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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.