Page 33 of Promised to the Cursed Laird

He didn't answer immediately. He looked past her, out toward the gate at the end of the passage, the grey morning light catching the sea beyond the walls, and when he spoke again his voice had lost the easy, guiding quality it had carried through the courtyards.

"Because I'll nae have ye lying awake calculating drops and locks and tide tables for the next fifty years of a marriage ye didnae choose," he said. "I told ye on the battlements that what happens inside the Accord is still ours tae decide. I meant it. And I cannae ask ye tae choose this… tae choose me while ye feel like a prisoner deciding whether ye're able tae leave. So, I'm removing that question first." He held her eyes, his gaze steady, entirely without the teasing or the banter she'd grown used to from him, only the plain, unadorned truth. "Ye're nae my prisoner, Neilina. Ye were never meant tae be, whatever it's felt like since the postern gate. If ye're determined tae go, I'll nae stop ye. I'll nae send men after ye. I'll nae have ye brought back by force a second time."

She stared at him, the cold morning air suddenly very sharp in her lungs.

"Ye'd let me simply…walk out yer gate?"

"I'd help ye do it properly, so ye dinnae break yer neck on the cliff path in the dark trying tae manage it alone, the way ye've been trying tae manage everything alone since MacRath's." A ghost of the old teasing returned, brief, gentling the weight of what he'd just said. "Ye'd want the grey gelding, if it came tae it. He's more sure-footedon the north path than anything else in that stable, and he willnae spook at the gulls the way the others do."

"Ye've thought about this."

"I've thought of little else since the battlements."

She turned from him, walked a few paces toward the gate at the passage's end, needing the distance to think, and found she couldn't, quite, think past the plain fact of what he'd just handed her: freedom, offered outright, by the one man in her life who'd actually had the power to withhold it.

Cailleach locked the door and called it kindness. And this man…this man I called my enemy days ago…is standing in his own gateway telling me which horse tae take if I want tae leave him.

"If I left," she said, not turning around, "could I go tae Fearchar?"

"If that's truly what ye want." His voice came from just behind her now, close but not touching. "I'll nae pretend I'd be glad of it. But aye. Ye could go tae him, and I'd nae raise a hand tae stop ye. I'd tell the King myself that the fault for any broken Accord lay with me for refusing tae hold a woman who didnae want holding, nae with ye."

She turned to face him then and found him watching her with an expression she hadn't yet seen on him, none of the wickedness, none of the laird's authority he wore through his own halls, only something quieter and more uncertain than she'd have guessed a man like him capable of showing anyone.

"Why would ye do that," she said. "Give up whatever the Accord gives ye. Risk the King's anger. For a woman who's called ye her enemy since the day we met."

"Because I'd rather have a wife who chose me with an open gate behind her," he said, "than one who stayed only because I'd made certain she'd naewhere else tae go. I watched my parents live thirty years the second way. I'll nae live it myself, Neilina, whatever it costs me tae avoid it."

She looked at the gate. Then at him. The morning was cold and the gulls were loud overhead, and somewhere behind her, she could hear the ordinary sounds of a household starting its day.

She had thought of it often enough. Of walking away, putting distance between herself and Marcas, returning to the life she had known before him. It was what she had told herself she wanted.

So why, now that the choice was finally hers, did the thought leave such a hollow ache behind her ribs?

Why did walking away feel less like freedom than it should have?

For all the times she had imagined leaving, she had never imagined what it would feel like to actually go.

She looked at him a long moment, the wind pulling at her hair, and said nothing further, because there was nothing she was certain enough of yet to say. He seemed to understand that, and didn't press for more, only offered his arm to walk her back the way they'd come, and she took it, and told herself taking it meant nothing beyond the cold and the uneven ground, and did not entirely believe that either.

Marcas had known the council would object before he walked into the room. He'd known it the moment he'd decided, on the battlements , that he'd rather lose the Accord entirely than build a marriage the way his father had built one, and he carried that knowledge into the chamber with him the same way he carried a blade into a border dispute, not looking for a fight, but fullyprepared to end one.

Ten of them sat at the long table when he entered. Baird, gray and stubborn as the stone he was named for. Young Cormag, still eager to prove himself worthy of his father's seat. Old Ionmhainn, who'd advised his own father and had opinions about everything as a matter of long habit. Lachlan at the far end, arms crossed, saying nothing yet, which meant he was waiting to see how badly the rest of them handled it before deciding whether he needed to intervene.

"It's true, then." Baird didn't wait for him to sit. "Ye told the Chisholm woman she's free tae leave."

"Aye." Marcas took his seat at the head of the table, unhurried, and let the single word sit in the room a moment before he gave them anything further. "I did."

"After we've spent days telling the King's man the Accord was as good as sealed." Cormag, sharper than his years, leaning forward. "After ye rode intae MacRath's stronghold and killed men tae bring her here. Ye'd hand her back tae Fearchar Chisholm now, and call the whole of it settled?"

"I've handed her naething. I've told her the truth that she's nae my prisoner, and never was meant tae be one, whatever it looked like from the road." He kept his voice level, unhurried, the same voice he used to settle a dispute over grazing land or a border raid, because a laird who let his council see him rattled taught them, that he could be rattled. "If she chooses tae stay, she stays because she's chosen it. That's the only version of this marriage I'm prepared tae build."

"The Accord doesnae require her tae choose ye, laird." Ionmhainn's voice, old and dry, carried the weight of a man who'd said the same sentence to Marcas's father once, long ago, and expected it to land the same way now. "It requires the marriage. Choosing is a luxury the Accord was never written tae afford either of ye."

"The Accord was written by men who'd never have tae live inside it," Marcas said, and felt the first real heat climb into his own voice despite every effort to keep it out. "I will. So will she. I'll nae have the King's paper dictate the whole of what happens between us any more than it already did."

"And if she leaves." Baird again, blunt as ever. "If she rides for Chisholm land the moment yer back's turned, and the Accord collapses, and the King asks why a MacKinnon laird let his contracted bride simply walk out his gate, what do ye tell him then? That ye were verra principled about it while our clan paid the price?"

"I tell him the truth," Marcas said, sharper now, his hand coming flat against the table. "That I offered a woman her freedom rather than her obedience, and that if the Accord cannae survive a woman being given an honest choice, then it was never worth the parchment it was written on tae begin with."