Chapter Sixteen
He stood with Alexander and Michael near the edge of the yard, tuning them out as their voices rose and fell over the merits of different sword grips.
Alexander insisted the pommel should rest against the heel of the palm, while Michael demonstrated with exaggerated movements how his way allowed for quicker strikes.
“You’re gripping it wrong,” Alexander declared, voice already hoarse. He yanked the hilt from Michael’s hands and demonstrated, knuckles white, the pommel braced firmly against the meat of his palm. “If ye’re loose with it, ye’ll get disarmed every time.”
Michael scoffed, rolling his eyes in a way that suggested he’d been born to disagree with anything Alexander said.
“If ye hold it like that, yer wrist will snap first blow. Ye want to keep it quick—” He snatched the sword back, flicked the tip up, and executed a short, tight circle.
“See? I’d gut ye before ye even noticed I’d moved. ”
Jacob knelt beside his dappled gray, working a small stone free from the beast's front hoof with the point of his dirk, when Alexander lost interest in the debate and pointed away from them.
“Look there,” he said, chin tipping toward the far side of the green.
Jacob’s gaze followed idly. At first, he saw nothing but the shimmer of heat over the grass, the pale green flush of new spring, and the walls of Wolvesly gray and bright against the morning.
But then—beyond the stables, just at the joining of wall and orchard—he caught sight of her: Elena.
She stood with her back to the house, her hair unbound and black as night, loose to her waist. She wore her traveling dress—plain, the color of undyed linen, but made lovely by her.
She laughed, head tipped back, and the sound of it carried across the distance like a thrown stone skipping over water.
There was a lad with her, a stranger to Jacob, but by the look of his build and cut of his hair, likely a village lad or servant’s son.
The boy leaned in, gesturing with a sort of nervous energy, all awkward elbows and fidgeting hands.
He was plainly besotted, and even from across the yard Jacob could read the pleading in his posture.
“Who’s that?” Jacob asked, his tone as neutral as he could make it.
Michael snorted. “Blacksmith’s son,” he said, as though that explained everything. “Da hired him on last winter. Thinks he’s clever, but he’s soft as cheese.”
Alexander grinned. “Follows Elena round like a lost pup.”
Jacob braced himself against a flicker of something sharp and mean in his chest, a sensation he recognized and despised.
He watched as the lad said something that earned a smile from Elena, quick and genuine, and then watched her step away, just far enough to keep the boy at bay without making him feel the bite of it.
“He’s wasting his time,” Alexander said, losing interest in the pair. “Elena’s made for better than that. Da’s always said so.”
Jacob squinted against the sun, staring at the pair. “Better how?”
Alexander frowned, as if the answer should be known.
“She’s to be married off—to some lord’s son, nae less than a baron.
Da wants southern ties, and she’s the only thing worth trading.
” He said it with the casual certainty of someone who’d never had to imagine his own life being bartered for a herd of sheep or a single sack of gold.
Michael nodded, matter-of-fact. “Aye. She’ll be gone to market before next spring, ye wait.”
The words lodged in Jacob’s mind, heavy and immovable.
He looked back at Elena then—not at the lad beside her, but at her face as she listened, bright and animated, mayhap unaware that her future had been arranged without her.
Something settled in him at that moment, quiet and final, eclipsing all the foolish notions that had been stirred in his head since he’d come last week to Wolvesly, the ones that had struck him the instant Elena had strode into the hall, no longer the girl who'd chased after him with skinned knees, but a beguiling young woman whose smile he found himself seeking across crowded rooms.
He did not belong in whatever bargain would one day be struck. Whatever plans were being laid for her life, he was not part of them.
By the time Wolvesly faded behind him a fortnight later, the truth had settled, not kindly, but as a matter of fact.
Some things were not meant to be, but only imagined.
ELENA WOKE WITH THE peculiar, disorienting sense that something fundamental had shifted while she slept, as though the world had quietly rearranged itself in the night and left her to discover the change by degrees.
It took her several heartbeats to remember what it was—what had been undone—and when the truth settled in, it did so not with elation but with a cautious, almost startled relief.
