Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
"Why didnae ye tell me?"
Alba didn’t wait for him to rise. She was already standing in the middle of his solar, arms crossed, the door still swinging on its hinges behind her, and her eyes were the kind of sharp that cut before the words even landed.
Lachlann looked up from the parchment spread across his desk.
He took her in. The set of her jaw, the controlled stillness of her shoulders that meant she was angrier than she was letting on, and he set his quill down with the slow care of a man who understood that whatever came next required his full attention.
"Alba."
"Nay." She cut him off cleanly. "Dinnae say me name like that, like ye're about tae talk me round somethin'.
I asked ye a question. Torquil's men have been crossin' the boundary.
Yer messenger didnae come back fer a week.
Men were hurt." Her voice dropped, and the drop was worse than if she'd raised it. "And ye didnae say a word tae me."
He rose slowly, unhurried, the way he did everything.
She hated, sometimes, how steady he was, how he could stand in the middle of a storm she was feeling and simply be still inside it.
"Who told ye?" he asked.
"It daesnae matter who told me." She took a step toward him, and the last of her restraint thinned at the edges.
"What matters is that it wasnae ye. That I had tae hear it from someone else, like I'm nae…
like this daesnae concern me." She stopped herself, breathed.
"He's comin' fer me, Lachlann. Whatever quarrel Torquil has, it has me name on it.
And ye decided I didnae need tae ken that? "
He came around the desk. Not fast, not with any urgency, just the same measured way he moved through every difficult thing, like he was giving it the full weight of himself before he reached it. He stopped a few feet from her.
"I didnae want ye tae worry, and I only found out yesterday. I didnae want to ruin our day," he said.
"Ye didnae want me tae worry." She repeated it flatly, not a question. Something in her expression shifted, not softer, but different. More tired. "Lachlann. Dae ye hear yerself?"
"Aye." His jaw tightened slightly. "I dae.
It daesnae matter," he said then, and the words came out with a quiet, absolute certainty that would have been almost comforting if she wasn't so furious.
"What Torquil daes, what he plans, it daesnae matter.
Ye're mine. And I'll protect ye. That's the whole of it. "
The whole of it.
Alba stared at him for a long moment.
She could feel the sincerity of it coming off him like heat. He meant every word, she knew that, had always known that about him, that he didn’t say things he didn’t mean.
But sincerity wasn’t the same as being right, and she wasn’t about to let the warmth of it close her eyes to the rest.
Her shoulders dropped. Just a fraction. Just enough.
"I should have kent," she muttered, half to herself, her gaze sliding briefly away before coming back to him."
"Ye are right."
"Aye," she said. "I am."
He was quiet for a moment. Outside the narrow window, the sounds of the castle drifted up, boots on stone, someone calling a name across the courtyard, the distant rhythmic clang of the smithy. Ordinary sounds. Sounds that had nothing to do with the careful, charged stillness of this room.
"I've been managin' things I should have brought tae ye," he said at last.
It wasn’t a deflection. It wasn’t dressed up in justification. It was just the plain shape of it, laid down without ceremony, and she felt it land differently than she'd expected.
"Why?" she asked, and she meant it simply, just the word, stripped of its anger.
Just the question underneath.
He looked at her steadily. She could see him working through it, the way he always worked through things that mattered — slowly, thoroughly, with the same deliberate gravity he brought to decisions that couldn’t be undone.
"Because ye carry a great deal already," he said.
"This place. The people in it. And I thought—" He paused.
"I thought if I handled Torquil quietly and it came tae naething, ye'd never have tae feel the weight of it.
" His jaw tightened. "That wasnae wisdom.
That was me decidin' what ye could bear.
And ye're right that it isnae me choice tae make. "
Alba held his gaze.
There was still something wound tight in her chest, a resistance she wasn’t quite ready to put down. But beneath it, she felt the particular loosening of something that came when words said matched something true.
She had spent enough time around men who never said I was wrong to know how rare it was, and how differently it landed.
"Ye scared me," she said quietly. "Nae Torquil.
Ye. When I found out I thought, what else daesnae he tell me.
What else is he managin' on his own." She exhaled.
"I dinnae need tae be kept from the truth, Lachlann.
