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Mabel blinked, caught off guard by the description. “Ye mean Caelan?”

At the mere mention of the Black Laird’s name, two young maids carrying a heavy pot of stew nearly dropped it. They froze, their eyes darting nervously toward the doorway, clearly terrified that the warlord might suddenly appear from the shadows. The entire corner of the kitchen went, uncomfortably silent.

Morag noticed the sudden hush. She rolled her eyes so hard Mabel thought they might get stuck in her head.

“Oh, get on with yer work, ye foolish girls; he isnae hiding in the pantry!” Morag barked at the maids, waving a floury hand dismissively. She turned back to the dough, shaking her head. “Aye,Ma’am, I mean Caelan. The man still forgets to eat whenever he buries himself in his maps and his patrols. Someone has to constantly remind him that he is a laird, nae a martyr.”

Mabel stared at the housekeeper, stunned.

She had never heard a single person speak so casually, let alone with such blatant exasperation, about the most feared man in the Highlands. Even Duncan Fraser treated Caelan with a heavy, cautious respect.

“Ye are nae afraid of him,” Mabel observed, keeping her voice low.

Morag scoffed loudly, ripping a chunk of dough off the main lump and slapping it onto the floured wood. “Afraid of Caelan? I have been washing that boy’s mud-stained tunics since he was five years old. It is incredibly difficult to fear a man when ye vividly remember chasing him through the courtyard with a wooden spoon because he stole a tray of fresh sweet tarts.”

Mabel’s lips parted in surprise. She tried to picture the towering warlord as a mischievous little boy stealing pastries, and her brain failed to conjure the image.

“He was a terror even then, I imagine,” Mabel said softly.

“He was incredibly stubborn,” Morag corrected, her rough voice taking on a strangely fond, nostalgic tone. “But he was nae cruel. Never cruel. I remember when he was ten years old, he came into this very kitchen with a black eye so swollen he could barely see out of it. His knuckles were raw and bleeding.”

Mabel leaned forward, captivated. “What happened?”

“He had picked a fight with three of the older boys from the village,” Morag said, smiling faintly at the memory. “Boys who were twice his size and years older. When his father, the old Laird, demanded to ken why the heir to Clan MacCarron was brawling in the mud like a wild dog, Caelan refused to speak. He took the punishment without shedding a single tear.”

“Why did he fight them?” Isla asked, returning with a steaming wooden cup of sweet cider and handing it to Mabel.

“Because those older boys had cornered the blacksmith’s young son behind the stables and were beating him for a copper coin,” Morag revealed, her gray eyes meeting Mabel’s directly. “Caelan stepped in between them. He took the beating meant for the younger boy, and he refused to tell his father because he dinnae want the blacksmith’s boy to face any retaliation.”

Mabel wrapped her cold hands tightly around the warm wooden cup.

He stepped in between them.

The unyielding protective instinct that Caelan possessed was not something forged by the horrors of war. It was innate. It had always been there.

“He changed when his father died,” Morag continued, her tone dropping into something far heavier. She stopped kneading the dough, wiping her floury hands on her apron. “The ambush in the western pass… it broke something inside him. He was only twenty. Suddenly, he was the Laird. The men were looking to him for orders while the blood was still fresh on the ground.”

Mabel remained silent, not daring to interrupt. She knew what it felt like to have the crushing weight of a clan dropped violently onto her shoulders in the wake of a father’s death.

“The night we brought his father’s body back to the keep,” Morag recalled, her gaze fixing on the roaring flames of the hearth, “I set the high table in the Great Hall for the new Laird. It was custom. But Caelan refused to sit there. He walked right past the high table, went directly out to the stables, and sat in the hay with the stable hands and the youngest recruits. He ate his meal in the dirt with the lowest men in the keep because they had lost fathers and brothers that day too. He refused to place himself above their grief.”

A tight, painful lump formed in Mabel’s throat.

She thought of the cold, brutal mask Caelan wore. She thought of his harsh words in the solar, insisting that he only saw her as a duty.

“He carries a burden, Ma’am” Morag said quietly, leaning across the wooden table so only Mabel could hear. “He has spent years carrying responsibilities and guilt that nay man should bear alone. He believes that every drop of blood spilled in these glens is his fault. Ye daenae become the Black Laird without carving out the soft, hopeful parts of yer own soul first.”

“He thinks he is a monster,” Mabel whispered, her voice incredibly fragile.

“He thinks he is what the Highlands require him to be,” Morag corrected gently. “He is a shield, Miss Mabel. And shields exist to take the heaviest blows so that the people standing behind them daenae have to.”

Mabel stared down into her cup of cider. The sweet steam rose into her face.

“Tell me something,” she said. “What was he like before all this? Before the Black Laird?”

Morag chuckled, settling back like she’d been waiting all evening to be asked. “Ye want a story, aye? Fine. When Caelan was no older than ten, he decided he’d teach himself to swim in the loch in the dead of winter, convinced the ice couldnae possibly hold a boy his size. Held him just fine, right up until he jumped on it to prove a point to Rowan. Went straight through. We fished him out blue as a robin’s egg, teeth chattering fit to crack, and the wee fool grinned up at us and said, ‘Well, now we ken.” She shook her head fondly. “Stubborn as a mule since the day he could walk.”

Mabel laughed a real laugh, bright and unguarded, the first one in days that didn’t feel borrowed from someone else.