Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
The council had been sitting for two hours, and Malcolm had been talking for most of it.
Alasdair had counted, at some point in the first hour, the number of times Malcolm used the word loyalty.
He had stopped counting at eleven. This was meant to be the last council meeting before his wedding to Isobel took place and Alasdair could not force his mind to focus on the matters at hand.
His thoughts were consumed by his bride-to-be.
What is she doin’ right now?
He put the thought away.
“The Elders are watchin’ this household closely,” Malcolm said.
He had his hands flat on the table, open and reasonable.
“I say this nae as criticism but as counsel. The marriage was their decree. Its success, or its failure, reflects on all of us. On the clan. On what we have built here since Culloden.” He paused, letting that word do its work.
“A Lowland bride whose father harbored fugitives is already a complication. If the Laird is seen to be, shall we say, distracted, by sentiment rather than strategy, the Elders will notice.”
The men around the table were very quiet. Alasdair could feel them not looking at him in a pointed fashion, as if it was an effort to avert their gazes.
“The lass’s faither made choices that cost good men their lives.
I daenae say this to condemn her. She is nae her father.
But the association exists, and association is what the Elders trade in.
” He tilted his head slightly, his voice warming with concern.
“I only raise it because the clan comes first. It has always come first. Any man in this room would say the same,” said Malcolm.
Several men in the room nodded. Alasdair noted which ones.
“Malcolm.” His own voice came out flat. The table went still.
Malcolm looked at him with his patient, open expression. “Aye.”
“Ye’ve been speakin’ for forty minutes.”
“There is a great deal to address before the weddin’.”
“There is,” Alasdair said. “The northern boundary dispute. The winter wool assessment. The Invermohr delivery that arrived three grades below what was promised.” He looked at him steadily. “Ye havenae mentioned any of those things.”
Malcolm’s jaw moved slightly. “Those are important matters, certainly. But the question of—”
“Ye speak as though I care nae for the clan.” Alasdair let the words sit for a moment.
Not loudly. He had never needed volume. “I have led this clan since I was seventeen years old. I have buried men for it. I have made decisions for it that I will carry the rest of my life.” He looked around the table, slowly, meeting each pair of eyes in turn.
“I ken me duty. I have always kenned my duty. I will nae be swayed by fear or whispers, and I will nae sit at the head of me own table and be told what me priorities should be.”
The room was very quiet.
Malcolm’s hand on his notes had tightened, the knuckles whitening slightly. His eyes moved around the table, quick and controlled, searching, and he found nothing to take hold of. No one spoke. No one leaned forward. No one offered him the opening he was looking for.
He looked back at Alasdair and smiled, a perfectly gracious smile. “Of course,” he said. “Forgive me. I spoke out of concern, nae criticism.”
“I ken,” Alasdair said. He held Malcolm’s gaze for a moment longer than necessary. “We’ll take the boundary dispute next.”
* * *
The great hall had not sounded like this in years.
Behind him, two of the kitchen girls moved between the tables flagons of mead, their voices low and bright beneath the noise.
“Three more barrels from the cellar and Cook says if anyone asks her for the spiced wine again before supper is served, she’ll use the ladle…”
“She said that last Hogmanay…”
“Aye, and Tam has the scar to prove it.”
Alasdair sat at the head of the long table and watched as it stretched out.
Long tables were brought in to accommodate all those gathered.
Candles lit in abundance, making the room warm and golden.
The smell of roasted meat and spiced wine mingled with woodsmoke and the familiar warm noise of a castle that had let go of its breath.
He had forgotten it could sound like this.
His grandmother was laughing at something at the far end. His sister, three days out of her sickroom and furious at the languid pace of her own recovery, was arguing cheerfully with Fergus.
Alasdair was pleased with all he surveyed. That was the thing he kept noticing—the absence of the grief and burdens he had carried so long he had stopped registering it as weight.
The centerpiece of the main table was a roasted rabbit, arranged with some ceremony on a bed of winter herbs.
She did this.
“When Miss Graham and I first met, she won the right to tear the leg straight from the haunch,” Alasdair said to Hamish, who had appeared at his shoulder with two cups.
“Aye.” Hamish sat down beside him and handed him a cup. “At the summer feast.”
“Ye were faster than me then as was Callum.”
