Chapter One

 
Sinclair Castle, 1451
They hadn’t even offered her a chair at the table.

Liùsaidh sat in the row behind the Sinclair Council, close enough to hear every word and far enough back to make clear she wasn’t expected to speak. The Great Hall smelled of cold stone and tallow smoke, and the MacBain men across the table looked like they’d ridden through the night and weren’t bothered. Their laird sat at the center of them, dark-haired and broad across the shoulders. His stillness didn’t seem to come from anything even resembling ease. It came from discipline. From a man who had learned to keep everything close to his chest.

Liùsaidh had not looked at him directly yet. She told herself it was beneath her.

Elder Cormac was speaking loudly where he should have been commanding, as though the hall’s size demanded it. “The MacBain victory is nae in dispute,” he said, spreading his hands across the table as though the gesture settled something. “But the lands have been Sinclair fer three generations. Dissolution of the clan serves no one’s long-term interests.”

“It serves ours.” The man spoke from the laird’s left and didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. He was a senior MacBain councilor with grey at his temples and a scar running jaw to collar. “There is nay male heir. Without succession, there is nay clan. That isnae a judgment, ‘tis a fact.”

Liùsaidh’s jaw tightened. She looked at the back of Cormac’s head and willed him to say something useful.

He didn’t. Instead, he cleared his throat and said, “There is, however, a Sinclair heir.”

The pause that followed settled over the hall like a held breath, the last moment before everything changed.

“Lady Liùsaidh.” Cormac half-turned, not quite looking at her, gesturing vaguely in her direction as though she were a document he was referencing. “A match between her and the MacBain laird would bind both clans. Sinclair lands remain Sinclair in name. Yer people gain stability and alliance rather than occupation.”

She felt every eye in the room shift. Felt Fionnlagh MacBain’s gaze land on her for the first time, steady and without drama. He looked at her slowly and thoroughly as if he was assessing a problem he was deciding whether to take on or not. She didn’t like it at all.

She stood before anyone could speak.

“I am already betrothed,” she said. Her voice came out even, which was more than she’d hoped for. “Tae Archibald Ross. There is nay match tae be made here.”

Cormac finally turned to look at her fully. His expression was patient in a manner that made her want to put her fist through a wall. “Me lady, the circumstances have changed considerably.”

“Me circumstances havenae changed. I gave me word.”

“Yer dowry is gone.” That came from the Council’s other flank, Elder Donan, who had the decency to look uncomfortable while he said it. “Yer clan is weakened. Without clan backing, the betrothal holds nay political weight. Archie Ross agreed tae a match with a Sinclair of standing. That Sinclair nay longer exists in the same form.”

“I exist,” she said. “In the same form I have always existed.”

“Nay one is forcing ye intae anything,” Cormac said, and she heard the but before he even drew breath to continue. “Betrothals have been broken before, and nay court in the land would question a woman of a love match changing her mind. Ye simply have tae agree it’s over.”

Simply. As though her word meant something only when it was convenient for them, and nothing at all when it wasn’t. A love match. They kept calling it that, as though the words could make it true. She had never once used that word about Archie, not even in the privacy of her own thoughts. What she and Archie had was an arrangement, useful and understood by both sides, and she had honored it as such. Love had nothing to do with it.

She opened her mouth and felt the pressure close around her like weather, the MacBain men watching. The Sinclair Council watching. The entire weight of a dead clan’s survival pressing against her from one side, and a future she hadn’t chosen pressing from the other, and no one in this room asking what she actually wanted, because the question had never occurred to any of them as relevant.

Her lungs pulled tight. She kept her face still, as she had been in rooms like this since she was twelve years old. She was very good at it. She hated that she needed to be.

“Give her a moment.”

The voice was low and calm. It cut through the room without effort. Liùsaidh looked at Fionnlagh MacBain properly for the first time, and her next breath came a half-beat too late.

He was looking at the Council, not at her. Not offering consideration as a gesture, but actually exercising it, his attention moving across the room with the same care a man gave unfamiliar ground, reading it rather than reacting to it. Up close, he was larger than she’d registered from the back of the hall. Dark hair, jaw set, a faint scar at his left brow she hadn’t noticed until now. His hands rested on the table, relaxed, which was more unsettling than if he’d been tense.

“She hasnae been asked,” he said. “She’s been informed. Give her room tae breathe before we continue.”

Cormac looked as though he’d swallowed something unpleasant. The scarred man to Fionnlagh MacBain’s left looked as though he wanted to say something but thought better of it.

Liùsaidh was still deciding what to do with the fact that the only person in this room who had said anything resembling a decent thing was the man they were all trying to give her to, when the door at the far end of the hall crashed open hard enough to bounce off the wall.

Every sword in the room cleared its scabbard before the echo died.

Archibald Ross stood in the doorway with six of his men behind him, breathing hard, color high in his face. He was handsome in the sharpened manner of a blade, clean lines and cold fury with nothing soft underneath. His eyes found her immediately, and her stomach dropped rather than settled.

“Step away from her,” he said, his voice leaving no room for argument, as though the outcome had been settled long before he’d walked through the door. His gaze swept across the MacBain men without flinching, landed on Fionnlagh and stayed there. “I’ll nae stand by while ye broker me betrothed like cattle at a market.”

“Archie—” she started.

“I’m here fer the Sinclair name,” he said, his gaze moving across the room like he was taking inventory of what he stood to lose. “And tae protect what’s left of its honor, since it appears nay one else here intends tae.”

“There’s nay need fer swords,” Cormac said, half-rising, his voice pitched to calm. “We’re in negotiation—”

“Ye’re in the middle of selling her off,” Archie said, and that was the moment Liùsaidh understood this wasn’t going to resolve with words.

His man lunged first. She didn’t see at whom. The hall erupted.

She pressed back against the wall as the table went sideways, chairs scraping stone, voices rising over the crash of blades. A MacBain man drove a Sinclair guard into the pillar two feet from her head. She ducked, moved, put a column between herself and the worst of it. Through the chaos she could see Fionnlagh on his feet, no sword yet drawn, reading the room, looking for the shape of it, the logic, where it was going to break next.

He was very good at it. She noticed it the same way she’d noticed the scar and the hands, without wanting to.

Archie’s voice cut through from across the hall, barking orders at his men, and she caught the edge of his gaze swinging toward her with an expression she didn’t entirely like. There was protection in it, but there was also possession. Those weren’t the same thing, and she was beginning to think she was surrounded by men who didn’t know the difference.

Steel rang against stone somewhere to her left. She pressed tighter to the pillar, chin up, and watched the room fall apart around her while keeping her face very, very still.

Chapter Two

She had never watched a man fight like this before.

The hall had become something barely recognizable, tables shoved sideways, benches overturned, the air thick with the scrape of boots on stone and the ring of steel. Liùsaidh stayed pressed to her column and watched Fionnlagh MacBain move through it all with a focus that made everyone else in the room look like they were fighting blind.

He’d only drawn his sword after he’d read the shape of the brawl, identified where it was going to break, and only then stepped into it, placing himself exactly where he needed to be a half-second before it mattered. A Ross man swung wide at Gregor. Fionnlagh caught the man’s sword arm mid-arc, redirected it into the pillar, and had him disarmed before the echo of the impact died. No wasted movement. No showmanship. He fought the way the most dangerous men did, not with aggression but with patience, like the outcome was never really in question.

Across the hall, Archie was still standing, which said something about his skill if nothing else. He’d driven two MacBain men back toward the far wall and was shouting orders at his remaining soldiers, sounding furious. He knew that the ground was shifting beneath him. One of the Sinclair council elders had retreated behind the dais. Another was pressed flat against the tapestry as though he hoped it might absorb him entirely.

Liùsaidh shifted her weight, calculating distance to the side door. Twelve feet, maybe fifteen. If she moved now, while the worst of it was concentrated near the table—

The arm came from behind.

