Page 41 of Promised to the Cursed Laird

"The road tae Fearchar's lands isnae safe," he said, the earlier tension still visible in the set of his shoulders. "Whoever laid that trap kent the road well enough tae know where tae wait. Whether they were waiting for us, or watching for anyone leaving the keep, I dinnae ken yet. Either way, I'll nae risk ye on that road again until I ken who they are."

"What do we do, then?"

"Ye'll write tae yer brother." He stopped pacing, looked at her directly for the first time since the stable yard. "Tell him what happened. Ye’ll tell him about the ambush, the archers, that the road's compromised. I'll see the letter reaches him safely, by a route I trust, rather than the open road we just rode."

"Ye'd carry a letter tae Fearchar yerself."

"I'd send a man I trust with my own life to carry it," he said, "which, given the morning, is a rather higher bar than it was yesterday." A ghost of dry humor moved through the words, the first lightness she'd seen in him since the study the night before. "But aye. I'll see it reaches him, and I'll see it reaches him safely, whatever else stands unresolved between the two of ye, or between the two of us."

She looked at him a long moment. All she could see was the man who'd turned a horse hard enough to outrun an arrow, who'd gone cold and silent over a scrap of his mother's embroidery, who'd stood in a stable yard with his jaw set like iron because another man had touched her arm. She felt the whole tangled, unfinished shape of what was growing between them settle somewhere she was no longer able to pretend she didn't feel it.

"Thank ye," she said. "For the road. For turning back when ye did."

"I'll always turn back for ye," he said, quiet, echoing the postern gate without seeming to notice he'd done it, and she found she believed him a great deal more easily than she'd believed anything a man had told her in a very long while.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Marcas meant to finish his correspondence before midnight. He was at it well past then, his ledgers and letters spread across the library table, candles burned low, and the fire keeping the worst of the chill off the stone floor. The door opened without a knock, and she came in wrapped in a shawl over her nightclothes her hair loose and feet bare against the cold flags.

"Ye're still awake," she said, unnecessarily, stating it the way people did when they wanted an excuse to stay rather than a reason to leave.

"I could say the same of ye."

"I couldnae sleep." She crossed to the chair opposite his table without waiting to be asked, curling into it with her feet tucked up under her, and he found he didn't have it in him to send her back to her room, not tonight, not after the incident they'd both survived that morning. "What are ye working at, this hour?"

"Grain counts. Border reports." He set down his quill, rubbing at his eyes. "A letter tae the King's man, explaining why I'll nae be delivering on the Accord's timeline quite so cleanly as promised, given this morning's complications."

"Will that go badly for ye."

"It'll go however it goes." He leaned back, watching the firelight move over her face, and found he didn't much want to talk about the King tonight. "Ask me something else."

She considered that, head tilted.

"What's it like," she said, "being laird? Truly. Nae the parts everyone sees…the council, the reports, the men bowing when ye pass. What's it like tae carry the whole of it?"

No one had asked him that in years. He turned it over a moment before answering, because she'd asked it plainly and deserved a plain answer back.

"Heavy," he said. "Every decision touches someone who didnae get a say in making it. A bad harvest year, and I'm the one deciding whose stores get thinned first tae see the whole clan through winter. A border dispute, and men die or dinnae die by whatever I choose tae order that morning. I was two-and-twenty when my father died, and I've nae had a single day since where the weight of it fully set down." He looked at her, surprised at his own honesty, the words coming easier than they had any right to at this hour. "I dinnae generally say that tae anyone."

"Why tell me, then?"

"Because ye asked plainly, and it's late enough that I havenae the energy left tae give ye anything but the truth."

She smiled at that, small and warm, and he found himself telling her more than he'd meant to…about Lachlan, about the men he'd lost at the eastern pass, about the loneliness of a table where everyone deferred to him and no one, until recently, had simply sat across from him and asked how he was faring.

She listened the way she listened to everything, careful, cataloguing, occasionally asking a question sharp enough that he had to think before answering it. The candles burned lower, and the fire settled to embers, and somewhere in the slow unwinding of the night her questions grew fewer and her silences grew longer, until he glanced up from a report he was only half reading and found her asleep in the chair, chin tucked toward her shoulder, the shawl slipping loose from one arm.

He set the report down.

He watched her a long moment before he did anything. He couldn’t get over the soft, unguarded quality her face had in sleep that it never quite managed when she was awake, the furrow between her brows finally smoothed out, one hand curled loose in her lap the way a child's might be. His heart slammed against his chest, and it had nothing to do with the weight he'd just finished describing to her.

She trusted this room enough tae fall asleep in it, he thought. Trusted me enough tae let her guard down, in a chair, with naething locked and naebody watching but me.

He rose quietly, crossed to her, and lifted her from the chair with more ease than he’d expected, her head coming to rest against his shoulder without waking.

One hand curled instinctively into the front of his shirt the way it had the night of the kiss, and he stood there a moment simply holding her, the fire's last light catching the loose fall of her hair, before he made himself start walking.

She stirred once on the stairs, murmuring something indistinct against his collar, and settled again without waking. He carried her the rest of the way to her chamber with a care he hadn't known he possessed until this exact week. He eased the door open with his shoulder, crossing to the bed and laying her down among the furs as gently as he'd have handled something that might shatter.