Chapter 1 #2
She held his gaze. “Nay, I daenae wish to marry ye.”
His smile tilted. “Fair enough. For what it is worth, ye seem far too good for the likes of me.”
“That is nay comfort,” she said.
“Nay,” he agreed. He tapped a finger against his lower lip, as if considering. “If ye truly daenae wish to marry me, there are ways.”
Her heart gave a startled leap. “What do ye mean?”
His eyes glinted. “Oh, I daenae suggest ye refuse outright. Yer laird braither would never allow it. But brides have been kent to trip. To fall ill. To run away in the night. There are songs about it.”
“That is foolishness,” Ariella said sharply, though the image flashed before her eyes, bright and dangerous. The dark hills, the open road, the taste of freedom. “What of me braither,” she asked. “Me maither. What of them?”
Hunter’s smile faded for a heartbeat. “That is the rub, is it nae? Someone has to pay for our freedom.”
He pushed away from the wall then, the moment of gravity gone. “In any case, I speak only in jest,” he said lightly. “Daenae look so alarmed, me lady. We shall stand before the priest like good little lambs, and our families will sigh in relief.”
He winked at her, his voice lowering only slightly, but conspiratorially, nonetheless. “Unless, of course, ye decide to do something about it.”
His words followed her long after he left the solar. Through supper, through her mother’s anxious fussing, through Frederick’s sturdy presence beside her, she heard them.
Unless, of course, ye decide to do something about it.
In her bed that night, staring at the rafters while the fire died low, she turned them over and over in her mind. Freedom weighed on one side of the scales, duty on the other, and in between lay her own heart, restless and aching, tired of being held in other people’s hands.
Unless, of course, ye decide to do something about it.
By the time the last ember winked out, Ariella had made her choice.
The castle slept.
Ariella could feel it, the great stone body of it settled in the dark, breath slowed, heartbeat a distant thrum where a watchman paced along the wall walk. The wind hissed at the shutters of her chamber, tugging and rattling like a beggar denied.
Her hands shook as she packed.
She had so little that was truly hers. A spare gown, plain and serviceable. Her cloak, thick but worn at the edges. Two chemises. Her comb. A small pouch of herbs tied carefully by her cousin, Skylar, for strength. She tucked that in as if it were the most precious thing she owned.
Her mother’s soft snores came faintly through the wall they shared. The sound pricked at her like needles. She paused, fingers clenched in the wool of her cloak.
I could stay. She could rise in the morning, let Elodie lace her into her best gown, walk into the hall, smile at Hunter’s smooth compliments, stand before the priest and speak the words that would bind her to a man who did nae want chains any more than she did.
I could do it. For Frederick. For the people who had never seen her as anything but their laird’s fragile little sister, but who still bowed to her in the yard and smiled when she spoke their names.
For the clan that had fed her, sheltered her, held her up when her lungs fought for air and her heart stuttered.
But when she tried to imagine it, to see herself years from now as Hunter’s wife, the picture would not settle. It smudged at the edges, faded and thin.
When she thought of herself on the road, cloak snapping in the wind, the whole world wide before her, it did not feel thin at all. It felt frightening and wild and almost unbearable.
She pulled the cloak about her shoulders and lifted the small bundle she had tied with trembling hands.
Skylar will scold me senseless. A breath of laughter caught in her throat. If I manage to reach her.
That was the plan that had formed. Go to Skylar.
To the cousin who had always treated her as capable, who had never clucked and hovered when Ariella coughed.
Skylar, who had walked into danger for love, who had faced a laird and his wrath, who had nae been content with the life others chose for her.
If anyone could help Ariella choose a new path, it would be Skylar and her husband, Zander Harrison, the Laird of clan Strathcairn.
She eased the door open, wincing at the faint creak, then slipped into the corridor. The torches had been banked; their flames were low, shadows pooling thick between the stones. The cold bit at her bare hands and face.
Step by step, she moved along the corridor, past familiar doors, down the turning stair that spiraled into the grand entryway of the keep.
The great doors to the courtyard were heavy, but she knew the trick of them.
She eased one just wide enough to slip through and pulled it closed behind her.
The icy air slapped her cheeks, sharper here, filled with the smells of horse and smoke and damp earth.
The sky was a deep, cloud torn black. A scatter of stars gleamed above the dark spill of the hills. In the yard, the stables hunched like sleeping beasts. A single lantern glowed near the gate, where a lone guard stood, shoulders hunched against the cold.
Her heart knocked painfully. Getting a horse would be the hardest part, yet she could not flee on foot. The hills were unforgiving, and her strength, though far better than in winters past, was far from endless.
“One thing at a time,” she whispered to herself, breath misting.
She made for the shadowed side of the yard, keeping close to the wall, the stone rough and cold at her shoulder. She risked a glance toward the gate. The guard had his back to her, hands cupped before his mouth as if he warmed them with his breath.
If I can reach the stables and lead a mare out quietly, she thought, I might be past the outer field before anyone kens I am gone.
Every step forward felt like a vow broken. Her mother’s face swam before her eyes, pale and anxious. Frederick’s hand on her shoulder, heavy and warm. Hunter’s glinting smile, his careless words.
Unless, of course, ye decide to do something about it.
She swallowed hard and kept moving.
A sudden gust of wind drove a swirl of dead leaves across the yard. She let out a slow breath, stepped away from the wall, and fixed her eyes on the dark line of the stable door.
“Stop there.”
The voice cut clean through the night. Deep, unhurried, carrying easily over the yard.
Ariella halted as if the word itself had turned to stone around her feet.
The voice had come from the shadow by the corner of the keep. From the place where the light of the lantern did not quite reach.
Her fingers tightened convulsively around her bundle.
Slowly, she turned.
A man stepped out from the darkness.
He was taller than Frederick, broader in the shoulder, the bulk of him filling the space as if he were made for it.
The scant light caught on the planes of his face, on the rope of an old scar that carved a pale line from brow to jaw.
Another jagged mark disappeared into his beard.
There were more, she saw at once. Faint ridges at his throat.
A slash along his temple. His eyes were a deep, unreadable green, hard as river stones in winter.
The Beast of McNeill.
Ariella’s breath hitched.
This was no smooth, laughing younger brother. This was the laird himself.
And he had caught her in the act of running.