It caught her across the chest before she’d processed the sound of boots behind her, yanking her back hard against a solid frame. Archie’s voice was low against her ear, all the public fury stripped out of it, something colder underneath.

“Dinnae make a sound,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

She made a sound. She made several sounds, in fact. She also drove her elbow back into his ribs as hard as she could manage, which given the angle wasn’t hard enough, and got her heel down onto his foot, which bought her approximately nothing. Archie exhaled sharply against her ear, not pain, but irritation. It was the sound a man made when something he owned refused to behave.

“Stop it,” he said, low and tight. “I’m saving ye.”

She drove her elbow back again. His grip turned punishing.

“Liùsaidh.” Her name in his mouth sounded like a claim. “Listen tae me. They were going tae sell ye tae him. I came fer ye. I’m the only one in this room who came fer ye.”

She was still fighting him, twisting against his hold. That was when his free hand came up and caught her jaw, sharp and fast, not quite a blow but not far from one either. Her head snapped sideways and the world tilted briefly.

“I said stop,” he said. “Ye’re hysterical.”

She wasn’t hysterical. She was furious, which was different. His grip tightened and he kept moving, pulling her toward the passage. She understood with sudden sharp clarity that he hadn’t come here to negotiate. He’d come here to remove her before anyone could stop him. The fight had been cover for exactly that.

“Let go of me,” she said, loud enough to carry.

It carried.

She felt Archie’s grip shift a half-second before Fionnlagh crossed the distance between them, and then everything happened very fast. Fionnlagh’s hand closed around Archie’s sword arm, not his throat, not his collar, but his sword arm. It was clear to her he’d read the threat correctly in the space of a single glance. Archie released her to meet the grab, and that was his mistake. Liùsaidh stepped sideways and out, putting three feet of cold air between herself and both of them.

“Let her go.” Fionnlagh’s voice hadn’t changed. Same tone, same pace as it had been all morning.

“I already did.” Archie circled, blade up, breathing harder than he wanted to show. “Which is more than ye were planning tae do.”

“I offered her a choice. Ye offered her a door she didnae pick.”

Archie lunged and Fionnlagh moved. The exchange was short and violent. It ended with Archie back against the wall, sword arm pinned, jaw tight with the effort of not showing how much that had cost him.

He recovered, and the fight that followed stayed brutal. Archie was skilled, relentless in the way men were when their pride had already taken the first blow. But Fionnlagh was unhurried. He didn’t need to humiliate Archie. He didn’t try to. He simply made it clear, step by step and strike by strike, that this was not a contest. When Archie’s back hit the door to the main corridor, Gregor was already there, and two other MacBain men behind him. The math became undeniable.

Liùsaidh straightened her sleeves. Her hands were completely steady, which she credited entirely to stubbornness.

“Get him out,” Fionnlagh said.

They escorted him out, though Archie went fighting it, which was at least consistent, twisting against the grip on his arms until Gregor’s hand closed on the back of his neck.

“Ye can walk out, or I can drag ye,” Gregor said, almost pleasantly. “Either way ye’re leaving, so pick one and save us both the trouble.”

Archie walked. He was through the door and into the courtyard in less than a minute, his remaining men behind him. The hall fell into the ringing silence that follows violence.

Liùsaidh crossed the floor before she’d decided to. She stopped in the doorway, not outside it.

“Ye’ll regret this.” Archie’s voice carried from the courtyard, roughened now, the polish scraped off entirely. He was looking at Fionnlagh. Then, as though he’d remembered she existed, he looked at her instead. “Both of ye. I’ll go tae the King. I’ll take back what’s mine. Every last bit of it.”

She held his gaze but said nothing. There was nothing to say that he would hear anyway.

Gregor shut the door.

The silence settled. Liùsaidh turned from the closed door and found Fionnlagh two feet away. He was closer than she’d expected, and looking at her with full attention. He was a man who noticed everything.

“Are ye all right?” he asked.

“I’m fine.” She said it before he’d finished asking. Then, because he didn’t move or look satisfied, she added, “I’m unhurt. I’m fine.”

He still didn’t step back. She refused to be the one to do so. The barely existent distance between them sat there but neither of them did anything about it.

“Good,” he said at last.

That was all. Just the one word, but the way he said it made it land like something much larger.

Not wanting to dwell on it, she turned to face the hall instead, the overturned furniture, the scattered council members, and the mess of everything that had been a negotiation just minutes ago.

“This is yer doing,” she said. She kept her voice even. “All of it. Yers and yer clan’s. If ye had simply left us—”

“Without a male heir,” Fionnlagh said, “there is no clan tae leave. Ye ken that as well as I do.”

She did know it. That was the problem. She knew it the way she knew every other impossible thing she’d been handed in the last three months. She didn’t have a single avenue of escape.

“Then I have no choice,” she said. The words tasted like ash.

“Ye have a choice.”

She turned to look at him then. He said it the way he’d said get him out, like a simple statement of fact.

“Ten days,” he said. “Take ten days tae decide. No pressure from this Council, no demands from mine. Ye think about what ye want, and then ye tell me.”

Behind him, the Sinclair elders stirred. Elder Cormac straightened from wherever he’d spent the fight and opened his mouth. Fionnlagh turned toward him with an expression that closed it again without a word being spoken.

“I willnae force anyone intae a marriage,” Fionnlagh said, addressing the room now, both Councils, the remaining guards, all of it. “And I willnae stand in this hall and pretend that is negotiating.” He paused, then added, quieter, “Especially not with her.”

The room stayed quiet. Liùsaidh stayed where she was, the closed door behind her and the hall in front of her and Fionnlagh MacBain standing in the middle of it, offering her ten days she hadn’t asked for.

She didn’t say thank you. She wasn’t going to say thank you. Not to him.

“Ten days,” she said. “And then I give ye me answer.”

He nodded, once.

She walked back into the hall, and though she didn’t look at him again, she was intensely aware of exactly where he was until she reached the far door and put the width of the room between them.

***

“Ten days,” Rory said, falling into step beside him. “Ye gave her ten days.”

Fionnlagh didn’t slow. The courtyard was loud with the sounds of preparation, men calling to each other across the cobblestones, horses being led from the stables, supply packs being checked and re-checked. The air still carried the edge of the morning’s violence, something unsettled in the way the Sinclair guards watched the MacBain soldiers from the walls. Nobody had sheathed their suspicion along with their swords.

“I did,” Fionnlagh said.

“The Council willnae stand fer it.” Rory’s voice was low, clipped, the tone he used when he was keeping himself from saying something sharper. He’d been using it since they left the hall. “Donan was already talking before we reached the door. They’ll have sent a rider before nightfall.”

“Let them.”

“Fionnlagh.” Rory stepped in front of him. He was one of the few men who could do that without it becoming an incident, broad enough to fill the space and certain enough of his welcome to use it. “I’m nae asking ye tae force her. I’m asking ye tae think about what happens in ten days if she says nay.”

“The lands are ours regardless.” Fionnlagh moved around him and kept walking. “The negotiation today established that. Her answer changes the terms, nae the outcome.”

Rory caught up in two strides. “And Archie Ross? Ye think he went home tae sit quietly by his fire?”

“Nay.”

“He went tae gather men. He went tae write tae every ally he has and tell them the MacBains are stealing his betrothed.” Rory’s voice dropped further. “Ten days is enough time fer him tae find a magistrate willing tae hear his claim. Enough time tae cause trouble we’ll have tae spend the next year undoing.”

Fionnlagh stopped near the stables, where two of his men were wrestling a supply pack onto a horse that had opinions about the matter. He watched them for a moment without seeing them. The morning had been long, and it wasn’t finished yet. He could still hear Liùsaidh, the way she’d said it without warmth and without refusal, leaving just enough space between the words to mean more than she intended.

“She willnae marry him,” he said.

Rory was quiet for a beat. “How dae ye ken that?”

