Chapter 23
“Frederick should be warned.”
Ariella looked up from the ledger she had been pretending to read.
She had been staring at the same column of figures for long enough that even Isla would have noticed, had her maid been present.
The ink swam. The numbers meant nothing.
They were only an excuse to sit with her hands busy while her mind ran in circles.
Maxwell stood across the solar, broad shoulders filling the doorway as if the room had been made too small for him. He was already half turned toward the corridor, one hand resting on the doorframe, as though this conversation were only a pause between orders.
“Warned of what?” Ariella asked, because she had learned that questions made him stop, if only for a moment.
He paused, just long enough to answer properly, and no longer. “Of the likelihood that O’Douglas will nae limit himself to one front.”
Her fingers tightened on the edge of the ledger. She forced her voice to remain steady. “Ye believe he may strike Frederick’s lands as well?”
“I believe Lyall O’Douglas is nae a man who wastes opportunity,” Maxwell said. “If he moves, he will try to stretch defenses thin. He will look for the place where it is weakest.”
Ariella swallowed. The words should have felt like strategy alone. They did not. She could hear what lay beneath them, the quiet certainty that war did not care for borders drawn on a map, and that O’Douglas did not care for rules of honor.
“And ye are sending word,” she said.
“Aye.” He nodded once. “I thought ye might wish to add yer own.”
The offer was reasonable. Considerate, even.
It did not feel like kindness.
It felt like something he had forced himself to remember. Like a duty, checked off and set aside so he could return to more pressing matters. Either way, she would be glad to write to Frederick.
Ariella rose slowly, smoothing her skirts as if her hands needed something to do besides reach for him. He was close enough that she could see the faint shadow of fatigue beneath his eyes, the tension in his jaw that never truly left him these days. He smelled of smoke and cold air and steel.
And memory.
The memory of a night that still lived under her skin.
She thought of his hands, the way his voice had sounded low in the dark, the weight of him beside her in sleep. She remembered waking with him, how safe she had felt, how foolishly happy.
Now he looked at her as if he were looking past her.
“I will write,” she said, because she refused to be a child in the corner of her own life. “Thank ye for telling me.”
He inclined his head. “Good.”
That was all.
He did not step closer.
Did not linger.
Did not look at her the way he had before. Neither with hunger nor with warmth. Not with the faint softness she had seen in him when he held Mairi’s baby, or when he had laughed in the kitchens.
He turned as if the conversation had ended the moment he had delivered his information.
“Maxwell,” Ariella said before she could stop herself.
He halted again, back still to her. “Aye?”
She hated that he did not face her. “Is there anything specific that ye want me to say to Frederick?”
A pause.
“Nay,” he said. “Yer brother will do what he will do.”
Her heart tightened. “That is all, then?”
“That is all,” he repeated, and his voice did not soften.
Ariella’s fingers curled at her sides, hidden in the folds of her skirts. “Ye think he is prepared?”
“We will see,” Maxwell replied.
She tried again, quieter. “And ye. Are ye prepared?”
His shoulders shifted. He did not turn, but she could hear the grim certainty in his voice. “I am.”
Ariella flinched at that. Not because it was harsh, but because it sounded like something he had told himself too many times.
He left the solar without another word.
When the door shut, the room felt colder, even though the fire still burned.
Ariella stood for a long moment, staring at the place he had been. Her pulse thudded hard in her ears, and not only because of the mention of war. There was something else. Something personal.
She told herself it was because he was busy.
She sat again, forcing her hands back to the ledger as if the ink would steady her mind. It did not.
The letter to Frederick took longer than it should have.
Ariella pulled out fresh parchment and dipped her quill, then stared at the blank page until the ink drooped from the nib.
What did she say to her brother.
Dearest Frederick, the man I married is preparing for war, and I have never felt so alone in a castle full of people.
She swallowed and began again.
She wrote once, then crumpled the paper before the ink dried. Wrote a second time, more controlled, more proper, and still it sounded wrong. Too cheerful. Too stiff. Too much like she was pretending.
On the third attempt, she forced herself to write simply.
That she was safe.
That the keep was strong.
That Maxwell was preparing carefully.
That O’Douglas was stirring.
She did not mention that she barely saw her husband anymore, and that every time he passed her in the corridor, she felt like she was watching him walk away from her all over again.
