Page 73 of Promised to the Cursed Laird

"He nearly succeeded."

"He did succeed, for an hour," Fearchar said. "I stood in yer hall with a blade drawn on ye, MacKinnon. I'll nae pretend otherwise, or make it smaller than it was."

"And ye lowered it, when it mattered." Marcas held his eyes. "I've done things this past fortnight I'm nae proud of either. I took yer sister from a stronghold in the dead of night with a sword in my hand and didnae stop tae consider how that would look tae the one man in this world who's spent his whole life trying tae protect her. I'd have done the same in yer place, kenning only what ye kent."

They'd settled, by unspoken agreement, into the two chairs flanking the hearth rather than standing over the desk any longer. Marcas studied the man across from him with a curiosity he hadn't anticipated feeling an hour ago, when Fearchar Chisholm had been nothing but a name attached to a grievance and a sword drawn in his hall.

"Before we go further," Marcas said, "I'd have ye understand what stands between MacRath and myself, politically, because it bears directly on why he's chosen tae move against us both rather than simply pressing his claim through the King's courts."

"The Accord binds Neilina and me under the Crown's seal. That means any open move against this marriage, any formal claim Cailleach might bring against the river land while it's still unresolved, would be heard as a challenge tae the King's authority tae broker peace between clans, nae simply a private land dispute between MacRath and Chisholm."

Marcas leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "He kens he'd lose that fight in open court. The Crown's nae interested in relitigating a generations-old boundary on the word of a man still nursing his grandfather's grudge. So he cannae press the claim honestly. He can only try tae see the Accord broken before it's fully sealed, and use the chaos of its breaking tae seize back by force what he could never win by petition."

"Which is why he needed her taken, or the marriage discredited, rather than simply riding at yer walls outright." Fearchar nodded slowly, the soldier's mind in him following the logic without difficulty. "A war he starts openly, he loses. Ye'd have the King's men at yer back inside a fortnight, and mine besides, once the Accord's properly sealed. But a marriage that quietly falls apart, a bride who vanishes back tae her brother under a cloud of scandal, a laird who's seen tae have abused the King's contract⁠—"

"That, he might survive," Marcas finished. "Nae by force. By making certain the thing he cannae win outright simply never comes intae being."

Fearchar was quiet a moment, turning that over, and Marcas watched something harden in his face, a soldier's cold recognition of a well-laid strategy.

"When she spoke to me," he said finally. "In the garden. I didnae fully believe her, if I'm honest. I've spent so many years believing I kent what was best for her that it was easier tae imagine her mistaken than tae imagine I'd been wrong about ye entirely." He exhaled, something loosening in his shoulders. "But I've watched her this past hour, MacKinnon. I've watched the way she stood between the two of us with a blade drawn and didnae flinch. That isnae a woman held against her will. I've seen women held against their will, in war, and it doesnae look like that. It looks like fear worn thin over silence. What I saw in yer hall was naething like it."

"I'll do right by her," Marcas said, low, meaning it with everything he had. "I ken ye've nae reason yet tae take my word for it beyond an hour's conversation and a stack of maps. But I swore tae myself long before I ever met her, Fearchar, that I'd never be a man who held a woman by force or fear, whatever else was demanded of me. I willnae break that oath for Neilina. I'll die keeping it, if it comes tae that. And I love her. I'll nae pretend that's a small thing tae have found, given how it began between us."

"Nae." Fearchar was quiet for a moment. "I want ye tae ken, whatever comes of this, whatever Cailleach still intends, I'll nae have her caught between our two clans again. I've spent this whole conversation waiting for ye tae give me some reason tae doubt what she told me, and ye havenae given me one. I'll nae manufacture one out of old habit."

"I'll give ye none," Marcas said. "Ye have my word on that, for whatever it's worth tae ye yet."

"It's worth considerably more than it was an hour ago." Fearchar extended his hand, and Marcas took it, the grip firm. For the first time, they were no longer two wary strangers but men standing on the same side of a coming fight.

"My scouts are yers tae use," Fearchar said. "Every report I have on Cailleach's movements this past year, ye'll have by morning."

"And mine are yers." Marcas rose and gathered the papers spread across the desk, the old maps, the scouting reports, the whole tangled mess of the threat they now faced together rather than apart. "We'll find where he means tae strike next before he manages it, Fearchar. Together, this time, rather than circling each other while he moves freely between us."

Fearchar nodded, and for a moment neither man spoke. The silence between them was nothing like the one the’d shared an hour ago in the hall. This time there was no threat in it. They both knew they were fighting the same war.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

She'd been pacing. She wasn't proud of it—a grown woman wearing a groove into the stone floor of her own chamber like a nervous girl awaiting a verdict—but she'd been unable to sit still since she had left Fearchar and Marcas alone.

Fearchar's temper was slow to rise and slower still to cool. Marcas carried his own pride like armor, however gently he'd learned to wear it around her. Put the two of them alone in a room together with a shared grievance and no one to soften the edges of it, and there were a hundred ways the fragile peace they’d reached in that garden could still come apart.

They were speaking of strategy, she told herself, for perhaps the twentieth time, crossing again to the window and finding nothing in the darkening yard below to settle her. Maps and scouts and old boundary lines. Men speak of such things for hours and call it productive. It doesnae mean anything's gone wrong.

She heard his footsteps in the corridor before the knock came, recognizing the weight and cadence of his stride, and was across the room and pulling the door open before he'd finished raising his hand to it.

"Well," she said, breathless, searching his face for whatever news it carried before he'd said a single word. "What happened. Is he⁠—"

"He's accepted it." Marcas said it plainly, and the tension she'd been braced against for the better part of an hour drained visibly out of her own shoulders. "The marriage. Ye, and I, and everything between us. He's nae standing against it, Neilina. He said, in fact, that he thinks ye've chosen rather better than he gave me credit for."

She let out a breath that felt like it had been trapped in her chest since the garden gate had closed behind her and Fearchar that evening, and felt something unsteady rise in her throat that was very nearly tears.

"Truly."

"Truly." He reached out, brushing a strand of hair back from her face with a gentleness that still, every time, caught her slightly off guard. This enormous, capable man, a laird who could break a stranger's jaw in a dark street without a flicker of hesitation, touching her like she was something rare enough to require care in the handling.

"More than that. He's offered his scouts, his reports on Cailleach's movements this past year, everything he has. We spoke for the better part of an hour, and by the end of it we werenae speaking as strangers wary of each other across a hearth. We were speaking as men who'd found the same enemy."

"Thank ye." The words came out thick, and she didn't try to smooth them into something steadier. "For nae letting it become what it looked like it was about tae become, in that hall. For sitting with him instead of letting it turn intae exactly the war Cailleach wants between our clans."