Fionnlagh looked at him then. Rory had the face of a man who’d been in enough council rooms and enough battles to know when an answer was being avoided, and the patience to wait it out.

“She called his name when he walked through the door,” Fionnlagh said. “Once. Then she stopped. She fought him the moment he grabbed her. That isnae a woman who wants tae go with him.”

Rory studied him. “That isnae an answer tae me question.”

“It’s the only one I have.” Fionnlagh turned back toward the stables. “And it’s enough.”

The silence between them stretched. Rory had the sense not to fill it with more argument. He fell into step again, quieter now, and they walked together through the organized disorder of departure, soldiers loading horses, the Sinclair guards on the walls watching every movement in silence, unsure whether they were guarding their own castle or someone else’s.

A Sinclair stable hand stepped back too quickly when Fionnlagh approached, knocking into a post and sending a bucket clattering across the cobblestones. Fionnlagh caught it before it finished rolling and held it out without comment. The man took it, color rising in his face. Fionnlagh had already moved on.

“The Council needs something tae take back tae their people,” Rory said, catching up again. “If ye come home without the marriage settled, they’ll say ye went soft. They’ll say the Sinclair lass made a fool of ye.”

“Then they’ll say it.”

“It matters, Fionnlagh.”

“I ken it matters.” He stopped again, this time facing Rory fully. The courtyard noise continued around them, men, horses, and the jangle of equipment, but the space between them went still. “And I ken what it looks like. I also ken that if I ride her intae a marriage she hasnae agreed tae, I’ll have a Sinclair wife who willnae trust a word I say fer the rest of our lives.” He held Rory’s gaze. “That isnae a foundation. That’s a siege from the inside.”

Rory’s jaw shifted. He didn’t answer immediately, which meant he was turning it over, fitting it against the arguments he’d already prepared and finding it didn’t slot the way he’d expected.

“And if she says nay?” he asked finally.

“Then I deal with that when it comes.”

“And Archie Ross?”

“She willnae marry him.”

Rory looked at him for a long moment. The question was still there in his face, the same one he’d asked before, and Fionnlagh had given him the same answer, or near enough. Rory was too experienced to accept it without noticing the gap in the logic, and too loyal to push the gap until it cracked.

“I hope ye ken what ye’re doing,” he said at last.

“I dae, I said,” Fionnlagh said, and walked away.

He crossed the courtyard toward the main gate, where the first of his men were already moving into formation for the road. The castle rose around him, stone and shadow, Sinclair banners still hanging from the walls. They looked different than they had that morning. Not smaller exactly, but less certain, as though the confidence they’d been flying under had quietly shifted while no one was watching.

He stopped at the edge of the courtyard and turned back. Half his men were already mounted, the rest still loading. He gave the order for the outriders to make camp outside the walls and told the remainder to stand down for the evening. There was no reason to crowd Sinclair walls with a full MacBain force overnight.

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Chapter One

 
1520, MacLean Lands

The upper hills gave nothing away.

That was what Jean had always liked about them– the silence up there was honest. No politics. No Councils. No one was watching to see if she flinched. Just the wind off the loch cutting through her riding cloak, the gray sky pressing low over the braes, and the land rolling away in every direction the way it had rolled for a hundred years before her and would roll for a hundred after.

She had ridden the eastern boundary since first light. Four hours in the saddle, checking the line of stones that marked where MacLean ground ended and the world began. Most were undisturbed. The turf was damp from last night’s rain, the cattle tracks still fresh and heading the right direction.

She’d told herself it was routine.

She knew it wasn’t.

Since Torquil had died, she had ridden the borders the way other people checked a wound; not because they expected it to be fine, but because they needed to know exactly how bad it had become.

She was halfway down the hill, the castle just visible below through the mist, when she saw them.

Two figures in the courtyard. Standing apart from the usual morning movement of her people. The way men stood when they were waiting for something they didn’t want to say.

Jean’s hand tightened on the reins.

Don’t, ye dinnae ken yet.

She knew.

She came through the gate at a trot and pulled up short. One of the men—Ruaridh, a tenant from the lower valley—had his arm wrapped in cloth that had bled through to brown at the elbow. The other, Cormac, was holding his horse’s bridle with both hands, as though he needed something to grip.

They both pulled off their caps the moment they saw her.

“Me lady.” Ruaridh’s voice was steady, but his eyes weren’t.

Jean swung down from the saddle without waiting for the stable boy. She handed off the reins and walked straight to them, pulling her gloves off finger by finger. Her gaze went to the bandaging first. “That needs cleaning. Who wrapped it?”

“Me wife,” Ruaridh said. “This morning.”

“She did well.” She stopped. Looked at Cormac. “Tell me.”

Cormac’s jaw worked. He was a big man, slow to speak, never given to excess. He said, “The boundary stones on the south ridge of Druim Ard. Three of them moved. Pushed back nearly twenty feet into our side.”

The air in Jean’s chest went very still.

“And the cattle?” she asked.

Cormac glanced at Ruaridh.

“Eleven head,” Ruaridh said. “Driven off by nightfall. We went after them.” He lifted his arm slightly as an explanation. “There were six of them. Fraser colors.”

Jean looked at the bandaging again. “How many did ye bring back?”

“None, me lady.”

She nodded once. Around her, the courtyard continued its morning, a woman crossing with a basket, two boys arguing over a harness, smoke drifting from the kitchen, all of it carrying on as though the ground beneath them wasn’t slowly being taken out from under them, stone by stone, animal by animal, acre by acre.

“How long has the south ridge line been holding?” she asked.

“It was already pushed back from last autumn,” Cormac said. “Before that—” He paused. “Before Laird Torquil passed, they stayed mostly to the valley floor.”

Before Torquil died.

There it was, laid flat and plain the way only farming men could, just the stating of fact. The Frasers had not changed. The MacLeans had become easier.

Jean pulled her second glove off and pushed it into her belt. “Ye’ll both eat before you ride back. Ruaridh, send yer wife tae me when that arm festers. It will.” She met his eyes until he nodded. “Go on, then. I’ll have someone take ye tae the kitchen.”

She turned toward the keep before either of them could see her face change.

The Great Hall was cold enough that her breath showed faintly. She crossed it without stopping, pushed open the door to the council chamber, and found that four of her elders had already gathered, which meant word had moved faster than she had.

Ewan stood with his hands clasped behind his back, looking at the fire. Old Iain sat at the long table with his chin propped on his fist. Domnall was at the window, arms folded, jaw set in the way it set when he had already decided something and was waiting for permission to say it. Young Fergus who was not young anymore, nearly fifty, but called so still because his father had sat at this same table, stood apart from the others near the door, turning his cap in his hands.

None of them spoke when she came in. That, more than anything, told her how bad it was.

She sat. “Tell me the rest.”

Ewan turned from the fire. He was sixty years old and he’d served her father, tried to serve her brother, and was now doing his quiet, honest best to serve her. She trusted him fully, and without enjoying what they had to say.

“Laird Donnchadh Fraser has sent formal notice,” he said. “He claims the valley by right of what he calls long stewardship and protection.” He paused. “He’s also petitioned the Crown. The argument being that MacLean lands lack stable governance.”

Jean said nothing.

Lack of stable governance. She knew exactly what that meant.

It meant no laird, a woman. Vulnerable.

“Has the petition been received?” she asked.

“We believe so.”

Domnall unfolded his arms. “We dinnae have the men to hold every pass. Ye know that already.” His voice wasn’t unkind, just stripped of comfort. “Fraser knows it too. That’s why he’s movin’ now.”

Old Iain spoke without lifting his chin from his fist. “And if he pushes the Crown argument—” He stopped. Let the rest of it hang there, because saying it plainly would be cruelty and he was not a cruel man.

The fire crackled. No one filled the silence. Jean looked at the fire.

She was twenty-four years old. She had managed this land for two months, since Torquil had died. She had managed it well, she believed, as well as any man would have. She had settled disputes, seen to harvests, maintained every bond of loyalty her father had built.