When the letter was finally done, she folded it with care and pressed the seal, then smoothed the page flat again as though she could smooth her life into place the same way.
She held the letter for a long moment before handing it to the runner.
“Ride swiftly. Deliver this to directly to Laird McIntosh,” she said.
The young man nodded. “Aye, me lady.”
As he left, Ariella stood alone in the solar again, staring at the empty space.
She told herself it was only the beginning of preparations. That she was being foolish. She told herself many things as the weeks went on.
The first week passed in a flurry of activity all that began before dawn.
Ariella woke every day to the sound of boots in the courtyard below, to shouted instructions carried on cold air, to the scrape of metal and the low rumble of wagons arriving at the gate. The keep did not roar. It hummed, steady and relentless.
By sunrise, men had filled the yard. For practice on some days, hauling sacks of grain into storage and rolling barrels of salted meat on other days, and lifting bundles of wood for arrow shafts as well.
The forge rang from dawn until nightfall. Hammer on iron. Hammer on iron. A rhythm that worked its way into Ariella’s bones.
The guards doubled, then tripled.
“Daenae stand there like a statue,” Moira snapped at one young lad in the kitchens. “If ye’ve got hands, use them.”
“I am using them,” the boy protested, shifting a sack of oats.
“Ye’re thinking too slow,” Moira replied. “Think quicker.”
The air of the keep tightened, drawn taut like a bowstring.
Maxwell moved through it all like a shadow given purpose.
Ariella saw him only in passing. On the stairs, when he brushed by without stopping. Across the courtyard, shouting quiet orders to the men. Once, briefly, at the high table before he rose again without touching his meal, leaving his trencher nearly full.
Isla, hovering beside Ariella that night, whispered, “He eats like a ghost.”
Ariella kept her gaze on her plate. “He eats?”
“Nae enough,” Isla muttered. “Nay one eats enough when war is coming.”
“He has always been like this?” Ariella assumed.
“Aye, and nay doubt all lairds are the same,” Isla said quietly.
She watched him go, his back rigid, his posture carrying the weight of every stone in the keep.
He did not come to her chamber.
The first night, she told herself he would.
He had been busy. He had been tense. He would come after his rounds, after his orders, after his mind settled.
She lay awake, listening for footsteps. None came.
The second night, she told herself the same.
The third, she began to understand.
By the second week, she stopped expecting him to come to her.
She slept alone, waking in the early hours and listening for his steps anyway, because her body had not learned to let go of hope even when her mind tried to drag it away.
Sometimes she rose before dawn and lingered near his chambers, pretending to admire a tapestry in the corridor or to speak with a passing servant.
“Cold night,” she’d say, as if she were there only to remark on the weather.
“Aye, me lady,” the guard would reply, and his eyes would flick to her face with the pity of a man who had noticed too much.
Maxwell never emerged.
She knew he was not sleeping. Not truly.
Once, late at night, she passed the study and saw light beneath the door, a thin line of gold against the dark corridor. She paused, hand hovering near the handle, wanting to knock, but did not.
Because she could already imagine the cold voice. The clipped words,
“I have work.”
Once, near dawn, she smelled smoke on his cloak when he brushed past her without stopping, his shoulder nearly grazing hers.
“Maxwell,” she said before thinking.
He halted, turning only halfway, eyes already distant.
“Ye should rest,” she said, and her voice betrayed her, too soft, too personal.
“I have,” he lied, flat and quick.
She searched his face. “In the study?”
His gaze sharpened, as if she had dared to name something he did not want seen.
“Go back to bed, Ariella,” he said.
It was a command.
She nodded and stepped aside, letting him pass.
Only when he was gone did she realize her hands had begun to shake.
She told herself she was not in love with him.
She told herself this was normal.
That marriages forged in urgency or obligation did not bloom like songs. Warriors did not pause to tend to feelings while enemies gathered.
She told herself many things.
She took her meals alone. Sometimes in her room, with Isla hovering quietly and pretending not to notice what went untouched on the tray.
“Eat,” Isla would say, too blunt to soften it. “If ye faint, I’ll have to carry ye, and I daenae want to carry ye.”
Ariella would force herself to swallow a few bites just to quiet her maid.