Page 15 of The Heather Wife
When she saw Sorcha slipping from the keep, donning her cloak night after night, Elspeth made sure everyone knew.
She didn't need to say what the Lady was doing out there—she simply let the clan draw their own conclusions.
But gossip could only cut so deep.
She needed something final.
Something fatal.
Elspeth and her brother, Liam, had long known of a man—once Strathloch-born, now outlawed and exiled—who'd taken up with lowland raiders near the border.
During a routine errand to gather herbs for their ailing mother, they veered from the known path and found him.
He listened.
And he agreed.
For a promise of gold and free rein to pillage Strathloch's stores, the lowland scum agreed to come—along with a pack of his new friends.
For all she promised, they need only do one thing.
"Take her out," she said. "Kill Sorcha MacAlasdair. Leave the rest be, but see to it she doesn't walk away."
A purse of silver to a gate guard with more complaints than sense ensured the eastern entrance would go unwatched at midnight.
The rest... was meant to be easy.
But nothing about Sorcha of Glenbrae ever was.
The warning horns shattered the night—shrill, urgent, panicked.
Elspeth rushed into the courtyard, her heart hammering with dreadful hope.
Then a figure burst from the woods. Running full tilt toward the keep.
That cloak.
It was her.
The cloak fell away, cast aside like shed skin.
And beneath it—
Steel flashed, silver-bright in the moonlight.
Sorcha pulled the longbow from her shoulder, the motion swift and sure.
She loosed an arrow that sank deep into a raider's throat — the very one poised to strike down Isobel, the same girl who had once tripped her in the bailey and laughed behind her hand.
Sorcha did not wait to see the girl's shock. She spun, blade suddenly in hand, and drove it clean through another marauder who had crept up behind her, his weapon raised high, ready to end her.
Elspeth froze. Her breath caught. Her heart stuttered.
Under the moon's cold gaze, Sorcha stood bloodied and unbowed, her face streaked with crimson.
This was no delicate lady of court.
This was a warrior—blood-slicked, sure-footed—and Elspeth realized then she'd never stood a chance. She would never have broken Sorcha.
