Chapter 24
The kitchens were hot and noisy when Neil stepped in behind the children. Finn and Anna tore ahead of him like two excited pups, Maggie skidding after them, her nails clicking on stone.
The maids froze at the sight of the Laird in their domain, a ladle held in mid-air, a tray suspended above a table.
Neil ignored the wide eyes and the sudden hush. He reached for Anna before she ran into a bench and lifted her onto the table. Finn scrambled up beside her and kicked his heels, proud as a lord.
A maid slipped past with a pot of warm milk and gave Neil a quick nod. He cleared his throat and tried to look as if he understood every part of this routine.
“So tell me,” he asked, his voice gruffer than he had intended, “how does it end?”
Finn blinked. “End?”
“Yer game,” Neil clarified. He pointed toward the doorway as if the explanation might be hiding there. “What happens when ye reach the kitchen?”
Finn’s mouth opened, before a grin spread across his face, bright enough that Neil immediately realized he should not have asked.
“Punishment kisses,” Finn announced.
Neil coughed into his hand. “Punishment?”
The word sounded wrong in his mouth.
“For being slow,” Finn explained, solemn as a judge. “She catches us, then she kisses us everywhere. Here, here, and here.” He tapped Anna’s cheek, then her little forehead, then her belly.
Anna squealed and clapped both hands. “Kiss, kiss, kiss!”
Neil went very still. He had endured a hot brand with better composure. He cleared his throat.
“Ye like… that?” he asked stiffly.
Finn shrugged. “Aye. She is happy when she gives them.” He said it without bitterness. “She always is.”
Neil’s jaw tightened. Something twisted under his ribs, sharp and uncomfortable. Guilt. Tenderness. A feeling he could not name.
Anna tipped forward on wobbly legs and reached for him with sticky fingers. “Kiss,” she demanded.
Neil stared at the small hand as if it were a snare. “Right,” he muttered. “Well.”
He shifted closer and pressed a quick kiss to her hair.
Anna crowed with triumph. Finn beamed, then stuck out his cheek like a soldier receiving medals.
Neil hesitated, then pressed a kiss there, too.
It felt ridiculous. It felt dangerous. It felt like something inside him was loosening a notch.
“Again,” Finn said, wicked with delight.
“Ye just had one,” Neil pointed out, struggling to keep an even tone.
“Aye,” Finn said, “but I was slow two times.”
Neil narrowed his eyes. “Were ye now?”
Finn nodded with the grave authority of a boy who had discovered a loophole and intended to live in it forever.
Neil tried not to smile, but he failed.
A maid snorted and masked it with a cough when he looked over at her. “Milk for the bairns, me Laird?” she ventured.
“Aye,” Neil replied, grateful for the distraction. “Give the lass the small cup, so she’d spill less.”
He did not even know if that was true. It sounded like something a father might say.
The maids moved faster after that, some with relief, some with curiosity. The kitchen felt less like a stage and more like a place where ordinary things happened.
Anna slapped both palms against the table and chanted, “Kiss, kiss,” as if the word itself were breakfast. Finn joined in, off-key and loud. Neil lifted a hand, unsure whether to surrender or to command silence.
Suddenly, the door banged against the wall.
“Where are the scoundrels who ran off without me?”
Kristen swept in, her breath quick and her hair mussed from sleep. The bright noise died down at once as she took in the sight before her. Neil standing rigid at the table’s edge, Anna clapping, Finn grinning, Maggie wagging her tail like a broom, steam lifting from a pot of oats.
Her mouth curved. The look Neil gave Anna, as if the child had asked him to rebuild the castle by noon, nearly made her laugh out loud.
“I see, ye didnae wait for me,” she scolded, warm as the morning sun.
Anna squealed and flung both arms up, while Finn launched himself across the small space. Kristen gathered them to her, one on each hip, then set them down and declared sternly, “Punishment for running: two apiece.”
She peppered kisses across their cheeks and temples, wet and noisy, until Anna hiccupped with giggles and Finn twisted like a fish trying to escape and then rushed back for more.
The maids melted into smiles, while Maggie shoved her nose into the tangle and received a quick kiss on the top of her head for her trouble, then wagged her tail as if she had been knighted.
“Three,” Finn bargained, his eyes shining.
“Two,” Kristen said, kissing the tip of his nose. “And a half.”
“Half?” he echoed, delighted.
She kissed the air near his cheek with an exaggerated smack. “Half.”
Anna shrieked, “Half!” as if she understood.
Kristen kissed her brow, then pressed her lips to the child’s hair and breathed for a moment, steadying herself with the simple joy of it.
She lifted her head, breathless and soft-eyed, and turned toward the table to look at the man who had, against all odds, delivered her scoundrels to their doom.
The space beside the table was empty.
Neil was already at the door, his hand on the handle, his body angled away. He did not look back. His stride was even, almost calm, but too quick to be casual. The noise of ladles and laughter rose to fill the gap he left.
Kristen watched the door swing shut. Her hand rose to her chest, palm pressed over her racing heart.
Finn tugged at her sleeve for more half-kisses, and Anna patted Maggie’s ear and squealed, “Half!” happy as a bird.
Kristen smiled and bent to them, but her eyes remained on the place where Neil had stood. She was not sure which worried her more, his silence or the ache that bloomed at his retreat.
