Page 3 of The Laird who Craved her

"Ye think I want to be standin' here, naggin' ye like an old woman?" He laughed, though there was no humor in it. "I'd rather be anywhere else. But someone has to say it, Finn. Someone has to remind ye that yer people need more than yer sword."

"I am their Laird."

"Aye. And a Laird's duty is to secure his line."

Finn hated those words. They felt like shackles binding him to a past he had spent a decade trying to outrun.

Finn turned away. His chest felt too tight, his skin too hot despite the cold.

Secure me line.

His father had secured his line.

And then he had died, cut down in a pointless border dispute that left the glen bleeding. And his mother had followed within a year, not from illness, not from battle, but from something broken inside her that would not mend. Finn had stood by her bed and watched her fade, her eyes going blank and hollow. He had stayed until her last breath.

He had been twenty-one years old. Barely a man. Burdened with a clan already starving, already surrounded by enemies who smelled blood in the water. He had learned then that love was a weakness that broke people, that left them defenseless when the world came crashing down.

I willnae become him.

I willnae leave behind a widow.

A shout went up from the half-built wall. One of the men, a thickset clansman named Robbie, had let his end of the timber drop too soon, and it had clipped another man's shoulder on the way down. The injured man swore loudly, clutching his arm.

Finn was across the field before he'd decided to move. He hauled Robbie back by the collar, his voice a low snarl that carried over the wind.

"Ye drop a beam like that again, and it'll be yer skull next time, no' his shoulder. Watch yer hands before ye watch the sky."Robbie went white and nodded, and Finn released him without another word, already turning back toward Douglas.

Douglas watched him cross the field again, something unreadable in his weathered face.

But Douglas was still speaking, his tone dropping into something far more dangerous than anger.

"If ye refuse much longer, the council will force the issue." His voice was quieter now, a low murmur that barely carried past the collar of his tunic. "If after the end of the harvest ye havenae chosen a bride, they will choose one for ye."

Finn went utterly still.

"That is in three weeks," Finn said slowly. "The council would never dare."

Douglas held his gaze, his silver-streaked beard shifting as his jaw set in dead earnest.

"They will," he said, "if they believe the clan's survival depends upon it."

Something hot and dangerous rose in Finn's chest, a feral anger that burned away the chill of the northern wind. The council. Those old men who had never held a sword in true battle, who had never watched their people starve during the great frost, who had never buried a father and a mother and half a dozenloyal clansmen before they were old enough to grow a proper beard. They sat in their warm rooms by the fires, drinking ale and dictating the lives of the men who bled to keep those fires burning.

They would force him?

"Let them try," Finn growled.

Douglas shook his head, a weary gesture from a man who knew the political landscape of the Highlands far too well. "Ye cannae fight the entire council, Finn. Ye cannae fight every clan that watches for weakness. Ye cannae..."

"I can fight anythin' that threatens me, people."

"Then marry." Douglas stepped into his space, close enough that no one else could hear, his hand reaching out to firmly grip Finn’s leather-clad forearm. "Nae for yerself. For them. Find a woman. Any woman. Bind her to ye. Give the clan somethin' to believe in."

Finn's jaw flexed.

He thought of cold halls. A stranger's face across the table, watching him with resentment or terror. A woman who would look at him with fear in her eyes, the way so many did when they saw the scars on his hands and the hardness in his face. The way they whispered when they thought he could not hear, calling him the iron Laird who felt nothing.

Finn turned back toward the field. The men were still working, the walls were still rising, and the enemy was still gathering beyond the hills, waiting for the harvest to end and the raids to begin.