“We will leave tonight,” she whispered, scratching the purring kitten. “If they ever fall asleep.” Hopefully, the Sinclairs were drinking lots of whisky, although she had smelled only a hint of it on Cain earlier. Would he post a guard right outside her door? If he did, escape tonight might be impossible. But she must go tonight or tomorrow at the latest if she wanted to use the hidden stairway in the chief’s room, because Cain would be moving in there soon.

Rap. Rap. The knock was soft on her door. Ella slid her hand over the blade that she’d strapped to her leg, the other one secured up her sleeve, the point wedged into the seam of her cuff to keep it from falling out.

“Who is it?”

“Hannah Sinclair. I have some drink for ye to go with the tarts. Cain said ye might be thirsty.”

Ella opened the door to the young blond woman. Slight in frame, she was tall like a fragile sapling in the forest and wore a flowing gown that added to her angelic look. She held a tray and had green fabric draped over her arm. “Thank you,” Ella said, taking the tray, and Hannah followed her inside. Cain’s sister gave a little gasp as she bent to scoop up Boo, nuzzling the kitten against her cheek while Ella set the tray down and washed her hands.

She met Ella’s gaze when she came out from the privacy screen. “So…Cain hurt your feelings years ago at the Beltane fair.”

Did the Sinclair siblings tell each other everything? Ella shrugged. “It was long ago.”

“Unresolved hurt never heals properly. Like stitched flesh that does not take. It can break open again and feel like a fresh wound.” She set the squirming kitten down and shook out the fabric in her hands. It was another gown, this one in green, and a smock. “I found another set for ye.”

“That is…very generous, considering I am a prisoner.”

Hannah kept her expression neutral and serious. “Ella, please know that the look my brother gave ye back then was not meant for ye, but for your father. When my aunt, Merida, was divorced by Alec Sutherland and sent back to Girnigoe in shame, she was quite open about the brutality she endured at Dunrobin under her husband when she could not produce a living child. He wanted nothing more than a male heir.”

A bigger truth could not be said. Ella had lived with the stigma of being a female her entire life. Her father would rail against her simply for being a daughter and not a son. She’d spent her early life hiding behind her mother, but when Mary Sutherland died in childbirth when Ella was fourteen years old, Ella had learned to become nearly invisible at Dunrobin to avoid Alec Sutherland.