Page 28 of The Laird's Masked Passion

“Robert Munro’s, most likely.”

The name struck like a flint in dry grass. Curses rose. One man spat into the rushes. Another crossed himself, though whether from piety or rage, Colin could not tell.

“Munro has wanted MacKenzie blood since before ye were born,” Breac reminded him.

“Aye,” Murdoch added. “And he has waited because he is a coward with patience, nae because hatred ever left him.”

Colin said nothing. He knew the story as well as any man in that room, though he never cared to hear it spoken. Robert Munro had loved Colin’s mother before she became a MacKenzie. He had loved her, desired her, and claimed in drunken rage that she had been stolen from him. Colin’s father had married her instead, and what followed had been sung about in whispers for years by those foolish enough to enjoy tragedy at a distance.

His mother had gone into the MacKenzie keep a bride. She had died there a wife. And his father’s hands had not been clean.

“Munro blames this clan for her death,” one of the older men said. “He blames yer father. And after yer father, he blames ye.”

“He can come fer me, then,” Colin replied.

“He did,” Murdoch said. “Yesterday.”

“Nay,” Breac answered with a dark gaze. “Yesterday, he came fer more than Colin. He came fer the new marriage, the Crown’s witness, the strength this union gives us. He means tae strike before the clan settles around its lady.”

Its lady.

The words sat strangely in the room. Colin thought of Elspeth standing in the wilderness with a branch in hand, threatening his skull in a torn bridal gown. He thought of her fingers cool against his wrist, of her face when she spoke of her mother, of the way she called him a thief without using the word.

“She is nae tae be touched,” he warned.

No one mistook his tone. Breac inclined his head. Murdoch’s eyes narrowed slightly, but not in objection, more in calculation.

“If Munro is behind it,” Murdoch continued, “he willnae stop at one failed attack. He will test the borders next. He will burn stores and cut throats.”

“He wants us suspicious and weak,” Breac nodded. “A young bride from a clan already tangled in Crown debt gives men something tae question.”

Colin’s jaw tightened. “Let them question me.”

“They will,” Murdoch replied. “Quietly.”

“Then they may learn quietly that I still hear well.”

That earned a grim silence. The fire hissed as damp wood surrendered to heat. Rain tapped faintly against the shutters. Colin looked at the faces around him and measured each fear beneath its anger. These were not soft men. They had held passes in winter, buried sons, negotiated with wolves in human shape. Yet Munro’s hatred was old enough to have become weather over their lives.

One of the older councilmen shifted. “Munro sees ye as yer faither, because ye are a spitting image of him.”

Colin went still. The chamber did the same.

The man seemed to realize his error too late, but pride made him continue badly. “I only mean… ye have his face, me laird. The same look. The same?—”

“Enough.”

Colin felt the old coldness rise inside him, not sudden but familiar, like a door opening to a room he had sworn not to enter and yet knew by every stone.

His father’s face. His father’s temper. His father’s blood.

Men had been telling him of the resemblance since he was a boy, as if bone could pass guilt into flesh, as if a jawline were a prophecy.

He looked at the councilman until the man’s gaze fell.

“Me faither is dead,” Colin reminded them all. “Speak of threats that still breathe.”

Breac’s eyes had lowered, not in fear, but respect. Murdoch watched Colin closely, perhaps seeing more than he should.Colin disliked that. He disliked being known almost as much as he disliked being compared.