“Callum? Laird of Klehln? He couldnae outrun an old woman.” Hamish drank deeply from his cup. “But as for the two of us? I was faster than ye then, and I am faster than ye now, and I will be faster than ye when we are both old men, and ye still willnae admit it.”
“Ye tripped me,” Alasdair said, “at the MacAlister gathering. Ye put yer foot out deliberately so you might send me sprawlin’ into the dirt.”
“I was runnin’,” Fergus said with dignity. “Me foot was where me foot was.”
“Ye were seven years old, and ye already kent how to cheat.”
“I prefer to think of it as usin’ available terrain.” Hamish laughed. “Ye caught me anyway. Ye always caught me. Ye were just slower gettin’ there.”
Alasdair looked at the rabbit and thought about the summers before everything changed—the running, the shouting, and the unique freedom of being young enough that the world had not yet demanded anything irreversible from him.
He had not thought about those summers in a long time.
He had not allowed himself to dwell in the past.
His grandmother’s laugh carried from the far end of the table again, and he looked up. She was watching Isobel.
Isobel was talking to one of the older women from the village, leaning slightly forward, her face open and animated in the way it became when she was genuinely interested rather than pretending.
His grandmother was watching her with an expression he recognized.
The stillness of someone who had found something they did not know they were searching for.
She caught his eye across the table. She held it for a moment, and then she smiled.
He looked away.
“She suits it,” Hamish said, beside him.
“What?”
“The hall. The castle. All of it. I ken I was not a great supporter of this union at first, nor did I give yer bride-to-be the warmest of welcomes, but I’ve come to recognize me mistakes.” He lifted his cup and gestured towards Isobel. “She moves through this life as if she belongs here.”
“She’s been here less than a month.”
“Aye,” Hamish said. He drank. “Funny how that works.”
Alasdair looked at the rabbit centerpiece. “Ye are doin’ the thing with yer face again.”
“I’m nae doin’ anything with me face. I’m observin’.” Hamish set his cup down. “Yer grandmother has been watchin’ her for twenty minutes. Lady Branwen doesnae watch people for twenty minutes unless she’s decided somethin’.”
“Granny decides things constantly.”
“She’s usually right.”
Alasdair remained silent because it was the truth, and Hamish knew it, so speaking up would only encourage him. He had a drink.
Across the table, Isobel laughed at something the woman said, and the sound of it cut through the noise of the hall as easily as it always did.
The evening continued. A song started at the far end, badly and loudly, by someone who had clearly enjoyed plenty of wine, and was cheered for it regardless.
Euan, as well as several other lads and lassies, fell asleep under the table and had to be carried out, which sparked a wave of warm laughter that spread across the hall.
Alasdair’s grandmother settled beside Isobel and remained there.
He watched their interaction keenly. He could not hear them.
He saw his grandmother lean in, observed Isobel’s expression soften as her guardedness momentarily dropped, and saw her say something that made Lady Branwen laugh, a genuine laugh.
Beside him, Hamish murmured, “Ye’re starin’.”
“I’m nae.”
“Aye,” Hamish insisted. “Ye are.”
Alasdair could not help himself.
He had thought about her every single day. Every single night.
And he knew that even though they would be wed soon, the ceremony could not come quickly enough for his taste.
* * *
Hours later, the hall was starting to settle down, the music faded, and voices lowered to a late-evening hush.
He rose and walked along the length of the table, stopping beside her.
She looked up at him. Her eyes were careful, not cold, but careful, the way she looked at him now when she was deciding how much to give.
He sat down in the empty chair beside her and looked at the table for a moment.
“I have struggled all night with a matter of great importance.”
“Oh?” Her eyes widened and the cautious look on her face disappeared. She was entirely enraptured.
“I have to take care of some affairs tonight,” he said.
“There are things I need to see to deal with before they go any further but...” He paused.
“I should like a moment alone with ye. Privately.” His palms had begun to perspire, so he wiped them on the white tablecloth that was covered in leftover bits of food and spilled wine. “Would ye wait for me in the library?”
She was quiet for a long time. He waited.
“Yes,” she said finally. “All right.”
He stood and looked at her once more. Her face, in the candlelight, was nothing short of angelic. Her mouth, that he yearned to kiss, was there, begging him to do what he wished.