Page 72 of Promised to the Cursed Laird

"Then someone intercepted it," she said. "It never reached ye at all."

"Cailleach's men have been moving through this whole stretch of country for some time," Fearchar said slowly, working through it even as he said it aloud. "I'd thought it simple opportunism, him circling while the Accord created confusion. But if he's kent enough tae stop a letter meant for me⁠—"

"He's kent too much," she said. "The road we'd take. When Marcas would be pulled away in the village. Which letters tae let through and which tae bury. He's been arranging this from the moment he first took me intae his stronghold, Fearchar, and I dinnae think it was ever truly about me."

"What d'ye mean?"

"Why does he want this Accord broken so badly," she said. "Truly. Ye've always kent more of the old history between our clans than ye've told me."

Fearchar was quiet a long moment, and when he spoke again, his voice had gone heavier.

"The land along the river," he said. "Our grandfather took it from the MacRaths in a war before either of us was born. Cailleach's family never accepted the loss, never stopped believing it was theirs by right. A Chisholm bride married intae MacKinnon land binds the Accord tighter around that very ground, seals it further from ever being reclaimed. I think Cailleach's spent this whole time trying tae see the match broken, one way or another, before it could ever be properly sealed."

Fearchar studied her for a long moment, the fury fully gone now, replaced by a weary, searching uncertainty.

"And ye still mean tae marry him," he said. "Kenning all of this. Kenning it's put a target on yer back that has naething tae do with either of ye personally."

"I mean tae marry him," she said, and felt the words settle into her chest with the same plain certainty they'd carried in the hall, "because I love him, Fearchar. Nae the Accord. Nae the danger, nae the politics, nae any of the tangled reasons that brought us tae each other in the first place. Him. I've chosen him, freely, with my eyes wide open tae everything it costs, and I'll nae have ye or Cailleach or anyone else decide otherwise on my behalf."

Fearchar stared at her, and for a long moment he said nothing at all, something working behind his face that she couldn't fully name. Disbelief, she thought, and beneath it, slowly, painfully, something that looked almost like grief for all the years he hadn't been there to see her become the woman standing in front of him now.

"Ye love him," he said finally quietly looking at her with fresh eyes.

"Aye," she said. "I do."

CHAPTER THIRTY

Neilina led Fearchar back through the garden gate and then followed Marcus into his study. She remained near the door, watching the two men take each other's measure properly for the first time without a drawn sword between them.

Marcas crossed to his desk and pulled a small, locked chest from beneath it. He unlocked it with a key he wore on a cord at his throat and began laying out papers across the desk: letters, maps, an old boundary parchment, and a handful of scouting reports marked in a hand she now knew as Lachlan's.

"This is everything," Marcas said, "since the first ambush on the road. Every sighting, every attack, every report I've managed tae gather since."

Fearchar came forward, and she watched her brother's face change as he read. The guarded suspicion he'd carried since bursting through the hall doors gave way, slowly, to ”the focused attention she knew so well.

"This." He tapped one of the scouting reports sharply. "This matches a sighting my own men gave me near the river crossing, three days past. Same numbers. Same direction of travel."

"Ye've had scouts of yer own watching this?"

"I've had scouts watching Cailleach for the better part of a year," Fearchar said. "Since before any of this. He's made overtures tae me this past winter, careful ones, testing whether I'd have any interest in reopening old questions about the river land. I refused him both times. I didnae think much of it beyond an old grudge, stirred by a man with too much time and too little land tae show for his ambitions."

"He's nae stirring it idly." Marcas laid the old boundary map flat between them. "This is the ground his family lost tae yers, generations past. Every attack since Neilina left his stronghold sits within these old lines. I think he's using the Accord, and using her, tae see that ground pried loose one way or another, either by preventing the marriage outright, or by making certain enough chaos surrounds it that neither of our clans trusts the other long enough tae stand against him properly."

Fearchar was quiet for a long moment, studying the overlapping maps with the same close attention she'd once watched him give to troop dispositions at their own hearth, years ago, before the fighting had taken him from her more often than it left him home.

She said nothing, content simply to watch the two men who’d nearly drawn blades over her an hour ago bend over the same table, working the same problem in the clipped, focused language of men who understood danger and how to meet it.

She slipped quietly out, pulling the door most of the way closed behind her, and left them to it.

He hadn't expected this. Not the ease of it, nor how quickly the old suspicion had burned off once actual information sat between them rather than accusation.

"I judged ye too fast," Fearchar said, once they’d gone over the maps twice and settled the worst of the tactical questions. He said it plainly, without the pride Marcas had half expected to have to work around. "I rode in here with Cailleach's letter in my saddlebag and a dozen men at my back, ready tae believe the worst of ye because I trusted the man who’d written it. I should have stopped long enough tae question whether that trust was still deserved. I didnae, and I'm nae proud of that."

Marcas set down the report he'd been holding, considering the man across from him. Fearchar was leaner than Marcas, harder around the eyes in the way of someone who'd spent too many years at war and not enough of them at home, and Marcas found, to his surprise, that he understood him rather better than he'd expected to.

"I should have sent word tae ye myself, sooner," Marcas said. "The moment I took her from MacRath's, before Cailleach's letter had the chance tae reach ye first. I told myself there wasnae time, that the road was too dangerous tae risk a messenger, and that was true enough, but it was also easier than facing the conversation directly. I let the silence between us do the explaining instead of doing it myself, and Cailleach used exactly that silence tae turn ye against me before I'd ever had the chance tae speak for myself."

"Aye." Fearchar's mouth twisted wryly. "He's patient, if naething else. He'll find the gap between two men and widen it slowly enough that neither of them notices till it's a chasm."