Page 27 of Promised to the Cursed Laird

Neilina looked at the window for a long moment, at the sea moving beyond it, grey and endless, and said nothing at all. She didn't trust what her voice would do with what she was currently feeling, which was something she couldn’t quite name or welcome and that had no business taking root in her chest mere minutes from stepping into a stranger's household.

Guards at the door and nae bars on the window, she thought. He wants me held and he wants me comfortable, and I cannae yet tell whether those two things contradict each other or he’s being verra clever about both at once.

"Thank ye, Elspeth," she said finally. "For the water. And the honesty."

"Aye, my lady." Elspeth bobbed a small curtsy and moved toward the door, then paused there, hand on the frame. "Lunch is called within the hour, in the great hall. The laird will expect ye."

The laird will expect me.

Of course he would.

The great hall was warmer than she'd expected and louder, full of the clatter of a clan that had eaten together for generations. There were benches scraping, a dog underfoot, a dozen conversations running at once in a dialect thicker than anything she'd grown up with, all of it slowing briefly, when she entered, before picking back up at a pace that suggested curiosity being deliberately restrained.

Marcas sat at the head of the table, and rose when she came in, which surprised her enough that she nearly missed the chair a man pulled out for her at his right hand.

"Ye slept," he said, low, as she sat.

"Some."

"Good."

That was the whole of it. No mention of the night before, no glance that lingered too long, nothing Lachlan could have seized on. Further down the table, he watched them with an expression of studied innocence that fooled absolutely no one, and she found herself grateful for his restraint and irritated by it in equal measure, which seemed to be becoming the general condition of her feelings about this man.

The meal began well enough, with warm bread and a good thick stew. Lachlan was telling some story about a horse that made two of the men near him laugh loud enough to draw a sharp look from an older woman she hadn't been introduced to yet.For a few minutes Neilina just sat in the warm, comfortable atmosphere and almost forgot why she was there.

Then Marcas set down his cup, and the silence that followed told her he'd chosen the moment.

"I've spoken with the council," he said, loud enough to carry the length of the table, "and we're agreed. The marriage will take place in one week's time."

The hall did not go silent all at once. It went silent in a wave, conversation dying outward from their end of the table until even the dog seemed to have stopped moving, and Neilina sat very still and felt every eye in the room land on her at once.

"One week," she repeated.

"Aye."

"Ye've spoken with the council." She heard her own voice climbing and let it, because level had gotten her nowhere with Cailleach and it wasn't going to fare any better here. "Ye've decided, with a room full of men I've never met, the exact day I'm tae be married, and ye're telling me of it over stew, in front of yer entire household, as though it were a decision about grain stores."

"Neilina—"

"Ye rode intae MacRath's stronghold in the dark and took me by force." Her hands had come flat against the table without her deciding to put them there. "Whatever ye called it after—rescue, retrieval, contract—ye took me, and now ye sit here and announce a wedding date tae a room full of strangers as though I've agreed tae any of this."

"The Accord requires⁠—"

"I dinnae care what the Accord requires." Her voice cracked on the word requires, and she hated that it did, hated that the whole hall could hear it. "Everyone I’ve encountered in the past two days has talked only of what the Accord requires…my brother, Cailleach MacRath, and now ye, and nae one of ye has once asked me what I require, and I am tired, MacKinnon. I am tired unto death of being a line in a document that men keep reading tae justify whatever they've already decided tae do tae me."

"That isnae what this is."

"Isnae it?" She stood, the bench scraping loudly behind her. "Ye're moving against my brother. Ye're setting a date I've had nae say in, in front of yer entire clan, and calling it hospitality because ye gave me a warm room and an unbarred window. I never agreed tae marry ye. I never agreed tae any of this, and I willnae sit here and let the King's Accord become the excuse used tae take my choices from me one at a time until there's naething left tae take."

"Neilina, if ye'll let me explain⁠—"

"I willnae." She was already moving, already past the bench, already aware of Lachlan's grin finally, entirely gone, of the older woman's face gone carefully blank, of Marcas rising behind her with something urgent in the scrape of his chair. "I've heard quite enough explaining from quite enough men this week."

She walked out of the hall with her chin level and her hands shaking. She did not look back to see what was on his face, because she was fairly certain that whatever it was would only make this harder, and she had no room left today for anything harder than this already was.

CHAPTER TEN

She did not have a plan. She was aware of that as she moved fast through unfamiliar stone corridors with her skirts gathered in one fist. She had walked out of a room in fury without any actual destination in mind, which was, if she were being fair to herself, becoming something of a pattern this week.