Page 40 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander

It was small, too small to be useful for much beyond sitting, with a single narrow slit of a window that looked out over the jagged eastern cliffs.

She had come here the night her husband died. She had come here that first bitter winter when the accounts would not balance, and she had not wanted anyone to see her desperately working out whether they would survive. She had come here on every occasion when the world outside the door required her to be steel, when she had needed to be nothing at all.

She sat in the pitch blackness with her hands resting in her lap, watching the torches move through the courtyard below.

His men were still unloading. Even at this late hour, they kept working as the massive supply wagons rolled through the iron gate in a slow, muddy procession that had been moving since midmorning. The steady, efficient sounds of it drifted up through the cold night air: the creak of timber, the heavy knock of barrels, and the occasional murmur of male voices. Her courtyard. Her Gates. Her cobblestones darkened with someone else’s mud.

The heavy door creaked open behind her. She did not turn.

Philomena moved quietly across the tiny room. She sat on the far end of the stone bench without being invited; one of the few things Alba had always valued about the girl, and occasionally found deeply inconvenient.

“It sounds different,” Philomena said softly after a long moment.

“What does?”

“The castle.” Philomena looked out at the courtyard, her chin resting briefly on her palm. “All those MacGregor voices…” She paused, her eyes tracking the movement below. “It sounds different at night. Louder somehow, even when it’s quiet.”

Alba said nothing.

“Strange,” Philomena added, her voice dropping. “To hear so many people in MacLaren walls.”

Alba’s eyes tracked a single torch moving across the yard. A man she did not recognize crossed from the Gate to the South Passage without once looking up.

Five days ago, she had known every single step on those cobblestones by sound alone. She had known exactly who turned left toward the kitchens, who turned right toward the garrison, and what precise time of night each of the watch fires was relieved.

Now she knew almost none of it.

“I hate it,” she said.

The words came out quieter than she intended, completely stripped of the careful, fierce neutrality she kept in every room where someone might be watching. Here, in the small Solar withthe dark outside and only Philomena beside her, they came out brutally honest.

“I hate the noise of it. The rearrangement of everythin’. Wakin’ up and nae recognizin’ me own home.” She pressed her palms flat against her thighs, her fingers digging into the fabric. “I hate that I cannae walk from me chamber to the Study without calculatin’ who I might encounter, and what expression I need to be wearin’ when I do.”

Philomena was quiet for a beat. “And him?”

Alba looked back out at the courtyard.

“I hate that the most,” she said. It was not an answer to the question asked, and they both knew it.

"Mm." Philomena tucked her feet up onto the bench, entirely unbothered by the lack of an actual answer. "Do ye ken, I still remember the day ye arrived. Ye came up that same road below, in a cart with yer whole life in two trunks, lookin' as ye'd rather face down a war party than yer own weddin'."

Alba glanced at her. "I was terrified."

"Ye dinnae look it." Philomena's mouth curved, somewhere between fond and rueful. "Ye walked into that Hall with yer chin up, met Old Laird MacLaren's eye without flinchin', and asked him within the hour why his horse had a docked tail. He laughed so hard he nearly fell off the beast."

"I did nae."

"Ye absolutely did. I was standin' right behind ye, and I'd only been in service here meself a year." Philomena's eyes glinted in the dark. "I thought, well, this one's either mad or made of iron. Turned out to be a bit of both."

Despite herself, something in Alba's chest loosened, just slightly. "I daenae remember being that brave."

"Ye wouldnae. Ye were far too busy being fearless to notice the rest of us shakin' in our shoes." Philomena's voice softened. "I always envied that about ye. Even then."

Alba said nothing for a moment, watching the torch below move out of sight, another instantly replacing it.

“I am nae fearless now,” she said quietly.

Philomena turned to look at her properly. “Nae?”