None of that would matter if Fraser succeeded in painting her as a symbol of instability. The Crown would not intervene on her behalf. They would intervene on the side of order, and order, to them, meant a man’s name above the gate.

“Without a powerful alliance,” Ewan said quietly, “the land will continue tae shrink. Piece by piece. There is nae other way tae say it, me lady.”

“I know,” Jean said.

She stood and moved to the window. The courtyard below was ordinary and familiar, the same gray stones, the same worn path from the gate to the well and yet something had shifted in the quality of it, the way a room shifted when you understood you might be seeing it for the last time.

She would not lose this.

She thought of the one clan whose word to the King had helped bring the MacLeans to this position in the first place.

“I’ll get us an alliance,” she said.

Ewan’s voice was careful. “Me lady, the clans who would—”

“Nae those clans.” She turned from the window. “MacKinnon.”

The silence that followed was the kind that meant she’d said something that couldn’t be unsaid.

Old Iain’s chin finally lifted from his fist. “The MacKinnons are—”

“I know what they are.”

“—enemies. Their word tae the King—”

“I know.” She crossed to the table and picked up her gloves from where she’d set them. “Which is precisely why the alliance, if I can make it, would be unbreakable. They owe us a debt, whether they acknowledge it or nae.”

Ewan looked at her for a long moment. “They willnae receive ye.”

“Nay,” Jean agreed. “Probably nae.”

She pulled on her first glove. Then her second.

“Ready me horse.”

***

Jean had crossed to Skye on a fishing vessel that smelled of herring and wet rope, standing at the bow the entire time because the hold made her feel buried. The water between Mull and Skye was gray and restless with dark hills shouldering up through cloud, the shoreline ragged and indifferent, and she told herself she was not afraid.

She was afraid.

Not of the crossing, not of the cold or the two days of riding ahead. She was afraid of what she was going to have to ask for, and who she was going to have to ask. She had grown up with the MacKinnon name as a kind of wound, not spoken often, but always present. The way her father’s jaw had tightened when it came up. The way Torquil had carried his hatred of them like a blade he kept sharpened.

Because there is nay one else. Because ye are out of other choices.

The boat ground against the dock. She stepped off.

She rode alone with no escort, no appearance of dignity. Men would make her look like a threat, and she couldn’t afford to be anything other than what she was: one woman, one horse, one desperate and calculated gamble. She kept to drove roads, stayed wide of settlements, ate in the saddle. The land was vast and indifferent here, black rock and brown moorland under a sky that went on too long in every direction.

She camped the first night in the lee of a boulder and did not sleep much. The wind found every gap in her cloak. She lay on her back looking at the sky.

Torquil would never have done this.

Not for lack of courage, he hadn’t lacked it but because he had lacked the particular humility required to walk into a room where you were not wanted and ask for something anyway.

She had it. She wished she didn’t need it.

She rose before light and rode on.

The MacKinnon lands announced themselves in the way all Highland boundaries did, not with a sign or a sudden change in the land, but with a shift in the quality of the silence. The hills were steeper here, darker, folded over one another in a way that made you feel watched before anything happened to prove you were.

She had just crossed the second ridge when they appeared.

Three of them, stepping out from the shadow of a stand of birch on her left as though they had been grown there. They were mounted, plaids in MacKinnon colors, and they moved to block the track with the unhurried confidence of men who had done this before.

The lead rider raised a hand. “Hold.”

Jean held. Her horse shifted under her, sensing the tension.

The man walked his horse forward a few paces. He was perhaps forty, square-jawed, with the look of someone who spent most of his life outside. His eyes moved from her face to her horse to the MacLean brooch at her cloak and stopped there.

Something changed in his expression.

“Ye’re MacLean,” he said.

“I am.”

“Then ye’re on the wrong side of the ridge.” He said it without hostility. Almost pleasantly. The pleasantness of a man telling you the house was on fire—not his problem, not his fault. “Turn around.”

Jean kept her voice even. “I’ve come tae speak with yer laird. It’s a matter of—”

“Aye, they all have matters.” He glanced at the men behind him, something passing between them that might have been amusement. “MacLean business is nae MacKinnon business. Turn around, go home, and tell whoever sent ye that the answer is nay.”

“Nay one sent me.”

He looked at her again. A proper look this time. She felt it—the calculation, the mild surprise—and held herself still under it.

“Then ye’re either brave or foolish,” he said, “and either way, ye’re leaving.” He lifted his chin toward the ridge behind her. “Now, please, before this becomes something else.”

Jean looked past him. Through the trees, perhaps two miles further down the glen, she could make out the dark shape of stone towers against the sky. The MacKinnon stronghold. Close. Close enough.

Her heart began to move faster.

“Thank ye,” she said. “I’ll go.”

She turned her horse.

Chapter Two

She waited until she heard him say something to the men behind him, low and satisfied, and then she drove her heels in hard.

The horse surged forward and Jean pressed low over its neck, cutting left off the track and onto open moorland, angling downhill and away from the birch stand. Behind her, a shout. Then the sound of three sets of hooves, coming fast.

The ground was uneven, tussocked, full of hidden dips that could snap a leg if she pushed too hard, but she pushed hard anyway because there was nothing else to do. The wind tore her hood back and the cold hit her face like a flat hand. She didn’t pull it up. She needed to see.

She glanced back once.

Two of them were closing. The third was cutting wider, trying to angle ahead of her. Smart. She adjusted, pulling right, using a shallow rise to block his line and buy herself twenty yards.

The castle towers were larger now. She fixed her eyes on them.

Don’t think. Just ride.

The moorland gave way to rougher ground of loose shale and heather, a burn cutting across her path. Her horse took it badly, stumbling at the bank, and she felt her seat lift, grabbed a fistful of mane, held on through sheer stubbornness, and straightened before it threw her. Her heart was hammering so hard she could feel it in her teeth.

One of the riders was alongside her now, close enough that she could hear his horse’s breathing. He reached for her bridle.

“Stop the horse! Stop! Now!”

She wrenched left and he overshot, cursing. She smiled.

The castle gate was perhaps half a mile.

Half a mile.

She could see the dark and thick walls properly now, built into the hillside the way MacKinnon walls always were, the gate set at an angle that meant you approached it slightly sideways, exposed. There were men on the wall. She could see them moving.

They had seen her.

The arrow came without warning.

It struck the ground just ahead of her horse’s left foreleg, a hard thwack into the turf, the shaft still quivering. Her horse screamed high and terrible, and then the world lurched violently sideways as he reared, and she lost the left stirrup, then the right, and then she was falling.

She hit the ground shoulder-first.

“Arghh!”

The breath left her body entirely.

For a moment there was nothing, not a sound or thought, just the gray sky above her and the strange, suspended quiet of a body that hadn’t caught up with what had just happened to it. Then everything came back at once: the cold of the ground beneath her, the thunder of the horse bolting, the shouts of the riders pulling up.

Jean rolled onto her side. Her shoulder screamed. She got her hands under her and pushed.

Get up.

She got up.

The castle gate was about two hundred yards away. Maybe less. She could see the iron-banded wood of it. She could see the guards on the wall looking down at her.

Behind her, hoofbeats were slowing. She could hear the riders dismounting and boots on wet turf.

She looked back at the wall, at the men she could see moving up there and she filled her lungs.

“I got past yer scouts and I got past yer riders and I’m still coming!” Her voice cracked on the last word but she pushed through it, loud and aimed upward, at the wall, at whoever was up there with the authority to make a decision. “Daes that nae tell ye something? Open the gate!”

Nothing moved.

Jean ran.

She had not run like this since she was a girl, not with this particular kind of abandon, all form gone, just the body doing whatever it needed to do to cover ground. Her shoulder was wrong and each stride sent a bolt of white heat up into her neck, and she ignored it completely because ignoring it was the only option that existed.

