Chapter 25
The next morning, Erica arrived before the maids had finished setting the table. The pale morning light slid across the stone floors, thin and cold.
She chose a chair near the window and kept her eyes on the dew that rimmed the glass. She counted her breaths as the hall filled, slow and steady, the way she had learned when fear ran hot.
She heard him before she saw him. The even tread of his footsteps. The brief stop at the threshold.
Alex entered and crossed to the far end. He did not glance her way. He pulled out a chair, sat, and reached for a loaf of bread. His posture was exact and his movements neat.
For some reason, the day felt tense. Even the servants moved more quietly than usual, their trays landing softly on the tables.
Bettie and Katie slid onto the bench between Grandmamma and their nurse. They peered down the long table, first at Erica, then at Alex, then back again with matching frowns.
Bettie leaned close to her sister, her voice not as low as she had thought. “They’re nae talking,” she whispered.
Katie nodded solemnly. “Nae even a wee bit.”
Erica broke a crust in half and did not taste it. She kept her gaze on the window instead. The morning dew had no pattern she could follow, only a thin white edge and a film of cold. She tried to convince herself to eat, but her stomach closed anyway.
Grandmamma watched the hall with the patience of a woman who had seen many mornings like this and won most of them. She buttered her bread and spoke as if nothing at all pressed on anyone’s chest.
“If we are going to do this properly, we should check the fabric stores,” she said. “A fresh bale of cloth was brought in town just two days ago, and the weaver’s wife has a keen eye for a bargain.”
The word did not land by chance. Everyone turned to her with a look that said, What in God’s name are ye talking about?
The older woman seemed to read the faces for what they were and smiled.
“For the wedding,” she added, mild as milk.
“Oh,” Erica whispered.
That was still happening.
Lady Bryden arrived minutes later with a quiet greeting and a steady smile. She sat beside Erica and set a cup in front of her, then looked toward Grandmamma.
“I was just talking about the wedding preparations,” Erica muttered to her.
“I see. Well, we will need to count guests,” Lady Bryden said. “And speak to the cook. Folks expect more than bannocks at a feast. We should think about fruit preserves and a second roast.”
Erica took the cup because her hands needed work. She did not lift it.
At the far end, Alex asked Calum something about the night watch. Calum responded in a hushed tone.
Conversation tried to grow and shrank. In the heat of the moment, one of the servants poured ale and spilled a little on a tray. Erica watched as he flinched and bowed his head.
“Forgive me,” he said.
“It is fine,” Grandmamma told him, easy and kind. “Wipe it and pass the platter.”
Erica tasted salt without tasting anything at all.
Lady Bryden’s elbow touched her sleeve. “Eat, lass.”
Erica set down the crust and reached for the dish of berries instead.
“The season is turning fast,” she said, voice clear enough for the table, though she kept her eyes on the bowl. “The fields back in Bryden used to take the early chill better than most. We learned to plant deep. It held the ground firm.”
Alex lifted his cup and answered without looking at her, “Our land stirs later and holds longer. What is late to others can still ripen here.”
“Then ye’ll be glad of patience,” Erica said, the words clean, the edge thin.
Grandmamma’s eyes darted between them.
The girls fell quiet again. At least for a good minute.
Bettie’s spoon clinked against her cup. She did not mean to slam it, but the sound was sharp enough to halt the conversation. She set the spoon down with both hands and looked from one end of the table to the other. “Everyone’s in a bad mood.”
Silence pulled itself tight. Servants froze. Even the nurse stopped fussing with a ribbon.
Katie nodded, eyes wide with the courage of being second. “Ye are.” She pointed, simple and true, from Alex to Erica, then back to Alex. “We need to do something about it,” she said, as if naming a color.
Grandmamma folded her hands. “And what would ye suggest, me dear?” Her tone stayed sunny, but her eyes sharpened, interested in the answer rather than the complaint.
Bettie straightened, heartened by being asked. “We should host a cèilidh,” she said at once.
