Page 97 of Promised to the Cursed Laird

The passage was sealed now. Lachlan had overseen it himself, and the masons had worked three days and a night until the mouth of it was a wall of fitted stone thicker than a man’s arm, and Marcas had put his palm flat against it when they finished and stood there so long that Neilina had slipped her hand into his without a word.

By the seventh day the smoke had cleared from the courtyard and the great hall smelled of beeswax and pine instead of blood. The gate hung straight on new hinges. Somewhere below her window a hammer rang, and a woman was laughing, and it struck Neilina that it was the first laughter she had heard inside these walls in a week.

"Ye're awake early."

She turned from the window. Fearchar stood in the doorway of the chamber, his arm in a clean linen sling, a bundle of something folded over the other.

"I didnae sleep," she admitted.

"Nor did I." He crossed the room and set the bundle on the bed. "Nor, I'd wager, did he."

"Marcas?"

"The man's been walking the battlements since the third hour. Lachlan told me. He said it's like watching a hound pace outside a lambing pen." Fearchar's mouth twitched. "He's terrified ye'll change yer mind about the wedding."

Neilina laughed in spite of herself. "He's nae such a fool."

"Aye, he is. It's one of the things I've come tae like about him." Fearchar was quiet a moment. He looked older than he had a fortnight ago, she thought, and tired in a way that had little to do with the battle. "Neilina. Sit with me."

She sat on the edge of the bed. He lowered himself beside her, the way he had done when she was a girl, and he'd come home from some campaign and she had demanded every story.

"I brought ye tae MacRath's gate," he said. "I believed I was bringing ye tae safety. I stood in that courtyard and watched ye walk in, and I didnae look at ye, because I was a coward, and some part of me kent that if I looked I'd see ye werenae afraid of the right thing."

"Fearchar—"

"Let me say it." He turned to her, and his eyes were bright. "I was away at war for the better part of ten years. I came home tae a sister I scarcely kent, and I thought, I'll fix this. I'll make it right. I'll hand her tae a good man and the world will keep her safe. And I handed ye tae a bolt on a door." His voice roughened. "It was never meant tae be a cage. But that's what it was, and I'll carry that."

She took his good hand in both of hers. "Ye didnae ken what Cailleach was."

"I should have."

"Everyone should have. He fooled the King…all of us." She squeezed his fingers. "Ye came. And when it mattered, ye stood beside Marcas and fought for me. "

"Aye," he said, with a faint smile. "Seems I chose the right side in the end."

"Ye did."

He drew a breath. "I've watched him this week. I've watched him look at ye when ye're nae looking, and I've watched him with the dead. I've watched the way his men follow him, and I'll tell ye plainly, lass. I'd nae have chosen him for ye. I'd have chosen some quiet man with a quiet estate who'd ne'er raise his voice." He paused. "I'd have chosen wrong."

Neilina's eyes stung. "Is that yer blessing, then?"

"It's more than that." He lifted the bundle from the bed and set it in her lap. "It's this."

She unfolded it slowly. It was a plaid, soft with age, in the deep green and blue of the Chisholm weave, the edges worn smooth from years of use.

"It was our mother's," Fearchar said. "She wore it at her own wedding. I've kept it these ten years in a chest in a house I was hardly ever in, and I've nae notion why, except that I think I was waiting for this." He cleared his throat. "She would have liked him, ye ken. She'd have said he looked at ye like a man who couldnae believe his luck."

Neilina could not speak. She pressed the wool against her mouth and breathed in cedar and old, faint lavender, and when the tears came she let them.

"There now," Fearchar said gruffly, and put his arm around her shoulders. "None o' that. Ye'll be red-eyed at the altar and the MacKinnon will think I've said something dreadful."

"Ye have said something dreadful," she said, laughing and weeping. "Ye've made me cry before breakfast."

"I'll count it a victory."

She leaned her head against his shoulder, and for a while neither of them said anything at all.

The chapel was too small for them, so they stood in the courtyard.