Page 2 of Promised to the Cursed Laird

She pressed it, because it was there and it was true. "The Accord bound ye tae a Farquharson bride the same as it binds me tae MacKinnon."

"That's different."

"How."

"Because I—" He stopped. His jaw worked.

Fearchar looked at her then, really looked at her, and she could see the contradiction sitting in him, the thing he hadn't let himself examine directly, the way a man avoided looking at something he knew would not reflect well on him.

"Nandag Farquharson is nae MacKinnon," he said finally. "That's the difference, Neilina. Whatever my reasons for staying away, I'm nae afraid of what she'll do tae the people around her. I am afraid of what MacKinnon will do tae ye."

She looked at his face.

At the jaw and the amber eyes and the faint lines that had not been there when he'd ridden to war five years ago, and she thought about what Fearchar had seen in those glens because he had told her enough of it—the particular things that a man carried home from a war that changed how he looked at everything after.

She didn't want to believe him.

But Fearchar was not a man who lied about the things that mattered.

"Then what are we doing here," she said. "If nae the MacKinnon marriage, I return home. We find another way tae answer the King."

"That takes time," he said. "And time requires somewhere safe tae be while I arrange it." He looked at the gate. "MacRath is that somewhere."

She looked at the stronghold.

At the walls. At the gate. At the men she could already see stationed at it with the ease of people who knew what they were guarding and why.

He might be right about MacKinnon, she thought. He might be right, and if he is right, going home is the correct answer, and this is a temporary arrangement, and I can⁠—

She breathed in through her nose.

And if he's wrong, she thought, I've been delivered tae a stranger's stronghold on my brother's word alone, with nae say in the matter and nae recourse if I change my mind.

The difference between those two things was the difference between a brother protecting his sister and a brother deciding he knew better than she did, and she was not yet certain which one this was.

"I'll stay," she said. "For now. While ye speak tae MacRath." She held his eyes. "But hear me, Fearchar. If I decide I want tae leave, nae arrangement ye've made will keep me here."

He nodded, which was not the same as agreeing, and she noted the difference.

Then she kicked her horse forward and fell into line behind him, because the gate was already opening and this was not the time for argument. She had learned long ago that the moment when the door is closing is not the moment to fight.

She was already counting the guards.

She took a deep breath.

Cailleach MacRath met them in the courtyard.

He was shorter than she'd expected yet the way he carried himself and his piercing expression made him appear tall. His dark hair was in one big braid and he was broad, with a scar running from his cheekbone to his mouth.

He smiled when he saw Fearchar, the easy smile of genuine alliance, and when his eyes moved to her the smile became something else, calculating and less real.

"Lady Neilina," he said. "Ye're welcome here."

"I'm grateful," she said, because she was not yet in a position to say otherwise.

He and Fearchar spoke for several minutes about things that had naught to do with her. She took the opportunity to observe her surroundings with focused attention, taking inventory of every wall, gate, and guard in her peripheral vision while appearing to look at nothing in particular.

There were two men at the main gate. Another on the eastern wall. The inner gate was open but looked like it had been recently oiled with the hinges bright against the older iron, and there was a man nearby with no evident purpose except to be nearby.