“A cèilidh,” Grandmamma repeated, as if tasting a spice she had used all her life. “What for?”
“Dancing,” Katie replied eagerly. “Music. Flowers. Ye can wear nice dresses. And ye daenae have to decide things right away.”
Grandmamma leaned back, thoughtful. “A celebration without an ending tied to it,” she said. “A breath, perhaps.”
Bettie nodded hard. “And we can have chicken.”
Lady Bryden laid a palm flat on the wood, as if testing the grain. She glanced toward the doors, then back at Grandmamma. “Folks will expect something,” she said. “They always do. If it must be something, let it be a dance.”
Grandmamma’s mouth curved. “Let it be a dance,” she echoed, then nodded her head toward the far chair. “Alexander?”
Alex had gone very still. For some reason, he refused to speak. Instead, he lifted his gaze from his cup and took in the table in one sweep, then the girls, then Grandmamma. The air waited.
Erica watched closely and noticed how the turn of his head had weight.
Grandmamma’s brow rose a fraction, not a push, but an invitation. “What say ye?”
Alex set his cup down near the board’s edge. He let a beat pass. Then another. When he spoke, his voice carried to every corner of the hall, even though he did not raise it.
“A cèilidh could work.”
Alex did not look at Erica when he spoke again. He kept his gaze level and his voice even. “We will host a cèilidh.”
Bettie clapped first, quick and bright. Katie joined in, feet drumming against the bench. Servants smiled with the relief of something decided.
Alex lifted a hand, and the noise died down. “If Erica agrees,” he added, clear enough for the back of the hall.
Her name skipped across the boards like a pebble on still water.
Lady Bryden looked down at her cup, while the nurse hushed the girls without much force. Erica was too speechless to speak.
Alex continued before anyone could fill the pause.
“Invitations will go out by noon. To the families nearby, the councilmen who mind their tongues, and the folks who trade with us most. The musicians in the valley can be hired by week’s end.
We will use the courtyard if the weather holds or the Great Hall if it doesnae. ”
Erica swallowed, still staring into the distance, unable to move.
“The purpose is simple,” Alex said. “Food. Music. Courtesy. Nay vows. Nay speeches.”
Bettie raised a hand like a scholar. “Flowers?”
“Aye,” he said. “As many as the gardens can spare.” He let a beat pass, then placed the stone he had been turning over in his mind. “We will also write to Laird MacGee.”
Erica froze.
What?
The cheer died clean. The silence that followed was not confusion. It was thought sharpening itself.
“Why him?” Erica heard Grandmamma ask
Alex kept his tone mild. “Rumor spreads faster when a man is left outside the gate. If he stands in the light, he will need his manners.”
Across the table, Grandmamma folded her hands and studied his face as if reading a map. She did not correct him, but she did not agree either.
He pushed back his chair. “That is all.”
He stood, nodded once to the hall, and turned away. The scrape of his chair sounded louder than it should. Calum stepped back to let him pass.
At the threshold, Alex paused long enough to give the steward three orders in a row, each short and exact. Erica couldn’t hear him from where she was, but she understood just from the way they responded to him. She then watched as he disappeared down the passage.
As if her soul had suddenly snapped back into consciousness, she felt the world around her crash into the ground.
Nay. Nay, I daenae have to sit here and take this.
Without thinking too hard about it, she slipped through the door before it could swing shut, shawl tight in one fist.
“I havenae accepted yer proposal,” she said, keeping her voice low.
The words were steady. The cost to keep them steady was not.
Alex did not stop. “The cèilidh buys time.”
“Time for whom exactly?” she asked.
He halted then, half-turned in the narrow light where the passageway opened onto the stairs. She could see the line of his jaw, the tired set of his mouth, the eye that watched everything and gave little.
He looked as he always did in a crisis, calm as stone. It made her want to shake him.
“For everyone,” he replied.
She scoffed.“That isnae an answer, and ye ken it.”