The gate was close. Closer. Her lungs were on fire.

She could hear the men behind her. Hear them not quite running yet, not quite believing she was going to make it, and that hesitation was the only thing she had.

She hit the gate with both fists.

The sound of it was enormous, her knuckles against iron-banded oak, again and again, the blows landing with everything she had, which wasn’t much by now but was all of it. Her knuckles were beginning to bruise and Jean knocked even harder.

“Open this gate!” Her voice came out raw, stripped of anything careful. “I am Jean MacLean, daughter of the late Laird MacLean. I’ve come under nay arms and I am asking — I am asking”

The men reached her.

Strong hands closed on her arms from behind. There were two of them, yanking her back from the gate with the efficiency of men trained to do exactly this. She fought. She knew she was going to lose and she fought anyway, driving her elbow back hard enough to hear someone grunt, twisting her body, trying to break the grip because breaking the grip was the only thing she could think to do and thinking had narrowed to that, only that, the next breath, the next second, don’t stop—

They pinned her arms behind her back.

She felt the rope before she saw it, looped around her wrists, and pulled tight. She pulled against it immediately. It didn’t give.

“Get off me.” Still pulling, still trying, her voice dropping to something low and furious. “I came here tae talk—get off—”

“Hold still,” one of them said

She was breathing in ragged pulls, chest heaving, her shoulder a continuous white-hot ache. Her hair had come half down, she could feel it across her face, sticking to her lips and she couldn’t push it away. She stood there, hands bound behind her back, and she looked at the gate.

Still closed.

This is it. This is how far ye got.

Then she heard the bolts.

Three of them, heavy iron, drawn back one by one from the other side. The sound was very loud in the sudden quiet.

The gate opened.

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Chapter One

 
1450, Road to MacBain Lands

“Faster, ye great daft beast. Faster!”

The road beneath Maighread’s horse was muddy, each hoof strike splattering cold muck against her skirts. Rain had been pouring down since dawn, soaking through her woolen cloak until the fabric clung heavy on her shoulders. She hunched forward, urging her mount onward. Every beat of her heart hammered the same rhythm.

The guards accompanying her were also hunched over their horses, one in front of her, one behind.

Faither’s dying, Faither’s dying, Faither’s dying.

Three days since the messenger had found her at her cousin’s holding in the Lowlands. Three days of hard riding north, and still the MacEwan lands felt impossibly distant. Her thighs burned from gripping the saddle after hours of brutal pace, and her gut twisted with a sickness that had naught to do with the journey.

The Council would be circling already. Those scheming vultures. She could picture them gathering in her father’s hall, whispering poison while Angus MacEwan lay fevered and helpless. And Keir Sinclair was bound to make a move soon, as soon as he found out there was something wrong with him.

Her horse stumbled, nearly pitching her forward. Maighread swore viciously, hauling on the reins. “Steady now. Steady.”

The forest pressed close on either side of the road, ancient pines crowding together until their branches blocked what little grey light filtered through the clouds. This stretch always made her uneasy. Too quiet. Too many places for trouble to hide.

A branch cracked somewhere to her left.

Maighread’s hand went to the dirk at her belt, fingers closing instinctively around the leather-wrapped hilt, despite the protection of the men travelling with her. She wasn’t foolish enough to travel unarmed, not with winter coming and desperate men prowling every road between there and salvation.

All of a sudden, the forest came alive.

They burst from the trees like wolves.

Five men, maybe six. Rough looking curs in stained leathers, faces hidden behind scraps of cloth. Her horse screamed and reared. Maighread clung to its mane, legs locked around its barrel as it bucked and spun.

Both her guards were targeted immediately, one’s throat slit before he could fully reach his sword, the other pushed off his horse and trampled.

“Get her down!” one of the attackers roared. “Alive, ye hear me? Alive!”

Alive. Not just bandits then. Bandits wanted quick coin and a quicker escape. These men wanted her specifically. They had been watching and had quickly made rid of her guards.

Her heart kicked into a gallop. She yanked her dirk free and slashed at the closest man as he grabbed for her bridle. The blade caught him across the knuckles. He howled and jerked back, blood spraying.

“Sinclair’s balls!” he snarled. “The bitch cut me!”

“Should’ve brought more men,” another growled, circling around her left side. Bile rose in her throat.

“Who sent ye?” She kept her horse spinning, kept them all in sight. Her voice came out steady despite the terror clawing up her spine. “Name yer master, ye cowardly monsters!”

The leader laughed, a wet ugly sound. “Ye’ll ken soon enough, lass. Now stop making this difficult.”

“Difficult?” She bared her teeth at him. “I haven’t even started being difficult.”

She kicked her horse hard. The beast lunged forward, scattering two of the men. Maighread leaned low over its neck and drove her heels in again, sending it plunging down the muddy track. Branches whipped past her face. Rain stung her eyes. Behind her, boots pounded and men shouted.

“After her! Move yer arses!”

The road curved sharply ahead. Maighread took the turn too fast, felt her horse’s hooves slide in the muck. They stayed upright by sheer luck and God’s mercy. She risked a glance back.

They were gaining.

Of course they were. Her mount had been ridden hard for three days straight while these bastards’ horses were fresh. Mathematics and misery. The border of MacEwan lands lay barely a day’s ride ahead––so close––but she wouldn’t reach it. Wouldn’t even make it another mile at this pace. She had to get off the road. Lose them in the forest, where their numbers mattered less.

Maighread hauled on the reins, turning her horse toward a gap in the trees. The animal balked, ears flattening.

“Go!” She kicked viciously. “By the Mass, move!”

They crashed into the undergrowth. Branches tore at her cloak and hair. Something ripped the braid half loose, sending chestnut strands whipping across her face. Her horse stumbled over roots and rocks, breath coming in great heaving gasps.

“She’s gone into the woods!”

“Split up! Fin, take Dougal and circle round. We’ll flush her out!”

Maighread’s mind raced. Five men, possibly six. If they split their forces, that improved her odds marginally.

She pushed deeper into the forest, guiding her exhausted horse between close growing trunks. The rain had softened, filtering through the canopy in a steady drip. Everything smelled of wet earth and pine sap and her own fear sweat.

A stream cut across her path, water running swift and dark over smooth stones. She urged her horse into it, then turned upstream. Old trick, older than memory, but it might buy her minutes. Might give her time to think, to plan, to figure out how in God’s name she’d survive that moment.

Hoofbeats.

Coming fast from her right.

Her stomach dropped. They’d circled quicker than expected. Professional then. Trained men, not common thieves.

She abandoned the stream, driving her horse up the far bank. The animal’s sides heaved. Foam flecked its neck. It couldn’t take much more.

Neither could she, if truth be told. Her arms shook from gripping the reins. Her throat burned. But fear had teeth and they were sinking deep, flooding her blood with something that felt sickeningly close to panic.

“There!” A shout, too close. “By the stream, I see her!”

Maighread twisted in the saddle. Two men crashed through the brush behind her. She turned forward again, ducked under a low hanging branch, and nearly collided with the third man blocking her path.

“Gotcha, ye troublesome quine.”

He grabbed for her bridle. Maighread slashed at him with her dirk, but he caught her wrist and squeezed until her bones ground together. The blade fell from her nerveless fingers.

“Get off!” She kicked at his face. Her boot connected with something that crunched. He staggered back, cursing foully.

Her horse reared again. This time Maighread’s exhausted grip failed. She tumbled backward, hit the ground hard enough to drive the air from her lungs. Mud splattered her face. For a horrible moment she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, could only lie there gasping like a landed fish.

Boots appeared in her vision.

“That was foolish, lass.” The leader’s voice, rough with exertion. “We’re trying not to hurt ye, but ye keep making things complicated and soon—”

Steel sang.

A blade appeared in the man’s throat, erupting through the front of his neck in a spray of crimson. His eyes went wide. He made a wet gurgling sound and collapsed.

