Chapter 1: The Lockout and the Betrayal
The whisky headache hit like a blacksmith hammering on an anvil lodged behind Hamish’s eyes. Just behind the right one, specifically. A deep, rhythmic thud-thud-thud that pulsed with every sluggish beat of his heart. Fog, thick and damp as wet wool, clung to the manicured lawns of Dunmarra House, muffling the world and turning the imposing stone facade into a grey, hulking ghost in the pre-dawn gloom. He leaned his forehead against the blessedly cool oak of the front door, the carved wood rough against his skin. Christ Almighty. The chill seeped into his bones, a counterpoint to the fiery nausea churning in his gut. Last night’s bravado – the endless drams, the booming laughter, the sheer quantity of it – tasted like ash in his mouth now. Regret. Stupidity.
He fumbled in the deep pockets of his old tweed jacket. Empty. Trousers? Nothing but lint and a crumpled betting slip. Panic, cold and sharp, sliced through the hangover fug. The keys. He’d left them… where? The library desk? The sideboard in the hall? It didn't matter. They were inside. Locked inside his own damn house.
"Bloody hellfire," he muttered, the sound thick and slurred even to his own ears. The booming Laird voice was currently a rusty hinge. He pushed himself away from the door, swaying slightly. The heavy iron knocker? Fiona wouldn’t hear it up in their bedroom wing. Ring the bell? The ancient wiring probably wouldn’t carry the sound through three-foot thick walls. And the humiliation… Waking servants or, God forbid, Fiona herself, to witness him in this state. He could already picture her expression: that tight-lipped disapproval, the cool disappointment in her eyes. Worse than any hangover.
Think. The old place had secrets. It always did. Built by paranoid ancestors who distrusted kings and neighbours alike. A memory surfaced, hazy through the whisky haze. The gardener’s shed. Back corner. Behind the stack of terracotta pots that hadn’t been used in decades.
He stumbled across the gravel drive, the crunching sound overly loud in the muffled silence. Each step sent fresh jolts of pain through his skull. The shed smelled of damp earth, peat, and rusting tools. He shoved aside the dusty pots, cobwebs tearing like lace. And there it was: a low, narrow door cut into the stone foundation wall, almost invisible beneath a thick layer of grime. The entrance to the Priest’s Hole network. Meant for hiding Jacobites, now a refuge for a hungover Laird.
The air inside the passage was frigid and smelled of centuries-old dust and wet stone. Pitch black. He felt his way forward, fingers scraping rough-hewn rock, shoulders brushing uncomfortably against the narrow walls. His breathing echoed, loud and ragged. How far? Memory was unreliable. Left at the junction? Or right? He bumped his head, hard, on a low lintel. Stars exploded behind his eyelids, merging with the hammering pain. He cursed, the sound swallowed by the oppressive darkness.
Finally, a faint glimmer above. A hatch. Relief washed over him, cold and shaky. The way into the attics. He groped upwards, his fingers finding cold, rusted iron rungs set into the stone. A ladder. He hauled himself up, each movement an agony. The hatch resisted, stiff with age and disuse. He pushed harder, muscles screaming. It gave with a protesting groan.
He levered himself up through the opening, gasping for cleaner air, blinking in the dim light filtering through dusty attic windows. He was in a forgotten storage space, piled high with sheet-shrouded furniture and discarded portraits staring blankly into the gloom. Almost there. Just needed to get down into the main house. The servants' staircase was nearby. Another hatch, this one leading down into a disused linen cupboard on the first floor landing. Perfect.
He crawled towards it on hands and knees, the rough wooden floorboards biting into his palms. As he neared the hatch set into the floorboards, a sound stopped him cold. Not the usual creaks and sighs of the ancient house. Something else. Rhythmic. Insistent. A low, guttural groan. And then… a woman’s voice. High. Breathy. Undeniably familiar.
Fiona.
His breath hitched. The hangover, the cold, the exhaustion – they vanished, replaced by a sudden, icy clarity. He froze, crouched like a thief in his own home. The sounds were coming from directly below him. The Blue Drawing Room? He knew the layout intimately. This hatch opened onto a small, elevated service alcove above the room, originally designed for musicians. Now just a dusty crawlspace hidden behind ornate wooden fretwork panels. A secret vantage point.
Slowly, carefully, he lowered himself flat against the dusty floorboards. He inched forward until his eye found a narrow gap between two fretwork panels. A sliver of view down into the grand room below.
The weak dawn light filtered through the tall leaded windows, painting everything in shades of grey and muted blue. But Hamish saw with terrifying clarity.
Sprawled across the large, antique chaise longue usually reserved for distinguished guests was Lachlan Ross. His estate manager. His friend. Shirt open, kilt pushed up around his waist. And astride him, facing away from Hamish’s viewpoint, was Fiona.
His wife.
Utterly naked except for sheer black stockings and a delicate lace suspender belt that cut across the small of her back. Her pale skin seemed luminous in the gloom. Her head was thrown back, a cascade of dark hair spilling down her shoulders. She moved with a fierce, primal abandon Hamish had never witnessed, never imagined her capable of. Her hips rolled, surged, possessed Lachlan beneath her. The sounds she made – sharp cries, low moans that built in intensity – weren't the quiet, dutiful noises she offered him in their marital bed. These were wild. Uninhibited. Ecstatic.
Lachlan’s hands gripped her hips, his own movements desperate, his face a mask of agonised pleasure as he met her thrust for thrust. His groans mingled with hers, a raw, animal duet that echoed obscenely in the elegant room.
Hamish stopped breathing. The world narrowed to that sliver of horror below. The sight burned itself onto his retinas: the arch of Fiona’s spine, the flex of muscle in her thighs, the gleam of sweat on Lachlan’s chest, the shocking intimacy of the black lace cutting into her flesh. The sounds drilled into his skull, replacing the hangover hammer with a thousand sharper instruments. Disbelief, cold and absolute, washed over him first, a numbing tide. Then came the heat. A volcanic surge of shame, humiliation, and a rage so profound it choked him. It clawed its way up his throat, bitter and metallic.
He couldn't look away. He couldn't move. He was trapped in the crawlspace, trapped in this nightmare witnessed through a spyhole. The grand manor he commanded, the legacy he upheld, the woman he shared it with... it all crumbled around him in the rhythmic squeaking of the chaise longue and the cries tearing from his wife's throat. The imposing Laird of Dunmarra, powerful, respected, was reduced to a voyeur in his own attic, retching silently, violently, into the dust as the foundation of his life shattered beneath the weight of her pleasure. Below, oblivious, Fiona cried out Lachlan’s name, the sound ringing through the ancient halls like a funeral bell. The house itself seemed to mock him, stone by unforgiving stone.