Page 11 of Promised to the Forbidden Laird

Movement passed through the crowd inside the gates. Several men looked toward Cormac. One lowered his bow.

Cormac’s jaw tightened. “I removed ye from MacIver’s reach.”

“By dragging me toward a cliff?”

“I acted before he could seize control.”

“Ye acted because I refused ye.”

The words rang against the walls. This time, the murmur inside the courtyard carried no easy agreement. Cormac’s face hardened.

“Ye are overcome by grief and confusion,” he said. “The council will decide what must be done with ye.”

“What must be done with me?”

Cormac seemed to understand too late that he had chosen the wrong word. “What must be done for ye,” he corrected.

“How fortunate that ye are present tae explain the difference,” she scoffed.

The wind swept a strand of hair across her face. She pushed it away with her bandaged hand and felt the sting of the cut beneath the linen. “Open the gates,” she commanded again.

Cormac looked down at her without warmth. “Nae.”

It was the refusal of a man who had already imagined himself obeyed.

“The castle belongs,” he continued, “tae those willing tae defend it.”

Donaldina could scarcely breathe. Dun Ard belonged to stone, memory, duty, and the generations buried beneath the sea. It belonged to Lachlan, though death had taken him. It belonged to the children sleeping in its rooms and to the old women who knew each draft by name. It did not belong to Cormac merely because he had placed frightened men on its walls.

Her hand curled at her side. “Ye mistake treachery for defense.”

“And ye mistake a royal stranger for salvation.”

Roy made to move, Donaldina turned sharply toward him. He had not drawn his sword, and she saw the cold intent in his eyes, knowing that if one arrow flew, men would die before it struck the ground. “Roy.”

His gaze came to her. She had not called him by his given name before. The knowledge seemed to pass between them, strange and immediate, though neither acknowledged it.

“Dinnae,” she whispered.

His jaw tightened, then he stepped back.

Cormac laughed from above. “Aye. Obey her while ye may.”

Roy looked up at him. “Ye should be grateful she spoke.”

Before anger overcame her, Donaldina turned away from the gate. She would not give Cormac the sight of her pleading outside her own home.

The councilors gathered several paces down the slope, where the curve of the land hid them partly from the archers above. Roy joined them, along with the MacIver men and the guards who had remained loyal.

Donaldina followed more slowly. The loss of Dun Ard had not yet become real. It seemed impossible that a barred gate could separate her from Lachlan’s solar, her chamber, the great hall where his body had lain. Her cloak was still inside. Her mother’s comb remained upon the table beside her bed. In the chest by the hearth sat a poorly carved beeswax figure Lachlan made when he was ten.

“We could take the gatehouse,” Ewan MacNicol, one of the younger councilors, suggested. “There are fewer than twenty men upon the wall.”

“And twice that within,” another replied. “Men who may nae favor Cormac but will fight if they think MacIver means tae invade.”

“Me archers can clear the parapet,” one of Roy’s captains said.

“And kill MacNicol men while Lachlan waits for burial?” Father Maol asked.