“‘Tis the only one we need at the moment.” He faced her fully now. “Ye heard everything back in the hall. The girls want joy, and the castle needs a sense of calm. A cèilidh gives each of those a place to sit and breathe.”
She took a step closer. “Ye say if I agree, yet ye speak as if it is set.”
“It can be both.”
“It cannae,” she countered. “Nae when ye plan in front of me and call it choice.”
His eye did not soften. “I willnae let MacGee set the story. I will set it first.”
“With me as the tale,” she said.
“With ye as the woman folks must respect to step into me yard,” he corrected. “If he comes to the gate and bows, then every tongue that think ye were dangerous and a traitor will mark the bow before they try the word again. Why can ye nae see that this benefits ye and yer maither as well?”
She let out a breath that felt like it had snagged on something inside her. “Ye ken ye are trying really hard to put me off of marrying ye. I cannae marry a man who speaks as if me life is a ledger.”
“Well, if we assume it is one, then let us assume that yer life is a line I intend to keep out of the red,” he said.
Her laugh was small and devoid of humor. “Oh, ye are really good at this, are ye nae? The highly diplomatic Laird MacMillan.”
He did not flinch. “It is a war of small pieces. I mean to win it.”
“By inviting a man who threatened me to our dance,” she said. “To me dance.”
He held her gaze. “To show him that he isnae feared here. To show others that they need nae fear him either. He will be watched. Trust me, he will either behave or wish he had. Either way, nay harm will come to ye.”
She swallowed. Words crowded her tongue and would not leave. “Ye cannae tell me I am safe and then invite the enemy into our walls. Which is it, Alex? Am I safe or nae?”
“Ye are,” he assured. “And the earlier ye see that the cèilidh is also me trying to protect ye, the better.”
“And me opinion on any of this?” Her voice thinned. “Does it weigh a thing?”
He did not answer at once. When he did, it was with the same calm that infuriated her. “It weighs as much as me oath,” he said. “I willnae leave ye undefended.”
“I didnae ask for a feast,” she said. “I asked for time.”
“And this is how I buy it,” he said.
They stood in the hallway with the soft sound of the hall behind the door, voices rising and falling, the household moving forward on the strength of a decision that did not feel like hers.
Erica folded her arms to keep from reaching for anything that would hold. “Ye spoke me name in there as if I had chosen,” she said. “Folks heard it. They will tell others.”
“Aye,” he said.
“Then ye will be careful how ye speak it next.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. He did not apologize. He did not explain further.
“The steward will come for ye later with lists,” he said. “Say what ye will about flowers and food. Put what ye want in the yard. The food we eat can be decided by ye.”
She stared at him. “The food we eat,” she repeated.
She knew what he was doing, but she was still a bit too upset to call him out on it. He was trying to make her think she had some control over this whole thing, when the opposite was the case. She never had. And a voice in the back of her mind whispered that she never would.
He nodded as if she had given him a fact to file. He stepped past her then, close enough that his sleeve brushed her hand.
“Rest,” he said, the word a habit he could not seem to drop. “I have work to do.”
“Of course ye do,” she said.
He started down the passageway, ignoring her statement. At the corner, he paused and looked back. Not fully to be called a turn, but just enough to show that he had heard her breath catch and chose not to ask why.
“The cèilidh buys us at least a week,” he said. “That is the bright side to all of this.”
“Of course. The fact that I get to stay longer in a loveless arrangement is quite thrilling,” she said quietly.
He went still for a heartbeat. Then he walked on.
Erica did not follow. She stayed where she was, palms clammy, the wooden door solid at her back, the stone cool at her shoulder.
The hall beyond began to breathe again. She knew by now that servants would be clearing plates and the girls would be choosing flowers. Grandmamma would be two steps into her lists.
Alex’s footsteps faded at the bend.
A truth settled where her anger had been. He was already planning, as if consent would catch up to the plan.
The shape of her days was being set by a man who would not let her be harmed and would not let her decide what to do with her life either.
Her heart thudded once, hard enough to feel in her throat.