Page 63 of The Laird's Masked Passion

“I was looking fer a way in.”

“With singed sleeves and nae bucket?”

The man’s mouth opened. Nothing useful came out.

Colin seized Lachlan’s burned sleeve. The fabric smelled sharply of oil.

“Who sent ye?”

“Nay one.”

Colin leaned closer. “One of me guards is dead. Think carefully before ye decide silence is worth yer tongue.”

The man’s face went gray. Behind them, another section of roof collapsed. A great cry rose from the village, anger and grief together. Colin did not turn. If he looked back now, if he saw his people watching their winter security burn, he might do something to Lachlan Kerr that would leave no questions to be asked.

A flash of green appeared at the edge of the lane.

Elspeth.

She stood with one hand pressed to her throat, with smoke drifting behind her. She looked stricken. Her gaze moved fromLachlan to Colin, then past him to the burning storehouse. The sight of her there sharpened his anger into fear.

She came closer than he had ordered. He wanted to drag her back to the horse and put ten walls between her and the world. Instead, because half the village was watching and because she was not a child, he only pointed to the man.

“Take him.”

The villagers seized Lachlan fully, binding his wrists with a strip torn from his own cloak.

“Back tae the castle?” one of the villagers asked.

“Aye. Alive.”

Lachlan started struggling at once. “Nay. Nay, I told ye, I didnae?—”

Colin stepped close enough that the man stopped speaking.

“Alive,” Colin repeated softly, “is the mercy ye have received. Dinnae make me regret it.”

The man went still.

Colin turned back toward the village. The fire was dying now, not because they saved the storehouse, but because there was little left for it to eat. The building stood blackened and broken, with smoke pouring through its ruined roof. Men stared at it with blank faces. Women held one another.

Elspeth approached him slowly. He braced for accusation, questions, horror.

“What can be done?” she asked.

It was not the question he expected. For one heartbeat, he only looked at her.

Then he answered. “Stores from the castle. Grain, salted meat, whatever can be spared. We ration until more can be brought in. Nay family here goes hungry.”

She nodded at once, as if the answer mattered more than comfort.

“Then tell me where tae stand,” she said.

Colin’s throat tightened strangely. Behind him, Lachlan was being dragged toward the horses, protesting weakly now. The questioning would come later, in stone walls, under guarded doors, where lies could be peeled back carefully or not carefully at all.

For now, Colin looked at the people gathered before the ruined storehouse.

“Me stores will be opened,” he told them.