Chapter 31
Neil stood in the hall, watching the maids and guards pass with quick nods and curtsies.
He had heard his title so many times that it no longer sounded like a word to him.
Instead, it sounded like a phrase he had to get used to.
A phrase that had haunted him ever since his wife took the children and left.
For the next couple of days, he did nothing but stare out the windows in the corridors. He spent more time there than in his study with the books and polish or in the Great Hall with the council members and visitors.
The bandit remained in the dungeons, smug at first, but fear of permanent imprisonment had begun to show on his face.
Good. That was what Neil wanted anyway. For the bastard to be afraid. It wouldn’t make up for the five years he had spent being brutally tortured, but it came close.
His hands were still folded, his eyes fixed on the window that overlooked the castle gates, when he felt another presence at his side.
“Neil.”
He turned.
Davina stood a few paces away, her eyes rimmed red, her face blotchy from tears, her back ramrod straight. He had never seen her look so breakable and so steady in the same breath.
“How are ye?” he asked.
He knew the question was useless even as it left his mouth.
She let out a small, rough laugh. “I just found out that me husband had been plotting against ye for years,” she said. “Against the clan. I daenae ken how I am.”
Neil nodded. “I ken very well how ye feel.”
She looked down at the empty road. “I keep thinking I was a fool. I thought what I had with Lachlan was real. I thought I kent the man I lay beside every night.” Her mouth trembled. “Turns out I was sleeping next to a stranger.”
Neil said nothing. There were no words that could fix her hurt.
Davina drew a breath and wiped her cheeks with the heel of her palm, as if furious at herself for crying.
“What will ye do with the prisoner?” she asked, turning to him.
“I daenae ken yet,” he replied flatly. “But I am nae losing sleep over how many years he should spend in the dungeons.”
Davina studied him for a long moment. “So ye care to keep people safe,” she said slowly. “Safe from monsters. That is good, Neil.”
He nodded. “Of course I care.”
She tipped her chin toward the empty road. “So why did ye let her go?”
His jaw tightened. “Because I cannae give her what she wants.”
“And what is that?” Davina pressed. “Kindness? Safety? A family she can trust?” Her gaze held his. “Ye already do half of that without trying.”
“She wants more.” The words tore from the depths of his soul. “She wants love. A husband who can be soft with her. I daenae ken how to do that without… losing meself.”
Davina’s eyes softened and sharpened all at once. “Then be better.”
He stared at her.
“Ye spent yer whole life trying nae to be yer faither,” she continued. “Which is good. But ye went so far that ye started living like a shadow. Ye may nae drink and shout like he did. Ye do the same harm, just in another way. Ye shut everyone out and call it protection.”
He glanced back at the gates. The stillness of the road beyond stung.
“Ye cannae change what Lachlan did,” Davina said. “Ye cannae change Alex, or yer faither. But ye can decide what to do with the woman who still wants ye despite what happened.”
Her voice thinned. She swallowed and steadied it.
“Daenae waste what I’ve just lost.”
The words sank into him like stones in deep water. He had no shield against them. No plan. No rule to drop between his heart and the truth.
Davina wiped her eyes once more, before turning around and walking away, her skirts a dark sweep against the flagstones.
The corridor settled around him. Wind moved the last scraps of ribbon from the cèilidh across the courtyard. Somewhere in the keep, a child cried and hiccuped.
Three words echoed in his mind over and over.
“Then be better.”
Neil stood at the edge of the training grounds the next morning, thinking over Davina’s words. The echo of her words sat in his chest like a blade.
“Then be better.”
The yard was awash in a thin grey that came before sunrise. He drew his sword in a weak effort to forget the ache in his heart, then started to train with his men.
For the first few minutes, he was able to control it. Then the fights grew more intense, and he grew more irritated with his men’s mistakes.
“Again,” he snapped, before the sun had cleared the hills.
The men were already sweating from the drills. He circled them as they traded blows. A young guard misread a feint and overreached. Neil stepped in, knocked the boy’s blade aside with a quick flick of his wrist, and sent him tumbling to the dirt.
“Good Lord. I thought ye would have all learned something by now. Ye are still the weak fighters I came home to, are ye nae?” he barked. “Is this how ye planned to protect the keep?”
The lad scrambled up, his cheeks burning. “Sorry, me Laird.”
“Apologies daenae stop steel,” Neil said. “Stand up. Try again.”
He gave them no space to breathe. He moved among them like a storm, catching wrists, turning shoulders, driving them back on their heels.
When a man fell, Neil hauled him up by his leather vest and shoved him toward another partner. When a parry was late, he rapped the guard’s knuckles with the flat. He wanted their effort to burn down whatever was twisting in his chest.
It did not.
A guard scrambled to his feet, panting. “Me Laird, are we drilling for a raid?”
“We are drilling because ye are soft,” Neil replied. “And because I willnae lose another person while ye stand there gawking. Again.”
