Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Sebastian had been on his feet since before dawn.
The Eastern Drainage crew had hit solid rock two feet below the blockage, which meant the re-channeling would take longer and cost more than he had told Hamish.
Three of his men had gotten into a dispute with two MacLaren farmhands over grazing rights on the southern field, which had required forty minutes of his time and considerable restraint from everyone involved.
The castle’s main water wheel had a cracked spoke that the MacLaren carpenter had apparently been aware of for six weeks and had not mentioned to anyone in authority, possibly because there had been no one in authority he trusted enough to tell.
That last one bothered him more than the others. A holding where problems went unreported was a holding where people had learned that reporting them made things worse. He filed it away to address later, added it to the growing list, and kept moving.
By the time the sun sank behind the Western Ridge, he had inspected every inch of the outer walls, reviewed the revised supply inventory with Hamish, settled the grazing dispute with a boundary line that satisfied nobody completely and everyone enough, and had not eaten anything since a heel of bread at midmorning.
He wanted his bed. Specifically, he wanted to fall into it face-first without removing his boots and remain there until something genuinely catastrophic required him to get up.
He took the East Staircase and ended up in a linen corridor he did not recognize, doubled back, found the right turn on his second try, and reached his chamber door with much less dignity than he had at the start.
He was going to learn this castle thoroughly. Tomorrow.
He pushed open the chamber door. He stood in the doorway and looked at the room. Then he stood in the doorway and looked at the room again, longer, slwoer.
The furs were gone. The table was gone. Maybe he got lost again? “Nay…”
The chair he had specifically told Alba he would sleep in instead of the corridor was gone. The curtains had been taken down from the window, leaving bare stone and gray evening light. The chest where Hamish had repacked his belongings after the tower storage incident was also gone.
The bed was gone.
Sebastian stood in the doorway of his chamber and looked at the room, saying nothing for a very long time.
Then he turned, slowly, toward the housekeeper who had appeared at the end of the corridor. Her apron was bunched tightly in her fists, her knuckles white as she chewed her bottom lip, her eyes darting frantically from his boots to the bare wall behind him.
“What,” he said, his voice dropping to a low whisper, a level murmur that made the housekeeper instantly freeze mid-breath. “What happened to me chambers?”
The woman swallowed, a distinct click in her throat. Her hands twisted together in front of her apron, wringing the linen into knots.
“Lady MacLaren ordered all the upper chambers opened for yer people, me Laird.” The words came out in a careful rush, as though speed might help.
“She said they’d lost everything and should have the comfort of choosin’ their own rooms. She said they should decorate them as they wished and feel at home.
She said a warrior of yer reputation wouldnae be troubled by simple furnishings. ”
Sebastian looked at her.
“And me belongings?” he said.
The woman’s eyes went briefly to the ceiling in the manner of someone seeking divine assistance. “Tower storage, me Laird.”
He held the silence for three full seconds.
Then he laughed. One short, sharp, completely humorless sound that echoed off the bare stone walls of his empty chamber and returned to him sounding just as hollow as it felt.
He turned away from the door. He walked down the corridor. He descended the stone steps one heavy, deliberate step at a time, matching the rhythm of his footsteps against the cold sequence etched in his mind.
First, the deliberate misuse of clan authority.
Second, the destruction of military property, retainin’ walls, and iron latches included.
Third, the systemic insubordination of a hostage toward a presidin’ commander.
By the time his boot hit the flags on the lower landing, he had the terms laid out clearly, his jaw clenched around a speech so blunt it would wipe the mocking smile right off her face before he even got to the third grievance.
She had emptied his chambers.
She had put his people in them. Which was, he knew, a stroke of real cleverness because how exactly was he supposed to move his own displaced clan out of comfortable rooms to reclaim furniture?
She had sent his belongings back to tower storage, and she had done it all with what he could already see was complete and deliberate satisfaction.
He went looking for Hamish first because he needed thirty seconds of conversation with someone who would not smile at him.
He found him in the South corridor, checking the window latches against the coming cold. Hamish took one look at his face and said, “The chambers.”
“Aye.”
“I heard.”
“Did ye stop it?”
“I was made aware of it after the fact.”
Sebastian looked at him.
“She moves quickly,” Hamish said, without particular apology.
Sebastian turned and kept walking.
He found a spare pallet in one of the garrison rooms, dragged it to the small chamber off the Great Hall that had been used for storage before his arrival, shifted three crates of candle tallow to make space, and dropped onto it, still wearing his boots.
The ceiling above him was low and water-stained.
Somewhere in this castle, Alba MacLaren was sleeping in his bed, in his chamber, surrounded by his empty furniture, and she was almost certainly not awake because she had done what she intended to do. People who accomplish their goals sleep well afterward.
He stared at the water stain.
Tomorrow, he thought. He would deal with this tomorrow.
* * *
The Southern Corridor was full of light when Alba finished with the servants.
Morning arrived clear and cold, sunlight streaming through the tall windows in long, bright beams that cast across the stone floor, making the corridor seem larger than it was.
She had been there since shortly after dawn, organizing the arrangements for the welcome celebration she had decided to hold for the arriving MacGregor families.
Food, space, music, if she could manage it. Small things. The kind of small things that told people they were seen.
She dismissed the last of the servants and turned back toward the window with the particular satisfaction of a morning going exactly as planned.
She heard him as he came up the stairs. She had been subconsciously learning that sound. The weight and pace of it, distinct from John’s measured step and Hamish’s quieter one. Sebastian walked like a man who never needed to announce himself and, therefore, never bothered to soften his approach.
