Chapter 15 #2
That was what Alba told herself when she left the Solar with her wool cloak half-fastened and her mind moving significantly faster than her feet.
Margaret's letter was still folded in her sleeve, its three brisk lines committed to memory by now.
The carriage. The trunks. Something concrete and forward-moving. It was better than sitting alone in a dark solar watching torches cross the courtyard below and feeling the stone walls press in from all sides.
She crossed the Great Hall without stopping. She took the narrow Back Passage to completely avoid the corridor where Sebastian’s men were doing something incredibly loud with heavy timber and iron, and pushed through the timber door into the open yard.
The storm had been building since midmorning without her noticing. She noticed it now.
The clouds had come down from the north in the hours since breakfast. Low, dark, and moving fast. The wind had violently changed.
She felt it the moment she stepped into the open.
The sharp, directional shift of it, no longer the steady bite of autumn cold but a gale with real intent behind it, pulling hard at her cloak hem and pushing grit against her face.
She kept walking, her chin tucked low.
The stables were warm with the heat of shifting horses and packed straw, the heavy scent of it hitting her immediately as she pulled the thick door shut to block out the wind.
The iron lanterns inside cast a low, orange glow over the long row of stalls. The horses were already restless, shifting their weight, ears twitching, mirroring the subtle, collective unease of animals that sense the changing air far better than humans ever could.
She was only three steps inside when she saw him.
He was at the far end of the row, standing at Siobhan’s stall.
Siobhan was her best mare. Sebastian stood with his back to the door, his linen sleeves rolled past his elbows despite the cold creeping under the stable eaves.
One large, calloused hand moved in long, slow strokes along the mare’s neck.
He was speaking to her. His voice was too low to hear clearly, just a steady, unhurried murmur.
Siobhan’s ears, which had been pinned flat the moment Alba entered, relaxed by a single degree.
Alba stood frozen in the middle of the aisle and looked at him for a moment longer than she should have.
She had seen him in the Hall, in the Study, and out in the courtyard in the bitter cold.
She had seen him chopping wood, reviewing maps, and managing heated disputes.
She had not once seen him like this. Quiet, unhurried, all that contained, lethal force turned down to something soft enough that a frightened horse could stand to be near.
The sight did something incredibly inconvenient to the space behind her ribs.
“I thought ye only barked,” she said, her voice cutting through the quiet hum of the stable.
He glanced over his broad shoulder. His eyes found her without a trace of surprise, as though he had heard her enter and had simply been waiting for her to speak.
“Only at people.” He turned back to the mare, his palm continuing its long, even stroke from poll to shoulder. “Animals usually listen.”
Alba moved down the row toward him before she had consciously decided to. The thick straw muffled her steps. Siobhan’s dark eyes tracked her approach. Alba stopped at the stall gate and held her hand out flat, letting the horse come to the decision herself.
Siobhan’s nostrils flared. A tense pause followed. Then, the velvet nose dropped briefly to press against Alba’s palm.
“She’s a good lass,” Alba said softly. She kept her voice at the same low register he was using. She ran her fingers gently along the mare’s jaw, feeling the tension still vibrating in the muscle beneath. “She nearly took a piece out of Hamish yesterday.”
“Hamish deserved it,” Sebastian said without looking up.
Alba looked up at him.
He was watching her now. Not the horse, her. His dark eyes moved across her face with that direct, heavy attention he applied to everything. It felt entirely different here, at the end of a row of stalls with the wind beginning to hit the wooden roof in irregular, testing gusts.
The laugh came before she could intercept it.
It was soft, genuine, and entirely involuntary blooming warm in her chest; the kind of laugh that arrived before the conscious decision to allow it had formed.
She felt the tension loosen in her face, aware with a half-second’s delay that he was observing her laugh in the low orange light of the stable, his eyes locked on her mouth and refusing to look anywhere else.
Outside, the storm officially arrived.
It did not build. It simply came. The full, sudden weight of the deluge dropped onto the stable roof all at once, rain driving hard against the timber in a roar that instantly swallowed every other sound.
The horses reacted violently, the whole row shifting, stamping, and a nervous gelding at the far end throwing his head up with a sharp, anxious whinny.
Siobhan went entirely rigid beneath Sebastian’s hand.
He did not startle. His large hand stilled on her neck, letting its heavy weight speak for itself. His voice dropped even lower, barely rising above the roar of the rain on the roof, that same steady murmur continuing without missing a single beat.
Alba’s hand was still resting on the mare’s jaw.
In the sudden, enclosed chaos of the storm, the physical distance between her and Sebastian transformed.
The wooden stall gate was between them, but only just. His arm ran along the mare’s neck, her hand at the mare’s jaw, and there was perhaps a single foot of charged, warm air separating her fingers from his forearm.
She did not move her hand back.
He did not move his.
Siobhan blew out a long, shuddering breath, dropping her head a fraction as the rigid line of her neck eased.
“She trusts ye,” Alba said. It came out quieter than she intended, the absolute roar of the rain forcing her voice down to carry.
“She’s learnin’ to.” His eyes remained fixed on the mare. “It takes time.”
Alba looked at the side of his face. She tracked the hard line of his jaw. The iron lantern above the stall swung in a sudden draft from the eaves, throwing the amber light across both of them in a slow, shifting arc.
Outside, the storm drove itself against the stable walls. The stable door rattled violently in its heavy frame. Neither of them looked at it.
“She nearly threw me the first week,” Alba said.
Her fingers moved slightly, a slow stroke along the mare’s cheekbone.
She felt, rather than saw, Sebastian’s intense attention shift toward the tiny movement.
“The first winter after Ewan died. I came out here in the pitch dark because I couldnae sleep and I thought ridin’ would help.
” She kept her eyes locked on Siobhan. “She put me straight into the fence post.”
“Were ye hurt?”
“Bruised. Mostly me pride.” A short pause. “I came back the next mornin’.”
“Of course ye did.”
The utter simplicity of his words moved through her veins in a way she had no useful place for.
His forearm was terrifyingly close to her fingers. She was aware of it. They were completely alone, and the storm had sealed the stable door as thoroughly as an iron lock.
Siobhan shifted her weight, pressing slightly into Sebastian’s large hand. The movement brought his arm a half-inch closer to hers.
Alba looked at his hands. The calloused knuckles.
The vast breadth of his palm flat against the dark bay coat.
The rolled linen sleeve pushed back, showing the corded muscle beneath weather-darkened skin that had gone completely still the moment she’d laughed, and had not entirely resumed its ease since.
She should step back from the gate. She was going to step back from the gate.
"Ye're nae movin'," she said.
"Neither are ye."
"I asked first."
"Ye did nae ask anything." His eyes stayed on the mare, but his voice had dropped. "Ye made an observation."
"Fine." Her chin lifted a fraction. "Why are ye nae movin', Sebastian?"
A long pause stretched between them, filled only by the mare's breathing and the rain hammering the roof.
"I havenae worked that out yet," he said finally.
The rain drove harder against the roof, a deafening sheet of water.