They tried, only to disappoint him again. His own body felt like a bell struck on every surface, and the clang inside him grew louder with each exchange. He saw his father’s hand curling into a fist and heard the old saying that had lived in the halls like a rule.
A laird who loves is a laird who dies.
The thought lingered. He parried a cut, turned the guard’s blade, and sent him sprawling with a kick. The lad groaned and rolled to his side.
“Up,” Neil commanded. “Unless ye fancy a bandit standing over ye while ye nap.”
Later, the yard looked like a field after hard rain, marked by footprints and sweat and the sour steam of effort.
Neil finally jerked his chin toward the gates. “Enough. Go tend yer wounds. Ye fight like ye have nothing to lose. Find something, then come back.”
They limped away in twos and threes, speaking low. No one came near him.
He exhaled once they were all gone and crossed to the woodline, where a stack of logs waited. An axe leaned against the chopping block. He set a log upright, squared his stance, and brought the axe down.
Crack.
He split another log. Then another. Chips spat against his boots, and his shoulders burned. His hands went numb, then he found the pain again.
He chopped until sweat soaked his shirt and ran down his spine.
A laird who loves is a laird who dies. Keep yer heart locked and yer sword ready, lad.
His father’s voice had been a map he walked even when he said he hated it.
Keep yer distance.
Keep order.
Keep everything at arm’s length so it cannae be taken.
Keep yer life in the process.
He had followed it into a cabin and into five hungry years. He had followed it back into a castle where a woman he wanted had stood in front of him and asked if he planned to claim her or keep her at the edge of his life.
He swung the axe harder. The blade bit deep and stuck. He wrenched it free with a low growl and sank the next strike clean. The wood split in half.
The ache in his arms peaked, but the knot in his chest did not loosen.
By night, the yard had emptied, and the lamps along the path were small islands of light. He left the axe sunk in the block and climbed up to the tower two steps at a time.
His old chamber at the top held its familiar quiet. A narrow window. A chair by the wall. The table where he had brooded over maps and pretended that thinking was action.
He closed the door and stood in the room where he had hidden from the world and called it planning.
The air still held the echo of her. He could not prove it, but he felt it.
The night she had sat on his bed and argued against his rules.
The small sound she made when he had flinched at thunder, and she chose a story instead of pity.
The warmth of her hand on his skin while she checked the bandage on his shoulder.
He dropped into the chair and rubbed at that bandage, feeling raised skin through the linen. Her voice echoed in his mind, quiet and sure.
“Ye have every reason to fear love… I think the lack of it did more harm than any blade I have ever seen.”
He closed his eyes. He saw her by the lake, reading about dragons to keep the world kind a little longer.
He saw her in the village, gentle with the elderly and chirpy with the bairns tugging at her skirts.
He saw her kneel in blood and try to tether a stranger to this world.
He saw her in the study, saying she might have missed him, too.
He sat with it all until the room grew loud. The truth came without a fight this time. It stole his breath and left his shoulders loose.
He had not been afraid of love. No, not the feeling.
He had been afraid of losing it. Afraid that if he reached for what he wanted, the world would snatch it as payment.
Alex in a bandits’ den. His mother in a grave.
The way hunger had taken everything in that cabin but his stubbornness. The way grief had taken what was left.
Avoiding Kristen had not protected him. It had only hurt her.
He let out a long breath. Simple truths were the hardest to acknowledge.
He did not just want Kristen safe behind walls he watched. He wanted her. He wanted to be wanted by her.
He wanted the family she kept trying to make from scraps and kindness. He wanted to be the kind of man who could stand in the middle of that and not ruin it.
If he did nothing now, he would become exactly what Davina had described: a man who wasted the one real thing he was given.
Dawn drew a pale edge along the window. He stood up, rolled his sleeves, and left the tower to the tight spiral of the stairs.
The courtyard was a hush of dew and cold stone. When he entered the stables, the air shifted from night to hay and leather.
The stable boy jerked upright on a stool. “Me Laird?”
“Saddle me horse,” Neil ordered. “I ride for Ainsley land.”
The boy blinked twice and hopped to his feet. “Aye.”
Neil checked the tack while the boy worked. He tightened a strap, pressed the girth, and set his palm on the horse’s neck until the animal’s ears relaxed.
He felt steady in a way that had nothing to do with calm. There were no promises waiting on the road. Kristen could send him away. She could tell him that he had missed his chance. But for once, he was not letting fear choose for him.
He put his boot in the stirrup and swung himself up. He glanced once toward the empty road that had swallowed the carriage, then turned his horse and urged him into a canter that stretched into a gallop as the fields opened.
The castle shrank behind him while the wind stung his eyes and whipped at his shirt. The sky brightened by slow degrees.
Whatever awaited him at Ainsley, he would face it.
He was done running from what mattered most.