Page 37 of The Laird’s Sinful Secret

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The ink had barely dried on the letter to his Covenant brothers when unease prickled down Euan’s spine.

He set down the quill, listening to the castle’s nighttime sounds—the distant clank of guards changing posts, the whisper of wind through stone corridors, the crackle of his dying fire. Nothing seemed amiss, yet something felt wrong in a way he couldn’t name.

Moyra.

The thought struck with the force of certainty. She’d left his office barely an hour before, the memory of her standing there in that thin nightshift still burning through his mind. But what if she’d grown restless again? What if she’d wandered somewhere she shouldn’t, gotten lost in corridors that all looked the same in darkness?

What if she’d decided his castle was just another cage and tried to leave?

The last thought had him on his feet before conscious decision caught up with instinct. He moved through Dunvegan’s shadowed halls with the silent efficiency of someone who’d walked those stones since childhood, taking the quickest route to the east tower, where her chamber lay.

The door stood ajar.

His pulse kicked. Euan pushed it open carefully, half-expecting to find her asleep despite the hour. But the bed was empty, covers thrown back as if she’d left in haste. The window stood open to the night air, curtains billowing like ghosts.

For one terrible moment, he thought she’d climbed out. That he’d find her broken body on the rocks below, driven by desperation to escape even at the cost of her life.

Then reason reasserted itself. The drop was too far, the walls too sheer. She was clever enough to know that path led only to death.

Which meant she was somewhere in his castle. Alone. In the late night hours.

The search began systematically—library, great hall, kitchens. Each empty room tightened the coil of worry in his chest. Where would she go? What had driven her from the relative safety of her chamber into Dunvegan’s maze of corridors and secrets?

He was passing through the lower hall when he heard it—the faint rush of water, barely audible beneath the castle’s usual night sounds. Not the sea, though that crashed eternal against the cliffs. This was different. Closer. The hidden stream that fed the castle’s water supply before cascading toward the rocks.

The garden.

Euan changed direction, moving toward the small courtyard garden that few knew existed. It was more sanctuary than ornament—a place his mother had tended before her death, that his father had visited with him as a bairn to tell him about her.

He found Moyra seated on the low stone wall beside the stream, her feet dangling above water that caught moonlight and turned silver. She’d wrapped a shawl around her nightshift, but the thin fabric did little to hide the curve of her shoulders, the line of her spine as she bent forward to trail one hand through the rushing current.

For a moment, Euan simply watched her. The way the moon’s light caught in her auburn hair, turning it to flame and copper. The vulnerable curve of her neck as she tilted her head, listening to water’s endless song. The loneliness that radiated from her small frame like cold from winter stone.

She looked lost. Not in geography—she clearly knew where she was. But lost in the way of people whose foundations had crumbled, leaving them floating unanchored in a world that suddenly made no sense.

He understood that feeling better than he cared to admit.

“Still couldn’t sleep?” His voice came out rougher than intended, startling her badly enough that she nearly toppled into the stream.

Moyra’s hand flew to her chest, eyes wide in the darkness. “Saints, Euan! Ye’re going tae give me heart failure sneaking up like that.”

“Ye were too lost in thought tae hear me comin’.”

She turned back to the water, but tension had replaced the melancholy in her shoulders. “I couldn’t stay in that chamber another moment. The walls were closing in.”

“So ye came here.” He moved closer, settling onto the wall a careful distance away—close enough for conversation, far enough to avoid crowding. “This was me maither’s garden. She said the sound of running water helped her think.”

“It daes.” Moyra’s fingers traced the stream’s edge, following the current toward where it disappeared over the cliff. “Everything moves so fast here. Water rushing, wind howling, even the clouds race across the sky like they’re fleeing something. But the stream just... flows. It daesnae fight or question. It just goes where it’s meant tae go.”

“And ye envy it.” Not a question.

“Wouldn’t ye?” She pulled her hand from the water, wrapping both arms around herself. “Tae have a clear path, a purpose that makes sense? Instead of being pulled in different directions by forces ye cannae control?”

Euan was quiet for a moment, watching moonlight dance across water that had flowed that same path for centuries. “I used tae come here after Loch Eilein.” His hand went unconsciously to his shoulder. “I’d sit exactly where ye’re sitting now and wonder if the stream ever wished it could stop. Just... stop rushing toward whatever waited at the cliff’s edge and rest.”

Her head turned, green eyes finding his in the darkness. “Did ye ever find an answer?”