Chapter 15
The castle felt different once the hall emptied.
The noise faded first, echoing laughter and clanking tankards bleeding into the old stones. Then the smoke thinned. Servants slipped away. Doors closed, hinges sighing. Somewhere above, a child cried and was shushed. A dog barked once in the yard, then settled.
The quiet after a night like this was never complete. It hummed. Like a bowstring unloosed but not yet slack.
Maxwell stood just outside the great hall, watching the last of the clansmen drift toward their bedrolls and chambers. Finley muttered something about “guard rotations and me poor feet” and took himself off toward the outer wall.
Maxwell stayed.
The great hearth at the end of the hall was banked now, no longer roaring, but still throwing gentler waves of heat. The long tables were mostly cleared. Candle stubs lingered in their holders, puddles of wax glowing softly.
Ariella remained by the fire.
She stood with one hand on the stone mantle, her face turned slightly toward the embers. Her gown had loosened a bit at the neckline over the course of the evening; a curl had escaped its pins and lay against her cheek. She looked not exhausted, exactly.
She had been brilliant tonight. Holding the hall together with smiles and careful words, deflecting Lyall’s barbs, turning Archer’s arrogance into something almost laughable. She had steadied Maxwell himself more than once with a single glance.
He felt that same steadiness tugging at him now as he watched her from the hall’s threshold.
Without quite deciding to, he walked toward her.
His footsteps echoed dully over the rushes. She turned as he approached, that small, unguarded smile already appearing, as if she expected him.
His chest tightened.
“Ye should be abed,” he said. “It has been a long day.”
“So says the man who is still standing,” she answered softly. “I could say the same to ye.”
He huffed. “I have too much noise in me head to sleep.”
“Same,” she admitted.
He reached the table nearest the hearth, found the small bottle of whisky and two cups that had not yet been cleared. He poured without asking if she wanted any.
He handed her a cup.
“Ye look pleased,” he said, eyeing the faint flush in her cheeks.
She took a slow sip, then met his gaze over the rim. “Did I please ye?”
The question hit him sideways.
He inhaled at the wrong moment and nearly choked on his own drink.
Ariella’s eyes widened. “Saints, Maxwell, I didnae mean to murder ye with whisky.”
He coughed once, twice, set the cup down with more force than necessary. “Warn a man before ye… ask things like that.”
“Ask what?” she asked with entirely too much innocence.
“If ye ‘pleased’ him,” he mimicked roughly.
Her mouth curved. “Well. Did I?”
He pressed his tongue against his teeth, somewhere between exasperated and undone. “Ye ken full well ye did.”
Her smile brightened at that.
“Ye are dangerous when ye smile like that,” he muttered.
She tilted her head, eyes sparkling. “Should ye nae be used to danger by now?”
He tried to scowl. It came out more like a reluctant smirk. “This is different.”
“How so?”
He shrugged, at a loss. “Danger in battle is simple. Ye swing, they fall, or ye do. This…”
He gestured vaguely between them.
“This is messier.”
Her gaze softened. “I didnae mean to make it messy.”
“Aye, but it happened anyway,” he said quietly. “Ye walked into me keep and moved all the stones I thought were set.”
She blinked, a little taken aback by his honesty.
Their banter continued, but laced with something gentler tonight.
They teased about the councilmen, about Finley nearly starting a brawl over a dice game at the far end of the table.
She mimicked Lyall’s pompous tone so accurately he almost laughed aloud.
He told her Ewan once tried to challenge a grown warrior to a wrestling contest and nearly broke his own arm.
All the while, the space between them seemed to shrink inch by inch.
Her laughter brushed against him like a hand. The firelight gilded her hair. She stood close enough now that he could see the faint shadow of fatigue under her eyes, and the brightness that refused to be dimmed.
She was not angry with him. Not bristling. Not hurt.
She was standing here, by the fire, flushed from praise and whisky, looking at him like she wanted a kiss or a life, and he was not sure which unsettled him more.
But as she looked up at him, lips parted, eyes luminous, he knew one thing with absolute, bone-deep certainty. She wanted him to kiss her. And God help him, he wanted to.
