Page 84 of Promised to the Cursed Laird

"Ye're safe now," she said, softly, meeting his eyes directly. "Ye and yer family. That's all that matters tonight."

Marcas watched her work through a dozen more families in the same fashion. She would listen first, settling the worst of their fear with kind reassurance, then moving them efficiently toward food and shelter before turning to the next. Marcas felt his chest swell with a pride that felt refreshing to feel in the middle of all the chaos.

Fearchar appeared at his shoulder, watching the same scene, a similar expression on his face.

"She's nae stopped since the first cart arrived," Fearchar said, low.

"Nae." Marcas watched her kneel beside a frightened child, speaking low enough that he couldn't hear the words from this distance, though he watched the child's tears ease regardless. Neilina pressed a small wooden horse, one of the ones the stable children played with, into the small hands before she rose again to the next family waiting.

"She listens tae them," Fearchar said, something almost wondering in his voice. "Truly listens, I mean. I've watched great ladies manage refugees before, MacKinnon, but it's rarely done with this much care. Most simply direct traffic and call it compassion."

"She kens what it is tae be frightened and have naebody listen," Marcas said, quiet. "She's spent her whole life having her own fears managed rather than heard. I think she's determined these people willnae have the same experience, whatever else this war costs them."

An old woman approached the table next, bent nearly double with age, her face carrying the exhausted terror of someone who'd walked farther than her body could bear, and Neilina rose immediately, coming around the table to take the woman's arm herself rather than simply directing her onward.

"Come," Neilina said, gentle, "sit a moment first. There's nae rush now ye're inside the walls. Tell me yer name, and I'll see ye properly settled myself."

Marcas watched the old woman's shoulders ease at the simple kindness of it, watched Neilina guide her toward a bench with the same careful patience she'd once shown a frightened child in a paddock. He felt the last of his doubt about what was coming settle into a steadier feeling, something closer to certainty.

"She's going tae be a fine lady of this clan," Fearchar said, watching the scene in front of them. "I didnae fully believe it, when she first told me she'd chosen ye. I believe it now, watching this."

"Aye," Marcas said, and found he could say nothing further for a long moment, his chest too full to allow more talk. He kept watching the woman who would soon be his wife steady an entire frightened household with nothing but patience and a plain refusal to let anyone, from a laird's council to a terrified old woman, go unheard.

"We'd best see this war won quickly," he said finally, low, turning back toward the gates and the men still arriving. "She's built something here worth protecting more than any stone wall."

The stories came faster than she could properly brace herself for them.

Neilina had expected fear from the villagers arriving at the gates. She’d braced herself for frightened children and exhausted mothers, she had even prepared blankets and bread and words to comfort them. But she hadn't prepared herself for the stories they brought with them.

They told her frightening stories in low, shaking voices as each family settled onto borrowed straw in the great hall.

"They burned the Dunmore farm," a woman told her, clutching a sleeping infant tight against her chest, "two days past. We saw the smoke from our fields before we'd even had word tae run. My husband's brother didnae make it out in time."

"How many men did ye see," Neilina asked, keeping her voice level, though her chest had gone tight and cold.

"More than I could count, my lady. Banners I didnae recognize, though old Tam said he kent them for MacRath colors. They werenae hiding themselves at all. Marching plain, like they wanted every farm along the road tae see them coming and spread the fear ahead of them. Scary, my lady, scary."

That's precisely what he wants. Neilina moved on to the next family, gathering numbers, directions, reports about the cruelty of an army that burned crops rather than simply passing through. An advance designed to terrify rather than merely conquer. He wants the whole countryside too frightened tae stand against him before he's even arrived. Oh Cailleach, ye dog.

By the time she'd made her way through the several dozen families, she understood something she hadn't fully grasped in the council chamber, surrounded by maps and strategy. Whatever had begun between herself and two stubborn men, and an old grievance over river land, had become something far larger. Ordinary people were paying for it now—farmers, mother, children younger than the ones she taught to ride. All of them paying, already, for a fight that hadn't even started.

She was still turning that heavy knowledge over when Marcas found her near the hall's edge, he looked exhausted and her heart broke for him.

"Ye've been at this since midday," he said, crossing to her. "Ye should rest."

"So should ye." She studied his face, and the careful way he held his hand, and felt whatever exhaustion she'd been fighting ease slightly at the sight of him. "How many more are we expecting?"

"Two dozen families still on the road, by last count. We'll have them all inside by morning."

He stepped closer to her, and she noticed, that his hand was closed around something small.

"What's that."

He opened his palm. A small silver brooch, the metal worn soft with years of handling, shaped into a thistle with a single dark stone at its heart. She gasped as it caught the light, it was beautiful

"It was my mother's," he said, quiet. "One of the few things of hers I kept. I've kept it in a drawer for fifteen years, unable tae look at it and unable tae part with it either." He held it out to her, his hand not quite steady. "I want ye tae have it, Neilina. Nae as a replacement for anything, and nae because I expect it tae mean tae ye what it means tae me. Only because I think she'd have wanted it worn by someone who kens what it means tae choose a marriage freely, rather than have one chosen for her."

Neilina's throat closed. She took the brooch from his palm with both hands, reverently, as though it might shatter, and felt the tears slip down her face.