Page 11 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander

“Then tell Hamish to bring them to me study.” She paused, letting the silence hang. Then, with biting precision: “Mestudy.”

One corner of his mouth shifted slightly. Not a full smile, but something that was completely aware of itself. “I will tell him.”

She turned on her heel to leave.

“Lady MacLaren.”

She stopped dead without turning around. The back of her neck felt the intense weight of his attention like a sudden change in temperature.

“The gap in the East Tower wall,” he said, his voice carrying over the wind. “How long has it been there?”

Her jaw tightened. “Fourteen months.”

“I will have it closed by Thursday.”

She said nothing in response. She walked straight back toward the keep without looking at him again, refusing to give him the satisfaction of adjusting her pace.

Behind her, she could feel his eyes watching her every step, so she kept her back perfectly straight, her chin level, and her hands loose at her sides all the way across the cobbles.

Inside the darkened stone doorway, Philomena was waiting.

“Well?” she asked eagerly.

"He agreed to close the tower gap," Alba said, peeling off her gloves finger by finger. "Before he'd even walked the full grounds."

"That's good, aye?"

"He also told me calmly that I have nowhere else to go and that I ken it as well as he does." Alba's mouth thinned.

Philomena winced sympathetically.

"And he wasnae wrong," Alba added, which was somehow the worst part of it. "I couldnae even properly argue with him."

"So he's..."

"Insufferable," Alba said flatly, already climbing.

“Interesting,” Philomena observed, almost to herself, a note of begrudging respect in her tone.

“Daenae,” Alba warned.

“I am only sayin’, me Lady.”

“Philomena.”

Her maid pressed her lips together securely. They walked in heavy silence for three more steps up the winding stone staircase.

“He has very good arms,” Philomena noted quietly.

Alba raised her brow, glaring at Philomena, clearly surprised at her remark.

“I will replace ye,” Alba said without missing a beat. “Happily and entirely without guilt.”

But despite her irritation, she was already thinking about the crumbling gap in the tower wall, promised to be closed before Thursday, and about the way he had said'assessment'instead of 'flattery'without so much as blinking.

She thought of the seven days she had left to find a plan actually worth the name.

She climbed the final steps to her study, sat down at her oak desk, and pulled the household ledgers toward her.