She arranged her expression and turned to face him as he came around the corner into the corridor.
He looked exhausted. More than exhausted.
There was a dark, purple bruise-like smudge under his eyes, and a deep, red line pressed into the skin along the corner of his jaw where his cheek had rested against raw timber instead of wool last night.
His right shoulder dipped slightly, stiff and leaning on a knot in his back, while his shirt hung crookedly, the collar frayed and missing its top lace.
She smiled at him, entirely too pleased with the state of him for it to be decent.
She had three days left, a plan she was rather proud of, and, for the moment, the deeply satisfying sight of Sebastian MacGregor looking like a man who had lost an argument with a woodpile.
“I thought it important yer people feel welcome,” she said pleasantly. “A small celebration for the families arrivin’ tomorrow. Music. A proper meal.” She tilted her head slightly. “I hope ye daenae mind that I have begun organizin’ it.”
Sebastian looked at her.
“Ye emptied me chambers,” he said.
“Technically, they were me chambers first. I merely assumed a warrior of yer considerable reputation wouldnae be troubled by the absence of curtains.” She paused as though a thought had just occurred to her.
“I did ensure yer belongings were carefully stored. Tower storage is quite dry at this time of year.”
“Ye put me belongings in tower storage.”
“Of course, aye.” She smiled again. “I am consistent, if nothin’ else.”
He did not move an inch toward her. His massive shoulders were stiff, and his hands hung loosely at his sides, curled into tight fists with knuckles stark and white against his tanned skin.
His chest rose and fell in a slow, artificially deep rhythm, while his unblinking eyes drilled into hers.
The muscle along his scarred jaw alternated between flexing and relaxing, like a ticking clock.
She found it considerably more entertaining than she should have.
She planned to see him out of this castle before Sunday. She intended to make his stay so unfathomably inconvenient, so endlessly uncomfortable, and so completely troublesome at every turn that he would weigh the effort against the reward and decide to find a more manageable place elsewhere.
She had three days. She had a plan. She was in an excellent mood about it.
* * *
God help him.
Sebastian stood in the corridor in yesterday’s clothes, having slept four hours on a garrison pallet beside three crates of candle tallow, and looked at Alba MacLaren smiling at him in the morning light.
She had emptied his chambers. She had relocated his belongings to tower storage.
She had put his own displaced clan members in the rooms she’d cleared, which was so precisely calculated to make him look unreasonable for objecting that he had spent a portion of the previous night, before the pallet’s raw timber had finally rendered him unconscious, genuinely admiring the architecture of it against his will.
And now she was standing in the corridor telling him about a celebration she was organizing. For his people. With the expression of someone doing him an enormous personal favor.
He was furious with her.
He was fully aware of this without any doubt. Her cheeks were red from the cold in the hallway. The sunlight was pouring through the high window at an angle that illuminated the curve of her neck, the dark loose curl that had escaped her hair and rested against her cheek.
When she smiled like that, fully, deliberately, two shallow dimples appeared briefly at the corners of her mouth. He had not previously noticed the dimples. He wished, with some feeling, that he still had not.
A woman had no business being that composed, that infuriating, and… He cut the thought off at the root before it could fully form, filed it away somewhere he did not intend to revisit, and kept his expression completely leveled.
She was trying to drive him out. He understood that completely. Every move since day one had been part of the same campaign: to make the occupation too costly, too uncomfortable, and too persistently inconvenient to sustain.
The approach was, objectively, quite good.
He was still furious.
“Ye’re very pleased with yerself,” he said.
“I am organizin’ a celebration,” she replied, entirely innocent. “For yer people. I thought ye’d be grateful.”
“Ye sent me belongings to tower storage.”
“I have mentioned the celebration, have I nae?” She looked at him with wide, helpful eyes. “I thought perhaps a fine meal would compensate for any minor inconvenience.”
Sebastian looked at her for one long moment while the heat and irritation moved through him and tangled together in a way he was becoming increasingly unable to keep separated.
Because she was doing this on purpose. Every bit of it, including the smile and the sunlight and the dimples that had no business appearing at this particular moment, and somehow standing in a corridor at half past eight in the morning wanting simultaneously to hold her neck and to push her gently backward into the window light just to see what she looked like in it.
He was losing his mind. That was the only reasonable explanation.
“The trouble is, me Lady,” he said, dropping his head slightly, his tone flattening into the quiet rasp he used when giving a direct, unyielding command on a battlefield. “I am losin’ me patience.”
She maintained eye contact for a moment, her smile steady but her posture subtly shifting from one heel to the other. Her hand moved to hold the wool of her skirt as her eyes flicked down to his jawline and back, gauging the space between them in a tense, silent pause.
Then she smiled again, slightly differently than before.
“I will have someone bring yer belongings down from tower storage,” she said. “There’s a perfectly adequate room off the North Corridor. Small, but functional.” A pause, light as air. “I am sure a good laird willnae mind.”
She turned and walked back down the corridor toward the kitchens, unhurried, her dark hair catching the light as she moved away from him.
Sebastian watched her go.
Then he turned toward the window, pressed two fingers against the cold stone sill, and stood there breathing slowly until the tangle in his chest eased into something manageable.
The North Corridor room would be very small.
He pushed off the wall and went to find Hamish because if he stood in that corridor alone for one more minute, he was going to do something that would make Sunday’s deadline entirely irrelevant.