Maxwell let the silence stretch for another breath.
Then another.
He could have stepped away then. Could have said something practical about guard rotations or O’Douglas or the hour. Could have put a length of stone-cold distance back between them.
He did none of those things.
Just stepped closer.
It was just half a pace, but it changed everything.
Her breath hitched. The flame’s glow skated across the hollow of her throat.
He could see now that she was trembling with every inhale, as if she was shivering, but he knew that it was not with fear.
It was with the same tight, coiled anticipation that had been burning in his own veins since the first time he kissed her.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
He watched her eyes, the way they searched his, wanting something she was too proud to ask for twice. Her fingers tightened around her cup, then loosened, as if she could not decide whether to reach for him or not.
He decided for both of them.
He lifted his hand, slowly, giving her plenty of time to flinch away if she chose, and brushed his knuckles along her cheek.
Her skin was warm. Soft. A little too soft for his battle-rough hands.
Her eyes fluttered closed.
The trust in that simple gesture nearly undid him.
“Ariella,” he murmured.
“Aye,” she whispered.
He wanted to be certain. “Are ye?”
She opened her eyes again. They were dark and bright all at once, reflecting firelight and something deeper.
“I am nae made of glass, Maxwell,” she said. “Ye will nae break me.”
He huffed out something like a laugh, low and strained. “I might.”
“I trust ye nae to.”
That was worse. That was so much worse.
He couldn’t bear the distance between them another heartbeat. He leaned in and kissed her.
Softly at first. Just his mouth against hers, slow and searching, as if relearning what he’d already learned in fragments in a library, in a study, in shadows. She sighed into it, lifting onto her toes, one hand fisting in the fabric at his chest.
The taste of her. The whisky and warmth and something purely her hit him like an unexpected blow. He deepened the kiss without thinking, his other hand finding the small of her back, drawing her flush against him.
She answered with sudden boldness, fingers sliding up to his shoulders, then around his neck. Her lips parted beneath his, and he took the invitation, tongue brushing against hers in a slow, hungry stroke that pulled a faint, helpless sound from her throat.
He swallowed it greedily.
The hall around them still smoldered with embers, lanterns low but not out. The doors were closed, but a guard could pass through. A servant might slip in. Any clansman too far into his cups might stumble back down for one last drink.
He knew all that.
His mouth drifted from her lips to her jaw, then the soft skin beneath her ear.
“This is quite public, lass,” he muttered against her. “Half the keep could walk in and see.”
She shivered, her hand tightening in his hair.
“Let them,” she whispered.
He froze.
“What?” he rasped.
“Let them see,” she repeated, a tremor in her voice that had more to do with want than nerves. “Let them see their laird stake another claim this night.”
The words hit him low and hard.
Stake another claim.
Not on border lines. Not on land. On her.
He pulled back just enough to see her face, to make sure he had heard right. Her cheeks were flushed, lips swollen from his kisses, eyes wide and utterly sincere.
She meant it.
She wanted to be his. Not just in vows. Not just in name.
His.
He kissed her harder, hand flexing at her hip. She gasped, clinging to him, and the small, breathy noises she made only drove him closer to the edge.
He wanted more.
He wanted all of her.
Neither the hall, the torches, nor the danger of being seen felt like enough of a deterrent anymore.
“Upstairs,” he growled softly against her mouth.
She nodded, breathless. “Aye.”
He caught her hand.
And this time, he did not let go.
They made it only halfway up the great stair before he lost patience.
The broad stone steps curved along the wall, a sturdy banister running the length of it. Torch brackets cast bars of light and shadow across the stairwell. Night air seeped in faintly from the arrow slits, cool against his overheated skin.
Ariella’s skirts swished as she climbed ahead of him, still holding his hand. She glanced back once, smiling over her shoulder—hair loosened, eyes shining, mouth still soft and kiss-bruised.
Something snapped.
In two quick strides, he caught up to her, turned, and backed her against the banister.
She squealed half in surprise, and half in delighted scandal.
“Maxwell!” she hissed, though her hands had already found his shoulders again.
“Ye wanted them to see,” he muttered, pressing his forehead to hers.
