Page 76 of Promised to the Cursed Laird

"Twice," Neilina agreed, making a note on the tally she'd been keeping, "and I'll want the honey set aside separate from the rest, for the small cakes. I promised the children a proper treat for helping carry the tables."

"Ye've the whole household wrapped round yer finger, my lady, and ye've nae even married the laird yet."

"I've simply learned which arguments are worth having," Neilina said, dryly. Elspeth laughed, and the work continued. It was warm and busy and entirely ordinary in a way Neilina found she treasured more than she'd expected to, after days of danger circling every corner of her days.

She was weighing a sack of oats against Elspeth's tally, when she felt rather than saw him enter. There was a shift in the room's attention, a ripple of straightened backs and lowered voices among the women nearest the door, and she looked up to find Marcas crossing the hall toward them, a ledger tucked under one arm.

Their eyes met, and they exchanged a warm, unguarded look. It was no longer something either of them tried to disguise.

"I've come tae discuss provisions," he said, though his eyes hadn't left her face since he'd entered, and she doubted very much the provisions were the whole of his reason for coming.

"Have ye?" She set down the sack, brushing flour from her hands, fighting a smile she made no real effort to hide. "Ye've a ledger and everything. How official."

"I take feast planning verra seriously."

"Ye take excuses tae stand near me verra seriously," she said, quietly enough that only he could hear it, and watched his mouth twitch at the corner despite his best effort to look properly laird-like in front of his household.

Around them, the women had begun, with varying degrees of subtlety, to discover urgent reasons to be elsewhere. One recalled a forgotten task in the buttery with a lot of giggles, another suddenly certain the linens needed checking, within a few minutes the busy corner of the hall had emptied entirely but for the two of them and several dozen sacks of grain.

"They're nae verra subtle," Neilina observed, watching the last of them disappear through the far door with a knowing glance thrown back over her shoulder.

"They've had long enough tae grow accustomed tae finding reasons tae leave us alone," Marcas said, setting the ledger down and crossing the remaining distance between them without any further pretense of discussing provisions at all. "I suspect Elspeth's begun training them in it deliberately."

"That does sound like her."

He reached past her, picking up the sack of oats she'd been weighing, and set it properly onto the scale beside the others with an ease that suggested he had, in fact, some genuine intention of helping, whatever else had brought him through the door.

"Ye're actually going tae work," she said, surprised despite herself.

"I did say I'd come tae discuss provisions." He glanced sideways at her, wicked amusement plain in his eyes now. "I simply didnae specify that discussing them and helping ye carry them were mutually exclusive activities."

They worked together a while in easy quiet, sorting and counting, trading small remarks like his dry commentary on Baird's certain complaints about the cost of it all, her observation that the smallest MacKinnon child had already sampled no fewer than three different honey cakes under the guise of "testing" them.

Neilina found, watching him hoist a sack of flour onto the counting table with an ease that made the effort look like nothing at all, that she could have spent the whole of the afternoon simply like this, enjoying how ordinary and comfortable it felt, if the world had been willing to grant them that much peace.

"Ye've flour on yer face," he said, setting down the sack and reaching up before she could brush it from her cheekbone, his thumb lingering against her cheek.

"Ye're one tae talk. Ye've a streak of it across yer own jaw that makes ye look considerably less like a laird and more like a man who's been wrestling with a bread oven."

"Is that so?" He didn't move to wipe it away. He only looked at her, his eyes warm with affection, the noise of the hall and the danger beyond falling away for the length of a breath. "Come and fix it for me, then, if it troubles ye so."

She reached up, meaning only to brush the flour from his jaw the way he'd done for her, and found her hand caught instead, turned gently, his lips pressing warm against her palm before he drew her closer, and she went, willingly, no resistance left in her at all when it came to him.

"We're meant tae be counting oats," she murmured, even as her free hand found the front of his shirt, resting against his chest.

"The oats can wait."

He pulled her against him, his hand on her waist. He kissed her slowly, one hand cradling her jaw with the same careful tenderness he always managed despite the sheer size and strength of him, and she melted into it. Her fingers curled into his shirt, the sacks of grain and the half-finished tally and the whole enormous undertaking of the coming feast completely forgotten for the space of that kiss.

Footsteps sounded from the corridor beyond, unhurried but drawing closer, and they broke apart at nearly the same instant, both of them a half-step back before Elspeth reappeared in the doorway with an armful of linens and an expression that suggested she hadn't been fooled for even a moment by their sudden industrious focus on the oat sacks.

"The tally, my lady?" she asked, entirely too innocently.

"Nearly finished," Neilina said, feeling the heat climb her throat, and did not miss Marcas's poorly hidden smile as he retrieved his ledger and made a show of studying figures he almost certainly hadn't actually looked at.

"I'll leave ye tae it, then." Elspeth's eyes moved between them, warm and knowing. "Though I'd suggest looking at the ledger in yer hands before ye count anything else, laird. Ye've had that one upside down the whole while."

Marcas glanced down at the ledger, found it was indeed inverted, and had the grace, at least, to look properly caught out as he walked back out. Neilina laughed and turned back to her tally with her chest still warm from the kiss and her heart considerably lighter than it had any right to be, given everything still circling beyond these walls.