Chapter 6
Chapter Six
The village had quieted down by the time Alba finally turned back toward the castle.
She walked the hill path alone, John having accepted her dismissal only after she reminded him that she had been walking this path since before he joined her guard and would continue doing so without his assistance.
The snow had stopped. The sky above the mountains was a deep, clear black, scattered with cold stars that only appeared after a storm had scrubbed the clouds away and moved on without apology.
Her breath came out in slow white clouds. Her feet remembered the path without her needing to think about it, which was helpful because her mind was elsewhere entirely.
Four days.
She had four days left on Sebastian MacGregor’s deadline and no plan worth the name, which was information she was keeping strictly between herself and the cold night air.
The castle was dark when she entered through the Gate, the courtyard empty except for the watch fires flickering at the corners. Inside, the Great Hall had been cleared after the evening meal. The last candles burned down to stubs in their sconces, casting wavering shadows across the stone floor.
Alba dragged her feet up the spiral stone stairs, her knees aching with each step.
She finally let her shoulders drop, rubbing the stiff, knotted muscles at the base of her neck where a dull throb had been growing since her argument with Tavish.
She unfastened the heavy silver clasp of her cloak, her fingers trembling slightly from the sheer strain of keeping her voice steady, her face blank, and her back perfectly straight for three hours of bitter village squabbles.
Three nights folded into the narrow bed of the second-best chamber had done nothing for her temper, and pride had finally worn thin enough to let practicality through.
Her own chamber sat untouched, as far as she knew, her books, her writing desk, the window that caught the morning light. If Sebastian MacGregor wanted to occupy her castle, he could do it from whatever room his men had prepared for him. She was done with him ceding her own bed to spite herself.
Philomena had left a single candle burning on the table outside her chamber door. One small, faithful flame. Alba took it, slipped inside, and nudged the door shut behind her with her shoulder.
She set the candle down and unfastened the silver pins of her collar one by one, placing them in a perfect, straight row along the edge of the washstand.
She slipped out of her heavy wool kirtle and smoothed the fabric flat against the tabletop, aligning the shoulder seams exactly before folding it into a crisp, neat square.
Every movement was quiet, intentional, and practiced. The left sleeve was tucked under first, followed by the right, practiced so precisely that the linen shifted from a pile of cloth into a tight, neat stack with edges as sharp as the stone walls surrounding her.
She poured cold water from the ewer into the basin and washed quickly, the cold sensation sharp against her face and the back of her neck.
She unpinned her hair, let it fall, and shook it loose across her shoulders.
She set the candle on the bedside table, pulled back the blankets, and climbed into bed.
Warmth enveloped her instantly. Firm warmth. The kind that had weight—dimensions—the unmistakable quality of something that was not a blanket.
Alba went absolutely still.
“Seducin’ me,” said a deep voice from directly behind her, rough with what sounded like recently interrupted sleep, “willnae change me proposal. It’s still marriage or the door, lass.”
The sound that escaped her was not a scream. It was far more undignified than that. She jerked herself sideways across the bed with such force that the blankets tangled around her legs, and she scrambled backward until her spine pressed against something broad, warm, and definitely without a shirt.
“What are ye doin’ in me bed?”
Sebastian did not flinch. He did not blink at the sudden motion, nor did his breathing quicken. He simply pushed himself up onto one elbow, his movements slow and fluid, his heavy eyelids lowering halfway as he watched her panic.
The candle on the table threw unsteady light across the room. It was enough light to see by. What it illuminated was not helping her.
He was shirtless, broad across the chest and shoulders.
His shoulders were heavy and thick, corded with dense muscle that only comes from hoisting timber and throwing a shield year after year.
When he shifted his weight, the muscles across his ribs pulled tight, hard, and distinct under weather-beaten skin that had taken its color from rain and sun rather than the safety of a hall.
Dark hair was loose around his face. Eyes half-narrowed from sleep, moving across her with a calm that was somehow more offensive than anger.
