Page 75 of Promised to the Cursed Laird

The pace became wild, a frantic collision of skin and sweat. The bed groaned beneath them, the sound echoing the primal noises Marcas was making of half-growls and half-sobs of release. Neilina was lost in it, her world narrowing down to the feeling of him filling her and the sound of their synchronized breathing.

The climax hit her like a tidal wave, a violent, shimmering explosion that radiated from her core to her fingertips. Her muscles clamped tight around him, milking him with desperate pulses. She cried out, her body shaking in the throes of a climax that felt like it would never end.

Driven over the edge by her release, Marcas let out loud, guttural grunts, his body stiffening as he buried himself as deep as he could. He poured himself into her in hot, pulsing waves, his seed filling her to the brim.

He collapsed onto her back, his chest heaving, their skin slick and glued together by sweat. He didn't pull away, he turned her to face him, holding her as if he feared she might vanish if he let go. He kissed the her neck, his voice a ruined, exhausted whisper.

"Ye are mine, Neilina" he rasped. "And I am yours. Always."

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The message reached Cailleach at first light, carried by a rider half-dead from pushing his horse too hard through the night. Cailleach read it twice before acknowledging how he felt about it.

Fearchar Chisholm has ridden intae MacKinnon land with a dozen men. He met with the laird privately for the better part of an hour. They parted on good terms. The Chisholm host has nae yet departed.

He set the message down on the table before his assembled council with the same deliberate calm he brought to everything, though inwardly he was already reconsidering his plans around this new and considerably less convenient fact. His anger was mounting.

"Fearchar Chisholm has gone tae MacKinnon," he said, into the quiet chamber, and watched the reactions on the faces of his men. Some confused, some uneasy, none of them yet grasping the full scope of what it meant. "And he did nae go there tae drag his sister home by force, as we'd hoped my letter would provoke. He went, met with MacKinnon privately, and is now on good terms."

"They've made peace," one of his older captains said cautiously. "The two clans."

"Worse than peace." Cailleach's voice stayed level, though the words themselves carried an edge sharp enough to silence the room fully. "They've found a common enemy. Me." He let that sit a moment, watching the understanding spread slowly around the table. "I spent months separating those two houses with careful, patient work…a rumor here, an intercepted letter there, enough doubt planted in Fearchar's mind that he'd ride intae MacKinnon's hall with a blade drawn rather than a question asked. And somehow, in the space of a single evening, they've undone the whole of it."

"The girl," someone said, slamming his hand on the table. "She must have spoken tae him."

"Aye. The girl," he sneered, his eyes cold and calculating. "I underestimated her. I'll grant her that much, and I dinnae grant such things easily. I took her for a pawn tae be moved, a lever tae pry two clans apart. I didnae account for a pawn clever enough tae talk her own brother out of a war I'd spent a year building toward or to even have the brains tae figure things out fer herself."

"What do we do, laird?"

Cailleach was quiet a long moment, turning the problem over in his mind.

"We remind Fearchar Chisholm precisely what he owes me," he said finally, "before he forgets it entirely in the warm glow of his sister's newfound happiness."

He snapped his fingers for a fresh sheet of parchment, and began composing the letter in his head even as he spoke it aloud for his scribe to follow. "Fearchar. I write tae remind ye of the understanding between us before MacKinnon hospitality clouds your judgment. Ye came to me because ye doubted the match and wanted yer sister protected from it. I offered ye my counsel and aid, and ye accepted both. I did so in good faith, believing ye understood what stood between our families and what the MacKinnons too from mine generations ago.”

He took a swig of his wine and wiped his chin with the back of his hand. "If ye now mean tae stand aside and let that match proceed regardless…that is yer choice. But if ye mean tae put yer own men behind MacKinnon against me, after everything we discussed, understand this plainly: I will consider it a breach of the trust between us, and I will answer it accordingly. I have shown restraint until now out of respect for what once stood between our houses. Dinnae mistake that restraint for weakness.”

The scribe's quill scratched fast across the page, and Cailleach watched the words take shape with a certain grim satisfaction, because every sentence of it was technically true.

He had indeed given Fearchar counsel, had indeed discussed the matter with him at length, months past, before Neilina had ever left her own lands. He had simply never mentioned, in any of it, that the counsel had been offered with his own interest in the river land sitting quietly beneath every word of it.

A man doesnae need tae be lied tae outright tae be led somewhere false. He leaned forward, drumming his hand on the table as he watched the letter finished and sealed. He only needs tae be reminded, at the proper moment, of a debt he'd nae yet realized he owed.

"See it delivered directly tae Fearchar's own hand," he said, "nae left with a servant, nae passed through anyone who might soften its meaning before it reaches him. I want him tae read it alone, and feel precisely how narrow his choices have become."

"And if he ignores it, laird? If the Chisholm and MacKinnon hosts stand together regardless?"

Cailleach considered that, and felt, beneath the cold calculation in his mind, something that might in a lesser man have been called anticipation.

"Then we stop waiting for either of them tae make a mistake," he said, "and we make our move before they've finished uniting against us. Gather the men. All of them, from every holding I can call upon within three days' ride. If this is tae become open war regardless of how carefully I've tried tae avoid it, I'd rather strike while they're still congratulating each other on their newfound alliance than wait until they've had time tae properly prepare for me."

He rose, and the council rose with him, and he felt none of the hesitation that might have given a more cautious man pause. He only felt the buzzing anticipation thrumming through his veins, the certainty of a man who had waited twenty years for a chance his family had never stopped grieving, and had no intention now of watching that chance dissolve simply because a meddlesome Chisholm lass he'd underestimated had proven cleverer than he'd allowed for.

Ye've cost me my quiet path, Neilina Chisholm, he crossed to the window, looking out toward land that had belonged, once, to his own grandfather's grandfather. I'll nae forgive ye that easily. But I'll grant ye this, ye've made the reckoning considerably more interesting than I'd planned for it tae be.

The kitchens and the great hall had both been given over entirely to preparation for the wedding. The tables had been pushed back against the walls, and flour dusted every surface. Neilina had spent the better part of the morning elbow-deep in it alongside a dozen MacKinnon women, counting stores and organizing the mountain of provisions Elspeth insisted a proper wedding feast required. The wedding was certainly not to be a small affair, judging by the slabs of salted meat, casks of wine, and loaves of bread already cooling on the kitchen tables.

"Ye'll want twice that much bread," Elspeth was saying, surveying the sacks of flour with both hands on her hips. "Half the clan will come, and half of them will bring cousins, and every one of the cousins will eat like they've never seen food before in their lives."