More swords, more shouting. The other men scattered, reaching for their weapons. Maighread rolled onto her side, still trying to drag air into her starved lungs.

New riders poured into the clearing. Six of them, maybe seven, all wearing colors that made her blood turn to ice.

Sinclair green and black.

The colors she’d learned to recognize from across any hall, any field. The colors that appeared in her nightmares, paired with Keir’s cold smile and colder eyes.

“Stand down!” A voice cut through the chaos, commanding and cold. “Lady MacEwan is under Sinclair protection!”

Maighread’s blood turned to ice. She knew that voice.

Keir Sinclair himself sat astride a black destrier at the edge of the clearing, sword drawn, his dark hair slick with rain. He looked exactly as she remembered—sharp features, grey eyes that missed nothing, handsome in a cold, calculated way that made her skin crawl.

Protection. The word hit her gut like a fist.

This was it. The trap. These weren’t bandits at all. This whole thing had been orchestrated. The attack, the chase, the convenient rescue. Keir arriving at precisely the right moment to play hero while pretending she was a grateful, helpless maiden.

Except she was neither grateful nor helpless, and she’d be damned before she let them drag her back like a prize heifer.

Maighread shoved to her feet. Her legs trembled but held. Keir guided his horse closer, his gaze fixed on her.

“Lady MacEwan.” His voice gentled, taking on a tone of concern that didn’t reach his eyes. “We’ve been searching fer ye. Yer faither needs ye home. Please, let us escort ye safely back where ye belong.”

“Stay back.” She stumbled away from him, scanning the ground for her dirk. Where had it fallen? There, half buried in mud and pine needles.

Keir dismounted, approaching with his hands raised like she was a spooked animal. “Me lady, ye’re injured. Let us help ye. We’ll take ye tae safety, get ye warm and fed and—”

“I said stay back!” She snatched up her dirk and whirled to face them. Six men against one exhausted woman. Shite odds. But she’d cut the first bastard who tried to touch her.

The remaining attackers took one look at Keir and his armed men and bolted. They scattered into the forest like rats, crashing through the undergrowth in their haste to escape. Within moments, the clearing fell quiet except for the sound of rain and her own ragged breathing.

“Lady MacEwan, please.” Keir took another step closer. Blood streaked his face but his expression stayed gentle, concerned. “Ye’re safe now. We’ll take ye home tae yer faither safely.”

Her mind raced through the possibilities. Keir had arranged the attack. Paid men to play bandits, sent his own soldiers to “save” her. Now she’d owe him a life debt. Now the Council could argue she needed a strong husband for protection. Now Keir could press his suit with the full weight of clan obligation behind him.

Clever bastard.

Maighread didn’t wait to hear more. She turned and ran.

Chapter Two

“Lady MacEwan’s trying tae run,” he called out. “Someone grab her before she hurts herself. Keir willnae be pleased if we return her with more bruises than necessary.”

Before she hurts herself. Like she was a child. Like she was witless.

Rage flooded her veins, hot and clarifying.

Maighread didn’t wait to hear more. She turned and ran.

Behind her, men shouted. Hooves thundered. But she knew those forests, had ridden them since childhood. She ducked under branches, leaped over roots, ignored the thorns tearing at her skirts.

“After her! Dinnae let her escape!”

Her lungs burned. Her legs screamed. But terror drove her forward, gave her strength she shouldn’t possess.

A stream appeared ahead, the same one she’d crossed earlier. She splashed through it without slowing, soaking her already muddy skirts to the knee.

“Fan out! She can’t have gone far!”

They were close. Too close. She could hear their cursing, their boots crashing through the undergrowth.

Maighread grabbed a low hanging branch and hauled herself up into a massive pine. Bark bit into her palms. Her arms shook from exertion. But she climbed higher, higher, until the branches grew thin and the ground spun sickeningly far below.

She pressed against the trunk, trying to quiet her ragged breathing. Through the needles she could see them searching below, spreading out in an organized pattern that spoke of military training.

“She’s got to be here somewhere!”

“Check the stream again! Look fer tracks!” Keir’s voice cut through the search, sharp with frustration. “Fan out wider. She cannae have gotten far on foot.” He moved through the trees with controlled purpose, his gaze scanning the undergrowth. “Search every bloody tree if ye have to. I want her found. Now.”

One of them passed directly beneath her tree. She held her breath, pressed her cheek against rough bark, and prayed to every saint she could remember.

He moved on.

For a long moment, blessed silence. Then more cursing, farther away now.

“She couldnae have gotten far. Keep looking!”

Maighread waited until their voices faded to nothing. Waited until the forest settled back into rain drip quiet. Then she waited longer still, counting her heartbeats, making sure.

Finally, when her arms were quaking and her fingers had gone numb from gripping bark, she began to climb down.

Her boots hit solid earth. She stood there swaying, filthy and exhausted and more frightened than she’d ever been in her life.

She took one shaky step forward, then another. Her legs barely held her weight. The forest remained quiet around her. A twig snapped behind her. Before she could turn, hands seized her shoulders.

“Got ye now, ye stubborn bitch!”

Hands seized Maighread’s shoulders, fingers digging into her flesh through the sodden wool. She twisted violently, bringing her elbow up into soft belly meat. The man grunted and his grip loosened enough for her to wrench free.

“Grab her, Callum! Dinnae let the quine slip away again!”

Another set of hands caught her from behind, arms wrapping around her waist and lifting her clean off her feet. Maighread kicked backward, her heel connecting with a shin. The man cursed but didn’t release her.

He yanked her and she went down hard, face first into the mud. The breath punched from her lungs. Someone’s knee ground into her spine, pressing her deeper into the muck. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, could only thrash uselessly while they pinned her.

“Hold her still!”

“I’m trying, ye great lummox! She fights like a wildcat!”

A hand fisted in her hair, yanking her head back. Pain blazed across her scalp. Through the mud coating her face, she glimpsed the scarred man from earlier grinning down at her.

“Now then, me lady. Let’s discuss being reasonable, aye? Ye can walk back tae the horses nice and calm, or we can drag ye. Yer choice.”

“Go… to… Hell…” She spat mud and blood.

He laughed. “Oh, Keir’s definitely going tae enjoy ye. Might even keep ye spirited fer a while—”

The words cut off abruptly as steel flashed through the air. The scarred man jerked backward with such force he flew from sight. The knee on her spine vanished. Someone screamed—high and panicked.

Maighread rolled onto her side, gasping, and looked up through mud-caked lashes.

A warrior on a massive grey stallion bore down on the second man, sword already swinging. The blade caught her attacker across the chest before he could raise his own weapon. He dropped like a felled tree. The rider wheeled his mount with perfect control, scanning for more threats.

More riders poured into the clearing behind him—seven, maybe eight—wearing blue and white. But Maighread couldn’t tear her gaze from their leader.

Sun-gold hair, longer than fashion dictated, tied back loosely so strands escaped to frame a face that could’ve belonged to some ancient warrior king. Blue-green eyes blazed with barely contained violence as he assessed the scene. Broad shoulders, powerful arms that controlled both sword and horse with effortless grace. Young—perhaps mid-twenties—but carrying himself with the absolute confidence of a man who’d seen battle and won.

Something in her chest lurched sideways.

Even through her terror and exhaustion, she couldn’t look away. He was beautiful in the way a storm was beautiful—wild and dangerous and utterly compelling. The kind of man bards wrote songs about. The kind of man women dreamed of in the dark hours of night.

Heat flooded through her despite the cold rain and mud coating her skin. Her heart hammered for an entirely different reason now, and she hated herself for it. She was filthy, terrified, half-dead from running—and yet some traitorous part of her noticed the way his wet shirt clung to his chest, the fierce protectiveness in his expression as he looked at the men who’d hurt her, the raw power in every movement.

Something in her chest lurched sideways.

The scarred Sinclair man moved to block her from view, reaching for his sword. “This doesn’t concern ye, MacBain—”

MacBain. The name rang through her skull like a bell.