She was no longer betrothed.
Word had come late the night before, delivered quietly by her mother after the household had begun to settle: Lord Hamilton had withdrawn from the contract, choosing prudence and pride in equal measure.
The alliance as intended, with the MacTavish/Hamilton betrothal at the heart of it, would not proceed—but neither, Isabel had told her, was the summit a total loss.
Some of the Lowland lords had nonetheless pledged their support to the cause, to Liam and Gabriel specifically, agreeing to stand with the Highland chiefs against the long grind of English aggression and the slow erosion of their own lands.
It was, Elena understood, the sort of compromise men of power called a victory. Isabel had assured her that her father considered it a win.
But the most pressing matter: she was no longer expected to wed Thomas Hamilton.
The knowledge sat strangely in her chest, light and heavy all at once.
She had prepared herself, over many months, to do her duty as she had been taught: to marry where she was told, to lend her name and her future to an alliance that mattered far more than her own wishes.
She had never specifically thought of rebellion—even yesterday—had only been resigned.
And yet, now that the bond had been severed, she could admit—if only to herself—how ill the prospect had always rested with her.
Not Thomas alone, for she had not found him wholly disagreeable, but what the marriage would have required of her: the quiet extinguishing of a hope she had never spoken aloud, but which she had guarded as treasure for so many years.
Not that she imagined there truly was hope now, not where Jacob Jamison was concerned.
That truth returned with uncomfortable clarity as she dressed and made her way down into the courtyard, the morning air hanging damp and chill beneath a low stretch of gray sky.
The MacTavish and Jamison households were already gathering, horses fitted, wagons loaded, outriders mounted and waiting, the business of departure carried out with an efficiency that bordered on careful avoidance.
No one had said the words aloud—you must leave—but they had hovered nonetheless, unspoken and unmistakable.
Lord Strathfinnan’s message the night before had been delivered with brittle courtesy, his farewell as stiff as his posture, while Thomas had kept his eyes resolutely averted, wounded pride clinging faithfully to him—by her mother’s account.
Now, in the pale morning light, the dismissal felt sharper still.
Elena stayed close to her mother while across the yard, Jacob moved among the Jamison horses, checking girths, tightening straps, his manner composed and intent on anything that did not require him to look her way, it seemed.
If he had noticed her at all that morning, she could not tell.
He passed within a few strides of her without pause, without the smallest acknowledgment, and the familiar, foolish ache stirred in her chest despite everything she told herself.
Freedom did not feel as she had imagined it might.
Once they passed beyond the estate’s outer boundary and the castle receded behind a curtain of mist, the tension did not immediately lift, but something in the air shifted—just enough that breath came easier.
The company rode in a loose formation now, MacTavishes and Jamisons intermingled, the women mounted among them rather than set apart or in carriages, cloaks drawn close against the damp morning air.
From her place beside her mother, she saw Jacob urge his horse forward, closing the distance between himself and her father with careful deliberation.
He drew level with Liam’s mount and began speaking to him, keeping his voice low, his posture respectful.
Her father did not turn at once, but Elena caught the slight tightening of his jaw.
They spoke for several moments as they rode on, heads inclined just enough to keep their words private.
Elena could not hear a single syllable, but she could guess well enough at the substance of it.
Jacob’s shoulders were squared, his expression sober, the look of a man offering something that could not be softened by charm or haste.
An apology, she thought. Or an accounting. Perhaps both.
Liam listened without interruption, his gaze fixed ahead, giving nothing away. When at last he inclined his head—once, sharply—it told Elena very little, except that whatever had been said had been received, if not happily.
Jacob fell back then, resuming his place among the Jamisons as though nothing of consequence had passed between them.
They rode mostly in silence for a time. Then, inevitably, the brothers noticed the heavy quiet—and did what brothers did best.
From a few paces back, David Jamison’s voice rose with deliberate cheer, pitched just loudly enough to carry. “Well then,” he called, “I ken I canna speak for the whole company, but I’ve a grievance to lay at your feet, Jacob Jamison.”
A few heads turned.