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No, this was not his cabin, because a man like him would never use the elegant pottery on the wooden shelves or the linen on the sturdy bed.

“She loved it here,” he murmured.

The tenderness in his voice sent a chill down her spine.

She watched as he glanced around with a soft look in his eyes, and yet something unnerving lingered beneath it.

“Ye ken,” he said, turning to her with a soft smile, “I have left it exactly as it was. Everything she had touched.”

Isla went still, realizing there was something more than hunger for power behind his betrayal. Something beyond rational thought.

Obsession.

“Whose cabin is this, Gavin?” she whispered.

Gavin’s smile turned longing, yearning. He walked over to her, and she tensed. He stopped a few feet from her and glanced at the robe draped over the armchair she was seated in.

“Whose?” He tilted his head. “Catherine’s, of course.”

Isla’s breath caught. Lady Catherine? Alisdair’s late wife?

Realization dawned on her like cold water in the dead of night. The look on his face, that forlorn gaze…

“She used to come here when the castle got too loud,” he continued, speaking mostly to himself.

A chill crept up her spine. This was not the reverent memory of a man speaking of his late mistress. This was something else entirely.

She had hoped, at least, to negotiate with a sane man. If her uncle had simply bought his loyalty, he might sell it back just as easily. That she could have worked with, manipulated, leaned on.

But there was no sanity in his eyes. The mask of the loyal, able, dependable advisor had dropped. All that remained was a man teetering on the edge of his sanity.

“Aye,” Gavin muttered to himself, “she really loved it here.”

Isla bit down on her lip to hold back the panic rising fast inside her. One thought kept her from crumbling.

Alisdair.

He would come for her. She had to believe that.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

RIDE HOME

“Alisdair!” Duncan called.

Alisdair ignored him for the millionth time.

“Alisdair! Me arse hurts!”

“I daenae care!”

“I ken ye want to go back to yer wife and play the wounded hero, but can we please slow down?”

Alisdair slowed down and glared at him. “I want to go back to me wife,” he growled, “and tell her that the tyrant who tortured her is no more, so her soul can settle.”

Duncan sobered up for a moment, before a glint entered his eyes. “I get it,” he said lightly. “So she can show ye exactly how grateful she is.”

“Idiot,” Alisdair hissed. “We ride!”