The golden warrior didn’t let him finish. His blade flashed in a brutal arc that caught the scarred man across the forearm. The Sinclair soldier howled and staggered back, his sword clattering to the ground.

“Touch her again,” the warrior said, voice deadly calm, “and I’ll take the whole arm.”

The second Sinclair man lunged from the side. MacBain’s sword met his with a shriek of steel, then swept low in a move so fast Maighread barely tracked it. The man’s legs went out from under him. He hit the ground hard.

Two more Sinclair soldiers charged forward. MacBain’s men intercepted them, and suddenly the clearing erupted into controlled chaos. But the golden warrior remained focused, positioning himself between Maighread and any threat. He moved like violence made beautiful—every strike precise, every step purposeful. His blade sang through the air, driving back anyone who came close.

Maighread couldn’t look away. Even through her shock and pain, she watched him fight for her with a ferocity that stole her breath. It wasn’t just skill. It was fury on her behalf, and something about that made her heart stutter in her chest.

Within moments, it was over. The Sinclair men who could still stand retreated into the forest, abandoning their wounded. MacBain turned immediately, sheathing his sword as he crossed to where Maighread still sprawled in the mud.

He crouched beside her, those startling blue-green eyes scanning her face with genuine concern. “Are ye hurt, lass? Can ye stand?”

His voice had gentled completely, lost all that deadly edge. Warmth instead of violence. She found herself staring at him, her mind still scrambling to catch up. This man had just fought off multiple attackers without breaking a sweat, and now he was looking at her like she was something precious.

“I…” Her voice came out rough, scraped raw. “I can manage.”

“Let me help regardless.” He slid an arm behind her shoulders, supporting her as she sat up. His hands were careful, almost reverent. “Easy now. Take yer time.”

She let him help her to her feet, hating how her legs shook, how she had to lean against his solid warmth to stay upright. He smelled of leather and horse and woodsmoke, clean male sweat beneath. Heat radiated from him despite the cold rain.

“Thank ye.” She forced the words past her chattering teeth. “I… thank ye fer…”

“Nay need.” He steadied her, his grip firm but gentle on her elbow. “Are ye truly unharmed? Did they hurt ye beyond…”

Horse hooves. Distant but approaching fast.

Maighread’s stomach dropped to her boots. She knew that sound, the particular cadence of multiple riders moving in formation. Keir’s men regrouping. Or worse, Keir himself coming to claim his prize.

Time collapsed into urgency.

She grabbed the golden warrior’s arm, fingers digging into the muscle beneath his sleeve. “I’m Maighread MacEwan. Angus MacEwan’s daughter. Please, I need…”

Recognition flared in his eyes. “I ken yer faither. Good man.”

“Then in honor of that, in honor of him, I’m begging ye…” The hoofbeats were getting closer. Her heart hammered against her ribs. “Follow me lead. Please. Just… please just trust me.”

He frowned, confusion creasing his brow. “Follow yer lead? Lass, what are ye…”

The hoofbeats crested the ridge. Riders appeared through the trees, at least a dozen strong. And at their head, astride a black destrier that matched his soul, rode Keir Sinclair.

His gaze found her immediately and something flickered across his face. Relief? Satisfaction? It vanished too quickly to name.

Maighread’s blood turned to slush.

“Lady MacEwan.” He guided his horse closer, his voice smooth as oiled steel. “Thank God ye’re safe. When me men reported ye went intae the forest, I feared the worst. These roads are treacherous fer a woman alone.”

She felt the golden warrior stiffen beside her, sensed his confusion. No time to explain. No time for anything except the desperate gamble forming in her mind.

“I wasnae alone,” she said clearly. Loudly enough for every man present to hear. “Me betrothed was with me.”

Keir’s expression froze. “Yer… what?”

Maighread turned to the golden warrior and smiled, praying he’d remember her plea. She stepped closer to him, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched.

“Me betrothed.” She looked up at him, her eyes pleading silently for him to play along. “We were tae meet and travel taegether tae me faither’s lands when those bandits attacked.”

The warrior’s eyes widened slightly, but after a heartbeat’s pause, he gave a slight nod. “Tavish MacBain,” he said, his voice steady despite the shock she could see in his face.

“Master MacBain fought them off, of course,” Maighread continued, emboldened by his cooperation. “He always protects me.”

Tavish’s entire body had gone rigid. She felt the shock rolling off him in waves. But he didn’t step away, didn’t contradict her.

“Betrothed,” Keir repeated. His voice had gone flat. Dangerous. “I was unaware ye had accepted any marriage proposal, Lady MacEwan.”

“Because it’s recent.” She moved fractionally closer to Tavish, willing him to play along. “Very recent. We’ve been… negotiating the arrangements privately.”

“Indeed.” Keir’s gaze slid to Tavish, assessing. Cold calculation flickered behind those grey eyes. “MacBain. I didn’t realize ye were courting Lady MacEwan.”

Tavish’s hand found the small of Maighread’s back—a steady, possessive touch that surprised her. When he spoke, his voice came out steady and firm.

“Aye. We’ve been acquainted fer some time. The negotiations were conducted between our families initially, as is proper.” He met Keir’s gaze without flinching. “I’m escorting me betrothed home tae finalize the arrangements.”

“How fascinating.” Keir’s smile could’ve frozen the loch solid. “And yet nay one in yer clan mentioned this when I dined at MacBain lands last month.”

“Private family matters arenae typically discussed with guests,” Tavish replied smoothly. His thumb moved in a small, reassuring circle against Maighread’s back. “Surely ye understand the need fer discretion until contracts are signed.”

Keir leaned forward in his saddle. “And now ye’re traveling taegether tae MacEwan lands tae… what, exactly?”

“Tae marry,” Tavish said before Maighread could speak. His tone left no room for doubt. “With her faither’s blessing, which we already have.”

Keir studied them both for a long, silent moment. The forest held its breath. Rain dripped from pine needles with terrible patience.

“Well then.” He straightened in his saddle. “In that case, I insist on escorting ye both tae MacEwan lands. Tae ensure yer safety, of course. These roads are clearly dangerous, what with bandits and…” His smile sharpened. “Other threats.”

Tavish’s hand pressed more firmly against Maighread’s back. “We have sufficient men—”

“I insist.” Keir’s tone left no room for argument. “I’m heading north meself. How convenient that we can travel taegether. Unless ye have reason tae refuse me protection?”

Refusing would raise suspicion. Accepting meant traveling under Keir’s watchful eye.

Tavish’s jaw tightened, but he inclined his head. “Yer concern is noted. We’ll travel taegether, then.”

“Excellent.” Keir turned his horse. “Shall we? I’m sure Laird MacEwan is anxious tae see his daughter. And his new son by marriage.” The emphasis on those last words sent ice down Maighread’s spine.

Tavish guided Maighread toward his horse with a firm hand, his movements deliberate and protective. As he helped her mount, he leaned close enough that only she could hear.

“We’ll talk when we can,” he murmured. “Fer now, follow me lead.”

She nodded, and he swung up behind her, one arm settling around her waist to keep her steady as they began to ride.

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A few hours before the ball

“If ye pull that any tighter, Maisie, I willnae be able tae breathe.”

“Ye need tae breathe less and look even more beautiful,” Maisie said from behind her, tugging at the laces of Alba’s stays with the determination of someone who took her duties very seriously. “Now hold still.”

Alba gripped the bedpost and tried not to think about how her ribs were slowly being compressed into her spine.

Around them, her chamber was in a state of controlled chaos. Gowns spread across the bed, jewelry scattered on the dressing table, ribbons and pins and pots of rouge everywhere.

“I can feel me heart beatin’ in me throat,” Alba said.

“That’s just nerves,” Orla said, giving another firm tug. “Ye’re always like this before a ball.”

“I’m nae always like this.”

