Page 42 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander

Philomena looked at her then, the playful deflection entirely gone from her face. “I’d follow ye anywhere. Ye ken that.”

“I ken.”

“Though I will say…” She stopped.

“Say it.”

Philomena looked back down at the courtyard below. “He doesnae look like a beast from up here. Nae the way I expected.” She tilted her head slightly against her palm.

Alba did not want to look.

She looked anyway.

Sebastian stood beside the last of the massive supply wagons at the far edge of the courtyard, speaking quietly to Hamish. He was in his linen shirt despite the biting cold, his wool doublet left somewhere inside. His dark hair was pushed back roughly from his face.

The flickering torchlight reached him from the left, catching the sharp line of his jaw, the vast breadth of his shoulders, and theway he held himself even at this brutal hour—straight, present, carrying the physical weight of two hundred people as though it were simply the natural shape of his body now. He had stopped noticing the burden.

Hamish said something. Sebastian’s chin dropped once in a sharp acknowledgment, and he turned to watch the last wagon being secured.

The ache arrived unexpectedly. It was subtle, quiet, and completely unwelcome, settling deep beneath her ribs where she had no reason to feel anything for a man who had taken her home by force. He had given her a week to decide whether to surrender the rest of her life to him.

Fool.

She was not certain which of them she meant.

She pulled her gaze back to the window frame, her knuckles turning white. She focused on the cold stone of it, solid and real beneath her fingers. She clung to the simple, physical fact of the wall.

She had exactly one day left on his deadline. Margaret’s letter had already been sent. The sensible thing—the only self-preserving, rational, intelligent thing—was to ride hard north when the answer came. She needed to put enough distance between herself and this man that her heartbeat went back to doing what heartbeats were supposed to do.

The foolish plan she had made on day one had not worked. She did not want it to work. That was the crushing truth she had been sitting with in this Solar for the better part of an hour, and she had not yet found a way to make it bearable.

She did not want to drive him out. And she could not surrender. The space between those two choices was getting smaller with every passing day, pressing in hard from both sides until she could barely find the air to breathe.

Philomena’s hand found hers on the stone bench.

Below, Sebastian turned away from the wagon. He said something brief to Hamish and walked back toward the Keep. He did not look up. He never looked up when she was watching him from a window, as though he extended her that much privacy at least.

The courtyard torch guttered violently in a sudden gust off the cliff.

Alba looked at the black, churning water beyond the Eastern Wall, at the mountains swallowed entirely in a dark cloud, at the sky that had nothing useful to offer. She understood one thing about the cold with the clarity she usually reserved for account ledgers.

If she stayed one more week beneath this roof, there would be damage done to her soul that could never be undone.

The question, the one she had been refusing to answer for days now, was whether she had already stayed too long.

Chapter Fourteen

The Great Hall had quieted to the low, comfortable murmur of a household settling into evening.

Tonight’s simple supper was laid out. Cold mutton, dark bread, the last of the soft cheese, and a jug of red wine. The long tables had been mostly cleared of Clan members. A few of his hardened men remained at the far end, speaking in low, rumbled voices over their horn cups. Brian had been deposited, loudly protesting, into Hamish’s care an hour ago; he had presumably remained vertical for approximately fifteen minutes before deep sleep took him sideways.

Sebastian sat at the head of the high table with the heavy supply ledger open in front of him, and read absolutely nothing in it.

Saints, what is she doin’ to me?

Across the table and three seats down, Alba was eating with one hand and reading with the other. A folded document waspropped precariously against the wine jug, one she had been relentlessly working through since before the bread had even arrived. She turned a page without once looking up. She reached for her cup without looking up. She made a sharp, small notation in the margin of the parchment with the blunt end of a silver pin she had apparently been keeping hidden in her sleeve; a preparedness he had stopped being surprised by.

“Cook says the salt’s runnin’ low,” a kitchen maid said, suddenly appearing at Alba’s elbow. “We’re nearly through what’s stored in the South Room.”