Domnall’s POV
I remain in the library long after her footsteps fade, staring at the space where she stood. Her words echo in the silence: It was one night seven years ago. I barely remember it.
The lie sits in the air, and I know it's a lie because I've told myself the same one for seven years. Tried to convince myself that night was nothing special, just a moment of weakness, easily forgotten.
I never forgot.
The firelight flickers, and memory pulls me back—seven years, to the morning I woke beside her in that Carvenmoor tavern.
The room was grey with pre-dawn light. She was still sleeping, curled on her side, dark hair spread across the pillow. I'd been careful not to wake her when I slipped out of bed.
Sorcha had been dead for more than a month. I'd run from home after her funeral, thrown myself into a border skirmish, then drowned what remained in ale until this serving girl spilled it on my sleeve and made him laugh for the first time since the burial.
I stood there watching her sleep and thought: I should get her breakfast. Something warm from the baker down the street, maybe those honey cakes I'd seen in the window yesterday.
I wanted to see her face when she woke—wanted to watch her realize I'd stayed, that I hadn't disappeared like men probably always did.
I pulled on my boots quietly and slipped out the door.
The baker was two streets over. I bought honey cakes, fresh bread, the last of the morning's strawberries. The sun was just breaking over the rooftops. I was walking back, provisions tucked under my arm, already imagining how I'd wake her—
That's when I saw them.
Four men on horseback, blocking the street ahead. Dressed for travel, positioned with military precision. I recognized the captain immediately—one of my mother's personal guard.
I stopped walking. The provisions suddenly felt heavier.
"Lord Morvaine." The captain dismounted, his voice flat. "Lady Catriona requests your immediate return."
My blood went cold. "How long have you been hunting me?"
"Two weeks, my lord. Your mother's orders: bring you home by any means necessary." He glanced at the packages under my arm.
I took a step backward, toward the tavern. "I need to go back. There's someone I need to—"
"No." The captain moved to block my path, two other guards flanked him. "Lady Catriona was very clear. No delays. No excuses. You come with us now."
"I'm not asking permission." My voice hardened. "Let me go back inside for five minutes. Just five minutes to—"
"We have our orders, my lord."
I tried to push past. A guard grabbed my arm, the provisions fell—honey cakes scattering across the cobblestones, bread rolling into the gutter.
I fought them, actually fought—threw punches, broke someone's nose, took a fist to the ribs that knocked the air from my lungs.
Because returning meant remarrying within the year, producing heirs my mother deemed acceptable, performing grief I didn't feel for a wife I'd never loved. Returning meant surrendering the one real thing I'd felt since Sorcha died.
They wrestled me toward their horses. I was still struggling, still shouting.
"Let me go back! Just let me tell her—let me leave a note, anything!"
"Enough." The captain's patience snapped. "We can do this gently or we can bind you. Choose."
I chose fighting. They chose binding.
They dragged me onto a horse, hands tied, and we rode north while I twisted back toward the tavern. Shouting for someone who couldn't hear me, who would wake alone thinking I'd abandoned her by choice. Who would never know I'd been trying to come back.
The captain rode beside me, expression carefully neutral. "If it helps, my lord, your mother said this was for your own good."
"My mother," I said through gritted teeth, "doesn't know what's good for me. She only knows what's good for her plans."
"Perhaps. But those are the plans we all serve."
The fire has burned low. Dawn light creeps through the windows.
I searched for her when they finally let me return three weeks later. Sent men to question every tavern worker, every lodging house keeper. Checked parish records for marriages, births, anything.
She'd vanished like smoke. No forwarding address, no family to track. The tavern owner said she'd left the day after our night together—collected her wages and disappeared.
Eventually I stopped looking, convinced myself it was better that way. That she'd moved on, found someone else, built a life that didn't include the memory of one night with a grieving stranger who never came back.
But something about tonight—her desperation to maintain distance, the panic barely hidden beneath her careful words—pulls at a thread I haven't wanted to examine.
The market scene replays in fragments I can't stop seeing. Three dark-haired, blue-eyed children. Six years old. I count backward—six years, nine months. Exactly nine months from our night in Carvenmoor.
I remember Mairead's panic when I asked if they were mine. The immediate, desperate lie: No. Thomas was their father.
But widows don't panic over paternity questions. Widows answer with simple truth or quiet grief. They don't freeze, don't calculate, don't look at you like you're a threat they need to neutralize.
Liars do.
By dawn, I'm at my desk writing careful instructions to my most trusted investigator—a man who served my father, who's kept family secrets for three decades, who understands discretion.
Check birth records in Carvenmoor and surrounding parishes. Look for triplets born approximately six years ago—Tavish, Lachlan, and Fenella.
Mother's name: Mairead Dunmore. Find witness statements from the birth. Medical records if they exist. Any documentation that establishes paternity or lack thereof.
Also investigate: Thomas Farren, supposedly a blacksmith on the Duchess Farren's estate. Marriage records. Death records. Any evidence he existed at all.
Absolute discretion, report directly to me. Tell no one, especially not Lady Catriona that you're conducting this investigation.
Whatever you find, I need it before my mother's investigators discover it first.
I seal the letter with my personal crest, not the family seal. This is mine. Private.
I'm not doing this to weaponize the truth. I'm doing it to protect them. Because if my mother discovers Mairead has been lying about the children's paternity, about Thomas Farren, about any of it—she'll destroy them.
She'll use it as proof of deception, of unworthiness. She'll take those children and twist them into weapons against their own mother.
I can't let that happen. Whatever Mairead is hiding, I need to know it first. Need to build defenses before my mother discovers the vulnerability.
I stand at the window watching dawn break over the estate. I fold the sealed letter and tuck it into my jacket. My investigator leaves for Carvenmoor this morning.
Whatever Mairead’s hiding, I'll know soon enough. Then I can figure out how to protect her from my mother's investigation before it destroys everything.
A knock at the door comes, a servant enters with morning tea and today's schedule after I give my permission.
"Lord Morvaine, Lady Catriona wishes to remind you that you and Lady Elspeth are expected at the florist at ten o'clock this morning. Then the caterer at noon, followed by…"
"I remember." I cut him off.
He bows and leaves. I stare at the schedule he's left on my desk. Every day for the next twelve weeks, packed with wedding preparations.
My mother's voice echoes from yesterday's conversation: "You and Elspeth must be present for all preparations together. It's an opportunity to bond, to build the partnership your marriage will require."
Partnership. As if attending flower arrangements and menu tastings creates intimacy.
I look at the sealed letter in my hand, then at the schedule. Ten o'clock. I have three hours before I'm expected to smile at my fiancée and pretend to care about table linens.
Three hours to get this investigation started before I'm pulled back into the performance my mother has scripted.
I call for my steward. "Deliver this personally. Tell him I need answers within two weeks. Three at most."
The letter disappears into my steward's coat. Within the hour, he'll be riding for Carvenmoor.