“Ye are. Remember the Midwinter feast last year? Ye made me re-lace ye three times because ye said it didnae feel right.”

“That was different,” Alba protested. “The Duke of Atholl was goin’ tae be there.”

“And tonight Lachlann MacNeil is goin’ tae be there,” Maisie said, and Alba could hear the grin in her voice even without seeing her face. “Which is clearly much more terrifying.”

Alba felt heat rise in her cheeks. “I dinnae ken what ye mean.”

“Ye ken exactly what I mean. Ye’ve been talkin’ about him fer weeks.”

“I’ve mentioned him twice.”

“Ye’ve mentioned him at least a dozen times,” Maisie corrected, giving one final tug before tying off the laces. “And every time ye dae, ye get that look on yer face.”

“What look?”

“The look ye’re wearin’ right now.” Maisie came around to face her, hands on her hips. “There. Perfect. Now sit so I can dae yer hair.”

Alba moved to the dressing table and sat, grateful to finally be able to draw a full breath, even if it was somewhat restricted.

She looked at herself in the mirror. Face flushed, hair still hanging loose down her back, eyes bright with what she was absolutely not going to admit was excitement.

Maisie appeared behind her in the reflection, already reaching fer the brush.

“So. Are ye actually goin’ tae talk tae him taenight, or are ye just goin’ tae stare at him from across the room like ye did at the last gatherin’?”

“I talked tae him at the last gatherin’.”

“Aye, but ye acted like ye barely kenned him, forget havin’ grown up with him around.”

“That’s still talkin’.”

“That’s barely acknowledgement,” Maisie said, beginning to work through Alba’s hair with practiced efficiency. “Ye need tae actually have a conversations with the man if ye want him tae see ye as anything other than Calum’s sister.”

“He kens I exist, that’s enough.”

“Daes he? Because from what ye’ve told me, lately yer conversations are stilted.”

Alba opened her mouth to argue, then closed it because Maisie was, unfortunately, correct.

“He’s just, he’s very, how dae I put it?” She gestured vaguely. “He’s him.”

“I ken he’s him,” Maisie said, gathering sections of Alba’s hair and beginning tae pin them. “That’s why ye need tae talk tae him properly taenight. Otherwise ye’re just goin’ tae spend another six months thinkin’ about what ye should have said. Ye used tae play with him and tease him all the time when ye were a bairn.”

“What am I supposed tae say? ‘Good evenin’, Lachlann MacNeil, I’ve been thinkin’ about ye fer years, would ye like tae dance?'”

“That would be a start.”

“I cannae say that!”

“Why nae?”

“Because he’s…” Alba stopped, trying to find words for what Lachlann MacNeil was.

Tall. Quiet. Possessed of the kind of steady competence that made her feel slightly unsteady by comparison.

“He’s nae the kind of man ye just walk up tae and say things like that tae.”

“What kind of man is he, then?”

“The intimidatin’ kind.”

“He’s one of yer braither’s closest friends,” Maisie pointed out. “He’s nae intimidatin’, he’s just reserved.”

“Reserved people are intimidatin’ tae people who talk too much.”

“Ye dinnae talk too much.”

“I dae when I’m nervous,” Alba said. “Remember when I met the Countess of Mar? I told her about our entire family history goin’ back four generations and she hadnae even asked.”

Maisie winced. “That was unfortunate.”

“That was mortifyin’,” Alba corrected. “And if I dae that tae Lachlann MacNeil, he’s goin’ tae spend the rest of the evenin’ avoidin’ me.”

“So dinnae,” Maisie said reasonably, working another section of hair into place. “Just be yerself. But the version of yerself that can complete a sentence without panic.”

“That’s a very narrow version.”

Maisie paused in her work and met Alba’s eyes in the mirror. “Me lady, if I may?”

“Of course.”

“The gentleman ye’re describin’ sounds like a good man. A quiet man. And in me experience, quiet men appreciate women who can talk, because it means they dinnae have tae.” She resumed pinning. “So if ye dae happen tae talk too much, it might nae be the disaster ye’re imaginin’’.”

Alba considered this. “Ye really think so?”

“I’ve been dressin’ ye fer enough gatherings tae ken when ye’re frettin’ fer good reason and when ye’re just frettin’,” Maisie said. “This is just frettin’.”

“But what if he’s nae interested? What if he’s just bein’ polite every time we talk and he’s actually just toleratin’ me because I’m Calum’s sister?”

“Then he’s nae worth yer time,” Orla said firmly. “But I dinnae think that’s the case.”

“How would ye ken?”

Maisie smiled slightly. “Because I saw the way he looked at ye at the last gatherin’ when ye were walkin’ away. That wasnae tolerance. That was interest.”

Alba’s head whipped around so fast that several pins fell out. “What? When? Why didnae ye tell me?”

“I’m tellin’ ye now,” Orla said, retrieving the pins with a long-suffering sigh. “Turn back around before I lose all me progress.”

Alba turned, but her heart was beating faster now. “What kind of look was it?”

“The kind that meant he was sorry tae see ye leave,” Maisie said. “Now stop movin’ or I’ll never get this finished in time.”

Alba forced herself to sit still, but her mind was racing.

Lachlann had looked at her. Had watched her leave. Had been, what? Sorry? Interested?

“What if I mess it up?” she asked quietly.

“Then ye mess it up and we’ll fix yer hair again tomorrow while ye tell me all about it,” Maisie said. “But at least ye’ll have tried.”

Alba looked at herself in the mirror as Maisie worked. Her hair was already taking shape, an elaborate arrangement she’d never be able to replicate on her own, woven through with ribbons that would match the deep blue of her gown.

“Right,” she said, taking a breath, or as much of one as the stays allowed. “Right. I can dae this.”

“Of course ye can,” Orla said. “Ye’re Alba MacKinnon. Ye’ve never been afraid of anythin’ in yer life.”

“That’s nae true. I’m afraid of spiders.”

“Everythin’ important, then.” Maisie finished the last pin and stepped back to examine her work. “There. Perfect. Now let’s get ye intae that gown before ye lose yer nerve entirely.”

Alba stood in front of the long mirror while Maisie made final adjustments to her hem.

The gown was beautiful, deep blue silk that brought out her eyes, with delicate embroidery along the bodice and sleeves. She’d never felt more like a lady and less like herself.

“Stop fidgetin’,” Maisie said, smoothing an imaginary wrinkle. “Ye look stunnin’. He’s goin’ tae take one look at ye and forget how tae speak.”

“That’s nae helpful. What if we both forget how tae speak and just stand there starin’ at each other like fools?”

“That would actually be quite romantic,” Maisie said. “In a tragic, terrible sort of way.”

Alba laughed despite herself. “Ye’re supposed tae be encouragin’ me.”

“I am encouragin’ ye. I’m encouragin’ ye tae stop worryin’ so much and just go tae that ball and dance with the man.” Maisie straightened Alba’s necklace, a simple pendant that had belonged to her mother. “The worst that happens is he says nay. And if he says nay, then ye ken, and ye can move on. But what if he says aye?”

“What if he says aye?” Alba repeated quietly.

“Then everythin’ changes,” Maisie said, smiling. “So stop frettin’ and go find out.”

Alba took a deep breath and looked at herself one more time in the mirror. She did look ready. She looked like someone who could walk into a ballroom and talk to a man without panicking.

She could do this.

Probably.

“Right,” she said, picking up her skirts. “Let’s go before I change me mind.”

Maisie handed her the fan she’d forgotten on the dressing table. “And remember, if all else fails, just smile and let him dae the talkin’.”

“That’s terrible advice.”

“It’s brilliant advice,” Maisie said. “Trust me.”

Alba laughed and headed for the door and the waiting carriage.

Her heart already beating fast beneath the silk and stays, imagining the moment when she’d see him across the room and have to decide, once and for all, whether she was brave enough to close the distance between them.

She turned and Maisie smiled and began tidying the chaos of the room, humming softly to herself.

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