Page 58 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander

Chapter Eighteen

It felt like Alba was avoiding him. Which only made him more aware of her absence everywhere.

The excuse, if anyone dared to ask, would be Margaret’s arrival. The flurry of MacKenzie outriders, the baggage carts, and the endless catching up that women seemed to require.

But the truth was a far heavier, uglier thing to swallow. He had avoided her, too. Ever since that night in the dim corridor, when she had exploded in his hands, all wild heat and fierce, desperate friction, only for him to pull back. To reject her.

Damn me.

He had spent his entire life mastering the art of restraint on the battlefield, knowing exactly when to hold the line and when to strike. Yet, looking back at her wide eyes as he’d stepped away in that corridor, he knew he had handled her with all the grace of a blunt axe.

He noticed the shift first in the morning light. There was an empty seat beside Brian during breakfast, the bench looking oddly long and bare without the dark woolen curve of her skirts filling it. He noticed it in the silence near the kitchens later that morning, a space where her voice usually carried through the chatter of servants and maids, keeping the entire castle running on her specific, unyielding rhythm. He noticed it, most of all, in the fact that nobody was arguing loudly in the courtyard anymore.

Somehow, over the course of five short days, the sharp-tongued Lady Alba had become the center of his days without him even realizing it. Her passive-aggressive campaign, her administrative defiance, her quick, defensive retorts - they had become the very air he breathed in this cold stone fortress. Without her presence to push against, the Castle felt entirely hollow.

Sebastian hated it.

Worse, Brian hated it too.

The boy spent the late afternoon trailing behind Sebastian. At supper, the tension finally snapped. Brian sat on his high oak stool, his wooden practice sword leaning against the table leg, his bowl of venison stew completely untouched.

“Will Alba come tonight?” Brian asked bluntly, his small voice cutting clean through the ambient roar of the Great Hall.

Sebastian did not answer immediately. He kept his eyes on his trencher, tearing off a piece of thick, dark bread with his teeth, chewing slowly to buy himself a second of peace he had not earned.

Brian did not let it go. He leaned forward, his small brow furrowed into a tight, dark line. “Did ye upset her? Will she leave because ye upset her?”

Sebastian looked up slowly from his drink, his fingers tightening around the rough clay of his mug until his knuckles turned white.

Across the high table, Hamish barked a laugh loud enough to choke on his ale. The heavy-set commander slammed his fist against the timber, spitting a mouthful of foam into his beard as he struggled to catch his breath.

Sebastian glared darkly at him, a silent vow of extra training drills flashing in his eyes, before turning his gaze back down to the boy.

“Eat yer meal,” Sebastian muttered, his voice dropping into a low, flat register.

Brian did not blink. He narrowed his serious, dark eyes suspiciously, his small jaw locking in a perfect imitation of Alba’s finest administrative glare. “Ye definitely upset her.”

And he knew that he did.

Sebastian let out a rough, silent breath through his nose, setting his mug down with a controlled thud that quieted Hamish’s lingering chuckles.

He looked at the boy’s untouched food, then past Brian’s shoulder toward the smaller trestle table near the hearth where Margaret and Alba had been sitting earlier. The seats were empty now. The two women had slipped out into the damp evening rain nearly an hour ago, leaving the hall feeling twice as loud and half as warm.

“She is hostin’ her cousin, Brian,” Sebastian said, attempting a reasonable tone that felt entirely foreign in his throat. “Lady MacKenzie traveled the Dragon’s Tail while carryin’ a child. They have matters to discuss that daenae concern ye. Or me.”

“She always reads to me before the torches are put out,” Brian countered, his voice losing its warrior edge. “She didnae come to the library today. Nae once.”

The bread turned to ash in Sebastian’s mouth. He looked at the smudge of flour still dusting the boy’s cheek—likely from a trip to the kitchens to find her—and felt a sharp, unfamiliar twist of guilt right beneath his ribs.

He had brought his people south for safety, and he had demanded this marriage to give his brother’s son a mother. He had expected Alba to be a cold, capable ledger-keeper who would perform her duties out of obligation.

He had not expected Brian to look for her as if she were the sun rising over the hills. He had not expected to look for her that way himself.

“She will be there,” Sebastian said, his voice softening by a fraction, though the gravel remained. “Eat the stew, Brian. A future Laird doesnae starve himself over a broken routine.”

Brian stared at him for three long seconds, weighing the promise, before he finally picked up his wooden spoon and began to eat with a slow, begrudging reluctance.

Hamish leaned over the table the moment the boy was distracted, his voice a low whisper. “The boy is nae wrong, Sebastian.”