Entirely too much of him in one room.
Alba turned away sharply and pressed one hand over her eyes. This shifted her grip on the blanket. She snatched it back immediately with both hands and held it to her chest like armor.
"Ye've had three days to find a bed," she said. "Where in God's name were ye sleepin' before tonight?"
"The Hall, with me men." He said it without particular complaint. "Hamish snores like somethin' dyin' slowly. I decided I'd rather take me chances with ye."
"Yer chances are nae accepted."
“This,” Sebastian said from behind her, with a serenity that bordered on a crime, “is the Laird’s chamber.”
She turned back. Kept the blanket exactly where it was. Kept her voice exactly where she needed it.
“This is me chamber. Mine. The one I have slept in for three years. The one with me books, me furniture, and me window that faces east for the mornin’ light.” She stopped. Started again. “Why are ye in me bed?”
He looked at her steadily. “I had to sleep somewhere.”
“Ye have an entire castle.”
“And this is the Laird’s chamber.”
He delivered the words with amusement, his mouth curling into a smile as if he was deliberately trying to annoy her, while he rested his large hands on the mattress. He did not lean forward to emphasize the point, nor did he glance to see how she reacted.
“Unless ye’ve decided to accept me proposal. In which case, the sleepin’ arrangements become considerably more straightforward.”
The audacity of it reached her one full second after the words did.
“Unless… yer proposal was a convenient excuse to get me into yer bed.”
* * *
She was furious.
Sebastian could see it in every line of her. The set of her jaw, the grip she had on the blanket, the way she held his gaze because looking away would feel like conceding ground, and she would not concede anything, not at midnight, not in her own bed, not to him.
She was livid, her hair loose, sitting on the bed in nothing but what she wore under her dress, with both hands wrapped around a blanket like a shield. Sebastian was working much harder than he should have to concentrate on what she was actually saying.
He stood from the bed. He reached for the shirt draped over the chair back and held it without putting it on. He crossed toward her slowly, giving her room to step back if she wanted to.
She did not step back.
“Ye think very highly of yerself, Lady Alba,” he said.
“And ye daenae?” The color across her cheekbones had deepened.
Her breath had changed, not the pace of it, she was managing that deliberately and doing it well, but the depth of each one.
Shorter. Shallower. Her body formed opinions her composure had not approved.
“Ye invade me home. Ye steal me chambers. Ye take me bed. And ye expect me to believe ye’ve honorable intentions? ”
“Honorable?” He stopped in front of her, close enough to see the candlelight moving in the darkness of her eyes. “I am tryin’ very hard to have honorable intentions.”
She made a sharp, humorless sound of pure disbelief, short and sharp, and he found it unreasonably entertaining. He kept that off his face.
“I’d rather throw meself from the tower,” she said.
“Which one?”
She blinked. “What?”
“There are four.” He tilted his head slightly. “Which one?”
“Ye’re…” She stopped. A muscle moved in her jaw. He watched her locate the response she wanted, discard it twice, then find the one that fit. “Get out of me chamber!”
“It’s me chamber.”
“It was yer chamber for approximately one day. It has been me chamber for longer.”
“Aye,” he said. “And yet here we both are.”
Her chin dipped slightly, and her eyes narrowed as they traced a slow, deliberate line from his chin to the collarbone where his shirt was bunched in his hand.
Her fingers stopped their restless twitching against the blanket, curling tightly into the wool as a tiny, sharp crease formed right between her eyebrows.
She did not blink; she just watched him, her gaze flicking once toward the iron latch of the door and back to his face, her jaw set as she timed the rhythm of his breathing.
She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it and pressed her lips into a tight, flat line, her chest rising and falling in quick, uneven jerks as each argument died before reaching her tongue.
“I will take the chair,” he said.
The offer landed. He watched something momentarily loosen in her expression. She tightened it again almost immediately.
“Ye’ll take the corridor,” she said.