“I do,” she whispered, laughter trembling through the words.
Her amusement and her utter lack of fear lit him up from the inside. He kissed her again, quick and rough, just long enough to make her cling tighter, then straightened.
Before she could catch her breath, he gripped her waist and lifted.
Her squeal turned into a breathless laugh as he settled her briefly on the banister, his hands firm at her hips to keep her steady.
“Ye’re mad,” she whispered, but the way she looked at him only drove him crazier.
“Only about ye,” he said.
The truth of that lodged somewhere in his chest.
He dropped a kiss just below her ear, resisting the urge to linger, then slid her carefully back to her feet on the step above him.
In the same motion, he bent, scooped her into his arms, and straightened.
She gasped, arms flying instinctively around his neck and a laugh spilled out of her. “Maxwell!”
“What?” he asked, smirking as he started up the stairs with her cradled easily against him.
He pretended to consider. “We are wed.”
She buried her face briefly against his neck. “Aye, but still.”
Her breath there, warm against his skin, nearly undid him again.
He carried her the rest of the way, boots thudding solidly against stone, the sound grounding him just enough that he didn’t devour her before he reached the door to his chambers.
He kicked it shut behind them.
The room was dim, lit only by the embers left in the hearth and the faint glow of a single candle on the table. The familiar felt suddenly different with her in his arms.
Alive.
He set her gently on her feet, but before she could step back, he’d caged her between his body and the door, his mouth finding hers again.
This kiss was nothing like the controlled, cautious one he’d once given her in shadowed corridors. This was fire. Weeks of restraint snapping, all his wanting poured into the press and slide of lips and tongue and breath.
She answered with equal ferocity, fingers tugging at his shirt, finding bare skin, pulling him down, closer, closer.
They tumbled together toward the bed, laughing once when his boot caught the edge of a rug, then gasping as they fell onto the mattress in a tangle of limbs and cloth.
He lost track of what came off first. Her gown, his shirt, her shifts, his plaid. It blurred into heat and hands and the soft little sounds she made when his mouth found a place that drew a gasp from her.
He was hungry for her.
Hungry in a way that had nothing to do with physical need and everything to do with the way she looked at him when she whispered his name.
He entered her slowly, watching her face for every flicker of discomfort, ready to stop at the smallest sign.
She took a sharp breath, fingers clenching around his biceps. Then she relaxed, eyes softening, lips parting on a low sound that went straight through him.
“Are ye?”
“I am fine,” she breathed. “Daenae ye dare stop.”
So he did not.
He moved then, faster, finding a rhythm that made her arch into him, that drew little gasps and sighs and whispered pleas. Every time she tightened around him, he had to grit his jaw against his own rising need.
He kept going until she shattered beneath him, her body clenching, head tipping back, a quiet cry slipping free.
Only then did he let himself go —
But not fully.
With an effort that felt like tearing muscle from bone, he pulled free at the last moment, finishing with a rough exhale as he braced a forearm against the headboard.
For a few seconds, the only sound was the ragged rush of their breathing and the soft crackle of the dying fire.
He collapsed carefully beside her, dragging her against his chest without thinking. She came willingly, tucking herself under his arm, her hand resting over his heart.
It hammered too fast.
She was drowsy, boneless, sated in a way that stirred something fierce and tender in him, and he pulled her closer.
“Maxwell,” she murmured, half-asleep already.
He huffed a breath that was almost a laugh. “Aye?”
“I think like ye,” she mumbled, as if it were a secret she didn’t mean to share.
His throat tightened.
He pressed his lips to her hair. “Rest, Ariella.”
She did.
Her breathing evened, her body slack against his, utterly trusting.
He stared up at the dim ceiling, warmth soaking deep into places he’d long considered dead.
This life might work after all.
He could keep her safe. He could share her bed, her laughter, her stubborn, dangerous light. He could give her pleasure until she forgot to want anything else.
And he could do it without giving her an heir.
He had proven that tonight.
He would continue to prove it.
She would be content. He told himself as his eyes drifted shut. She would never ken the difference.
With her curled in his arms and the echo of her soft cries still in his head, Maxwell let himself believe that everything would work out just fine.