Read Chapter 15: The Old Gamekeeper

The tower room they’d turned into a war table stank of tallow and old paper. Iona had dragged every ledger, deed, and scrap of correspondence she could find from the estate office, spreading them across the floor in overlapping layers. Lachlan stood over her, arms crossed, watching her work with the wary attention of a man who expected a knife in the back at any moment.

“You’ve proof of every dead sheep and stolen bridle for thirty years,” he said, nudging a sheaf of wool accounts with his boot. “We’re looking for treasure, not tenant grievances.”

“Treasure hides behind paperwork,” Iona snapped, not looking up. She was on her knees beside a cracked leather folio stamped with the Campbell crest—worn thin as a whore’s patience, but sealed. The flap gave way with a dry groan. Inside: a series of loose sheets, hand-drawn, ink faded to the color of weak tea. Maps. Not the neat surveyor’s grids that hung in the estate office, but the kind a man draws in secret, with shaky lines and suspicious margins.

“This is the glen,” she murmured, tracing a route along the river. “And there—the old Caledonian road. But the markings past the falls… they don’t match anything I know.”

Lachlan crouched beside her, close enough that she caught the smell of rain and horseshide off him. He studied the map over her shoulder. “That’s not the glen. That’s the boundary line. Where our land meets MacTavish land.”

“According to your father’s ledgers, that land shouldn’t exist. It’s all contested.” She tapped the paper. “But here there’s a mark. A hollow. And a route leading to it from both estates.”

He went very still. “A hollow under the hill. The old witch’s cave.”

“You know it?”

“Only by warning.” Lachlan’s jaw tightened. “Every Campbell child is told never to go near the Caledonian Stones. The gamekeeper’s family has kept that superstition alive for three generations.”

A knock at the door interrupted them. Elspeth entered without waiting for an answer, carrying a tray of bread and cheese, her eyes scanning the room with the precision of a hawk. She saw the maps, the open folio, and her face—usually carved from granite—flickered with something Iona couldn’t name.

“You’ve been at this since dawn,” Elspeth said, setting the tray on the edge of a writing desk. “You’ll wear out your eyes and your temper.”

“We’ve found a lead,” Iona said, watching the woman’s expression. “A map to a cave on the boundary.”

Elspeth’s hand stilled on the bread knife. “The old gamekeeper’s tales are not for gentle reading. That ground is cursed, my lady. Every soul who walked it has come to grief.”

“Cursed,” Lachlan repeated dryly. “Or defended.”

They found the gamekeeper in the stableyard, mending a harness with the slow patience of a man who has done the same work for fifty years. His name was Murdo, and his face was a road map of Highland weather—deep gullies of wrinkles, eyes the color of peat smoke. He looked up as they approached, and Iona saw recognition there. Something older than her marriage. Something almost like fear.

“Map’s old,” Murdo said before they could even ask. He’d glanced at the folio in Lachlan’s hand and gone the color of chalk. “My father drew that. Before the Troubles. It’s nothing but a boy’s fancy.”

“It shows a cave,” Iona said. “Past the falls, under the hill with the standing stones.”

Murdo’s hands dropped the harness. “There’s nothing there. Caves don’t survive a hundred winters of rock and flood. You’d need a miracle.”

“We’re not looking for miracles,” Lachlan said. “We’re looking for what my father might have hidden. Before the debts, before the raids, he was a man who planned ahead. Is there anything worth keeping out there?”

“The only thing worth keeping out there is the one thing you should not find,” Murdo muttered. He gestured at the map with a scarred thumb. “That’s not a cave, my lord. That’s a grave.”

“Whose grave?” Iona asked, sharp.

The gamekeeper looked at her then, and for a moment she saw something in his eyes that wasn’t superstition. It was knowledge. Old, buried knowledge. He opened his mouth, closed it again, then glanced toward the main house as if expecting someone to be listening from the windows.

“I’ve fed every lie this estate asked me to feed,” he said low. “I’ve said the word cursed to every laird’s son who came asking about that hill. Your father didn’t want you near it, and he was right to.”

“My father is dead,” Lachlan said flatly. “And his secrets die with him unless you speak.”

Murdo was quiet a long moment. The wind picked up across the yard, flattening the grass, rattling the stable doors. He finally took the map from Lachlan’s hands with surprising gentleness, tracing the same hollow Iona had found.

“There was a man who came to Braemore,” Murdo said. “Before the raid. Before the feud even. A merchant, well-spoken, with coin to burn and questions about the boundary lands. He wanted to buy the MacTavish claim. Said he had a buyer south who wanted the whole parcel—ours and theirs both.”

Iona’s blood went cold. “What was his name?”

“He used many,” Murdo said. “But the one I remember was MacAllister. Duncan MacAllister.”

The room—the yard, the whole world—seemed to stop. Lachlan’s ledger. The payments from “G.” The name in the books, the man Gregor had theorized was a silence fund. Iona’s nails bit into her palms.

“Did my father sell?” Lachlan asked, his voice barely above a growl.

“Your father was a man of principle,” Murdo said. “He refused. Told the merchant the land would never leave Campbell hands while there was a breath in his body. But the MacTavish chieftain—old Auld Ewan—he was a desperate man. Floods had taken his crops, and his creditors were circling. He saw coin and he took it.”

“He sold his own land?” Iona breathed.

“A partial right. A pre-sale, the papers called it. If a survey found the boundary favored his side, the merchant would buy the parcel outright. If it favored ours, the merchant would buy from the Campbells instead. A win either way for the man with the purse.” Murdo’s mouth twisted. “But the survey never came. The feud did. And soon both families were too busy burying their dead to notice a stranger walking off with their deeds.”

Lachlan’s face had gone to flint. “And no one spoke of this?”

“You were both told the boundary was sacred. That the other clan wanted it for pride or revenge. But pride doesn’t pay a merchant’s purse. The man who wanted the land sat behind the feud like a spider, waiting for both families to bleed themselves dry so he could buy the entire vale for a song.” Murdo shoved the map back at Lachlan and stepped away. “Told you the place was cursed. Maybe it is. Cursed with the truth, and no one brave enough to dig it up.”

Iona looked at the map in Lachlan’s hands, her heart hammering. A cave. A grave, Murdo had called it. But a grave could hold more than bodies. It could hold papers. Deeds. Proof of a swindle that had cost her family everything.

“We go tonight,” she said.

“Like hell we do,” Lachlan replied. “The light will be gone in three hours, and I won’t stumble through cursed ground with only a torch and a guess.”

“Then we go tomorrow,” she pressed. “Before the estate swallows us whole.”

Lachlan stared at her, something shifting behind his eyes. Trust, perhaps. Or the beginning of it.

“Tomorrow,” he agreed. “We go together. And we find out who really burned that first shot between our hills.”

Murdo opened his mouth, as if to warn them again, then shook his head and turned back to his harness.

“God help you both,” he said quietly. “You’re about to dig up a ghost that should have stayed buried.”