“The chair. It’s the Laird’s chamber.” He let that sit one breath. “Ye’re welcome to think of it as a gesture of goodwill.”
“I daenae want yer goodwill.”
“I ken that fine.” He looked at her steadily. “Ye’ll have it regardless. It’s the Laird’s bed after all, so I daenae mind sharin’ if you daenae want me in the chair.”
She stared at him. He looked back without difficulty and waited, because he had learned in four days that waiting was the most disorienting thing he could do to Alba MacLaren.
She was built for forward motion, for argument and action, and the next move. Stillness without resolution confused her. It was the one weapon in his limited social arsenal that consistently worked on her, and he was not above using it.
“This was me chamber,” she said quietly. Not the sharp edge of fury anymore. Something hidden underneath it.
“Aye.” His gaze dropped to her mouth before he could stop it. The candlelight was not helping anything. He brought his eyes back up with effort. “It was.”
He became aware, without moving, that the distance between them had shrunk since a moment ago. He did not notice when he had stepped forward. The warmth of her body reached him. Her dark hair fell loosely over her bare shoulders, and he was aware of it with a clarity he had no use for.
Her pulse was visible at her throat. Quick. Steady. Telling him things she was not saying.
“Careful, lass.” His voice came out lower than intended. He did not correct it.
He leaned in, just slightly, just barely enough, until his mouth nearly grazed the edge of her ear. She went completely still beneath it, every muscle arrested mid-breath. He could feel the stillness. He let the silence stretch one beat past comfortable.
“I have remarkable restraint,” he said quietly against her ear. “But if I wake to find ye in me bed again…” He paused. He felt her breath catch. “I may finally forget how honorable I am tryin’ to be.”
The knock at the door split the silence like an axe through timber.
Both of them went still.
“Me Lady?” A soft voice from the corridor, careful and apologetic. “I have brought yer sleepin’ tea. Philomena said ye’d be wantin’ it late tonight.”
Sebastian straightened and stepped back, giving her space in a single motion.
Alba drew a sharp, deep breath, her shoulders snapping back into a rigid line before her lungs had even filled.
By the second breath, the wide-eyed flash of heat in her gaze disappeared behind a cold, flat stare.
Her fingers untangled from the blanket, smoothing over the white wool with a slow, deliberate stroke as she lifted her chin, the flushed, breathless woman from a moment ago concealed behind a mask of unblinking ice.
“I will take me tea in the chambers across the corridor,” she said, her voice coming out without a single tremor. “They’ve a better view when the sun rises.”
She reached for the robe at the foot of the bed. Then her palm struck the center of his chest, pushing hard, sudden, and with more force than her size suggested, causing him to rock backward on his heels before he could brace for it.
“Ye will pay for this,” she breathed, fierce and low, not quite a whisper and not quite a hiss, directly into the space in front of his face.
Then she swept toward the door, pulled it open, and was gone.
The door clicked shut.
Sebastian stood alone in the quiet and the candlelight and let the laugh out now that there was no one to hear it. Low and real and involuntary, the kind he had not practiced suppressing because he had so rarely needed to.
He dropped back onto the bed. Stared at the ceiling where slow light moved across the stone.
She would come around. That was simply the truth of it. He had offered her safety, protection, a future for her clan and her lands—everything a woman in her position needed and could not provide for herself forever, no matter what she believed.
The only thing standing between her and the sensible decision was her pride; and pride, in his experience, eventually ran out of places to hide.
She had four days remaining. She would use every single one of them, he had no doubt. She would scheme and maneuver, making his life thoroughly difficult in the process.
He thought about her shoving him backward with both hands. The precise, furious force of it. He thought about the pulse at her throat when she had not been able to answer him.
She would come around.
He closed his eyes.
Brian needed a mother. MacLaren needed a laird. The math was straightforward, and she was a practical woman beneath all that stubbornness, and by Sunday, she would see it the same way he did.
He was almost certain of it.
Sleep pulled him under before he could examine why he’d needed to think it twice.