She kissed Finn’s cheek again, then Anna’s, and laughed for their sake. The kitchen bustled around her, safe and warm, full of milk and oats and chatter.
Down the corridor, his footsteps faded. The gnawing feeling at the pit of her stomach, however, did not.
Neil sat hunched over the desk like a man guarding a wound. The smell of beeswax and ink filled his nostrils as he studied the maps spread before him.
Ink rings circled valleys and burns. Names of men he had killed sat beside names of men who had run. Candle stubs leaned in pools of wax. His fingers pressed against his temples until a dull ache became a steady drum.
His focus, however, could not stay on the maps for long. All he could think of was Kristen’s face in the kitchen and how at peace she had looked with the kids.
He couldn’t believe he could feel like an intruder in his own home, but somehow, he did. Seeing them huddled together, with the maids walking past, had hammered that notion home.
He was an intruder. A visitor. A guest who had to earn his place if he intended to stay here for long.
“Good God,” he muttered to himself.
The door creaked open at that moment, and Davina slipped inside, brushing soot from her skirts. “Me Laird, have ye seen Lachlan? He wasnae in the courtyard.”
“He is likely at the training grounds,” he replied, eyeing the maps, though his thoughts were nowhere near.
Davina did not move. She studied the hard set of his shoulders and the restless turn of the quill in his hand. “Ye look like a man carrying a boulder.”
He shifted the quill but said nothing.
She drew nearer. “So tell me, what is gnawing at ye?”
The quill clicked down. “Everything.”
Davina waited. The room held its breath with her. “Would ye like to elaborate?”
Neil exhaled. If he needed to get something off his chest, his sister-in-law might as well be the person to do that with.
“I thought I kent what was right,” he sighed. “Fight the bandits. Protect the clan. Keep me distance. Keep the order.”
“And now?” she prompted.
“Now I feel like none of it fits.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “Kristen. The bairns. The people. Me anger. Me fear. I keep reaching for rules that used to make sense, and me hands close around nothing. It is like living someone else’s life.”
“Ye are overwhelmed.” Her tone was kind. “Adjusting is never tidy.”
“It feels like drowning.” The words scraped out as if they had waited years for a place to land.
She put her hand on his shoulder. “Give yerself time, Neil. Time fixes a lot of things.”
Neil looked up at her, his eyes narrowed. “Time?”
Davina nodded. “Aye. Just daenae take so long that ye waste all of it.”
The warning in her eyes startled him more than any raised voice could have.
“Lachlan nearly lost me once by thinking we had all the time in the world,” she continued. “Ye daenae want to learn that same lesson the hard way.”
Silence settled. Only the faint hiss of a candle filled the space between them.
She squeezed his shoulder, then let go. “I will look for him in the training grounds.” She turned toward the door.
At the threshold, she paused.
“Whatever knot ye are trying to cut, it willnae loosen if ye stand and glare at it.” Her mouth twitched. “Eat something, by the way. I ken ye werenae at breakfast.”
When the door closed, the study grew larger and emptier.
Neil stared at the black thread of a route he had traced through the hills on the big map. Davina’s words echoed in his mind.
“Give yerself time… Just daenae take so long that ye waste all of it.”
He stood up, the chair legs scraping softly. He rolled the maps, then left them in a careless stack. He snatched his cloak from the back of a second chair, pulled it on, and crossed the room. The lock settled under his hand with a small groan.
The corridor carried him toward the open air, and he took the steps two at a time.
The courtyard lay ahead in a wash of pale light, and the stable boys moved like ants. A guard argued quietly with a cooper over a broken hoop.
The castle breathed around him, ordinary and alive.
It did not ease his tension. It never did.
Distance, that was it. He needed distance.
There were still trails to follow and names to hunt. There was the last guard from the cabin. There was the choice of who he meant to be when his hunt ended.
He could not hear his own thoughts with the children’s laughter in the hall and Kristen’s scent in his clothes. He could not trust his feelings when her voice softened and made the world seem less jagged.
Across the courtyard, the outer gate stood open to the woods beyond. A pair of guards shifted on their feet and straightened when they saw him. He nodded once, and they responded with slight bows.
Lachlan stepped out of an arch and fell into his path. “Off somewhere?” he asked, half-teasing, half-testing.
“There is something I need to do,” Neil grunted.
“That is what ye said the last time ye disappeared.” Lachlan’s smile did not reach his eyes.
“This is different.” The words came out crisp. “I will return later tonight.”
Lachlan looked at him for a long beat, concern pulling at the corners of his mouth. “If ye say so,” he said. “Mind the weather on the ridge. It turns fast.”
Neil dipped his chin. He did not say thanks. The habit lived somewhere far behind his teeth and would not come forward. He passed his brother and did not look back.
The guards swung the gate wider, and he stepped out. Beyond the wall, the track curved toward the tree line.
The woods waited, dense and steady, a place with no voices and no eyes. A place where the noise in his head could settle into the rhythm of the wind and nothing else.
He took another step, and already, the air felt cooler. He drew it deep into his lungs and let it out slowly. Behind him, the castle carried on with its morning, but it was not enough. He needed something else. Something different.
The gate closed behind him, the sound echoing for a few seconds before it faded into the woods.