I need the truth so I can stand beside ye in it. That's different from protectin' me."
"I ken." He stepped closer, and when he reached for her hands she let him take them, her arms uncrossing. His thumbs moved slowly across her knuckles. "I ken it is."
"Dae ye?" She searched his face. "Or will ye dae it again the next time ye decide the news is too heavy?"
He met her gaze, and what she saw there wasn’t the easy reassurance of a man saying what she needed to hear.
It was something more effortful than that, a man looking at a habit of himself and finding it wanting.
"From now on," he said, "I willnae hide anythin' from ye. Ye have me word on it." A pause, quieter. "And I'll ask ye tae tell me when I am. I dinnae always see it in meself."
"Ye're better at carryin' things than settin' them down," she said.
"Aye." The corner of his mouth moved. "That's fairly said."
She looked at him a moment longer, at the line of tiredness at the corner of his eye that only appeared when he'd been sleeping poorly, at the steadiness of him that she'd first mistaken for coldness and had long since learned was something else entirely.
She freed one hand and pressed it flat against his chest, feeling the slow, solid beat of him beneath her palm.
"Nay more closed doors," she said.
"Nay more closed doors," he said.
She meant to say something else.
She had a list, actually, of the things she'd rehearsed walking there, the points she'd been intent on making.
But he was looking at her the way he sometimes did when he thought she wasn't noticing, with a quiet, unguarded attention that undid her arguments before she could make them, and she found the list had gone somewhere she couldn’t reach.
His hand went to cover hers where it rested against his chest, holding it there.
"Come here," he said, low and quiet, and it wasn’t a command, it never was with him, even when it sounded like one. It was an offer. A door left open.
She stepped into him.
His arms came around her slowly, the way he did everything, deliberate and unhurried, and she felt the last of the tightness in her chest release on a long exhale against his shoulder.
His hand moved up her back, and she felt his lips press to the top of her head. Not passionate, not urgent, just present.
Just him.
"I'm still angry with ye," she said into his shoulder.
"I ken," he said.
"I mean it."
"Aye," he said, and she could hear the quiet smile in it without seeing it. "I dinnae doubt ye."
She pulled back just far enough to look at him, and whatever she'd meant to say next dissolved when his eyes met hers. Dark and warm and entirely certain in the way they always were when they were on her, like she was something he'd already decided about and wasn’t inclined to revisit.
"Lachlann."
"Aye," he said, and walked her backward until the backs of her thighs met the edge of the desk.
The solar was a sanctuary of warmth, the flickering firelight casting long shadows across the stone walls. The scent of woodsmoke curled through the air, mingling with the faint, earthy aroma of heather that clung to Lachlann’s skin.
Alba fingers traced the edge of the wooden table, her breath shallow with anticipation. She had known that moment was coming, had felt the tension building between them, but now that it was there, her pulse raced as if she were standing on the edge of a cliff, ready to leap.
Lachlann closed the gap between them. His broad frame blocked the firelight, casting her in shadow as he stopped just inches away.
The heat radiating from his body was intoxicating, the rough wool of his plaid brushing against her bare arms as he reached for her.
“Nay more secrets,” he murmured, his voice low, rough with emotion. His thumb traced slow circles over her knuckles, sending a shiver up her spine. “Nay more hidin’, Alba. Nae from ye.”
She swallowed hard, her gaze locked on his.
The firelight caught the golden flecks in his dark eyes, making them burn with an intensity that stole her breath.
“And what if I dinnae want tae hear what ye have tae say?” she whispered, though her body betrayed her, leaning into him, craving the solid warmth of his chest against hers.
A slow, knowing smile curved his lips. “Then I’ll show ye instead.”
Before she could respond, he pulled her against him, one hand sliding to the small of her back, pressing her flush against the hard planes of his body.
The contact sent a jolt of heat straight to her core, her nipples tightening beneath the thin fabric of her gown.
His other hand cupped her cheek, his thumb brushing her lower lip before he claimed her mouth in a kiss that was neither gentle nor rushed.
It was a kiss of possession, of long-held desire finally unleashed.
His lips were firm, demanding, his tongue sweeping into her mouth with a groan that vibrated through her entire body.