Chapter 17 #2
As if feeling her weight upon him, Sebastian turned his head. His dark eyes locked onto hers across the crowded room. She did not look away this time. She could not. For a long, silent moment, the noise of the Hall faded into nothing but a distant hum between them.
“Alba,” Margaret whispered gently, her hand coming to rest over Alba’s cold fingers on the table. “Ye’re allowed to lean on someone, ye ken. Three years is a long time to hold up a ceilin’ by yerself.”
Alba swallowed hard, forcing her gaze back to her plate, her fingers curling around the edge of the table. “The ceilin’ stays up because I daenae let go, Margaret.”
“Perhaps,” Margaret said softly, her eyes full of a strange, tender pity that Alba had not expected. “But look at what happens when ye do.”
* * *
The rain had begun just after the second cask of ale was tapped, drifting in soft, gray sheets across the high stone walls and turning the dirt paths of the Castle gardens into dark ribboned tracks of mud.
Through the narrow slit windows of the Great Hall, the faint, tinny scraping of a fiddle and the rhythmic thrum of boots against wood echoed into the night, sounding muffled and thin against the steady hiss of the water.
Alba walked slowly, her heavy wool cloak pulled tight around her shoulders to keep out the damp chill that always seemed to rise from the earth before a heavy frost. Beside her, Margaret kept a measured, easy pace, one hand resting absently against the gentle curve of her stomach beneath her mantle, her fingers moving in small, rhythmic circles.
The garden was empty save for the iron cressets fixed along the stone walls, their torches sputtering and spitting white smoke as the rain clipped the edges of the flames.
“Ye are nae well,” Margaret said, her voice dropping into the quiet space between the drops of rain.
Alba groaned immediately. “Christ, of course I am nae. I am leavin’ me home.”
Margaret laughed softly, entirely unbothered by Alba’s sharp edges.
“Alba. Ye were sufferin’ in this home of yers.
Ye just managed to make them listen to ye, to keep them alive and thrivin’.
” She paused, her boots squelching slightly in the soft turf as she turned a corner toward the ancient, leafless rowan tree at the center of the garden. “Is this about the Laird?”
“He’s infuriatin’,” Alba snapped, her hand reaching out to steady Margaret as they navigated a slick patch of stone.
“Aye.”
“Arrogant.”
“Definitely.”
Alba felt the words gathering at the back of her throat.
She wanted to tell her everything. She wanted to tell her about the ledgers she had spent three years bleeding over, only for him to point out the rot in the timbers with a single glance.
She wanted to tell her about the way he stood in her Study, smelling of iron and cold wind, taking up so much space that the walls felt as though they were leaning inward. But she did not.
“He took me home by force,” Alba said instead, the statement landing between them like a cold iron weight.
Margaret stopped walking, her hazel eyes catching the orange flicker of a nearby torch. She looked sideways toward her cousin, her expression turning into that old, protective mask she had worn since they were girls sharing a single narrow bed in the winter.
“I ken how ye feel,” Margaret said softly, her hand sliding from her stomach to take Alba’s fingers.
“Ye are a woman, and ye havenae choices in how the world moves its pieces. But ye have me. We’ll find a solution together.
” She squeezed Alba’s hand, her gaze drilling into Alba with sudden, sharp intensity. “So, what really is the matter?”
Alba looked away, her eyes tracing the dark, blurred outline of the Southern Battlements against the night sky. The silence stretched until the fiddle music from the Hall felt miles away.
“He kissed me”, she said.
The words were out before she could stop them, small and fragile in the damp air. The garden went entirely quiet after that, save for the rain.
Alba sighed heavily, the breath leaving her in a long, white plume. “I daenae understand what happened.”
Margaret’s expression softened immediately, the fierce MacKenzie protector vanishing to reveal the cousin who knew every secret Alba had ever tried to bury. “What do ye mean?”
Alba looked ahead toward the dark, tangled thicket of the winter rosebushes instead of at her cousin. She could not look at her. If she looked at Margaret, she would see the truth reflected there, and she was not ready to face it yet.
“Maybe I struggled before him, but I have managed,” Alba said, the admission sounding almost angry, her jaw tightening until her teeth ached.
“I had this land. The people. I had me freedom.” Her throat tightened slightly, a sudden, hot ache that made it difficult to swallow the damp air.
“And now... now every time he walks into a room, I stop thinkin’ properly. ”
She remembered the corridor. She remembered the way the stone had felt against her back, cold and unyielding, while everything else had been entirely too hot.
She remembered the rough texture of his knuckles against her chin, the gravelly catch in his breath just before his mouth closed over hers, and the terrifying realization that she had not wanted to pull away. She had wanted to pull him closer.
Margaret smiled until her cheeks puckered. It was the exact look she had given Alba when they were fourteen and a young stable hand had left a bunch of wild violets on Alba’s desk.
Alba’s eyes narrowed, and she nearly shoved her cousin into a graying snowbank at the edge of the path. “It’s nae funny.”
“Oh, I ken.” Margaret caught her balance, her fingers wrapping gently around Alba’s forearm to steady them both. “That’s the problem.”
Alba swallowed hard, the cold rain catching on her eyelashes as she stared down at her muddy boots. “I should hate him.”
“Do ye?”
Alba stood there in the dark, the rain soaking through the wool of her hood, because the answer had become terrifyingly complicated.
God help her, she did not hate the memory of his mouth.
Margaret turned her head, her gaze drifting up toward the high, narrow windows of the Castle. Above them, the lights of the Great Hall glowed warmly through the rain, casting long, trembling squares of amber across the wet stone of the courtyard.
“Do ye remember what ye told me the night before I married Fergus?” Margaret asked quietly.
Alba frowned slightly, her mind working through the fog of her own confusion. “Probably somethin’ wise and devastatin’. I was very fond of bein’ devastatin’ in those days.”
Margaret snorted softly, a small, wet sound. “Ye told me that love was dangerous because it gave another person the power to ruin ye.”
Alba remembered. Gods, she remembered. She had sat on the edge of Margaret’s bed while the maids packed the heavy cedar chests, her own hands trembling.
“And?” Alba asked, her voice barely a whisper against the rain.
Margaret smiled faintly into the dark garden, her eyes reflecting the distant, amber light. “Turns out ye were right.”
Alba blinked once in surprise, turning her head to look at her cousin’s profile. Margaret’s hand settled protectively over her stomach again, her fingers stilling against the heavy wool.
“It does give them the power to ruin ye. Every time Fergus rides out to the borders, I feel as though me ribs are bein’ pulled apart. Every time he stays out past dark in a storm, I look at the door until me eyes ache. It is terrifyin’, Alba. It is the most frightenin’ thing I have ever ken.”
She turned, her hazel eyes bright and completely clear as she looked into Alba’s face. “But some people become worth the risk anyway.”
Silence settled gently between them after that. The rain seemed to thin, turning into a fine, silver mist that hung in the torchlight like woodsmoke.
Alba looked back toward the Hall. Through the glass, she could see a broad shadow move past the light; Sebastian, still watching the door, still waiting.
For three years, she had been a wall. She had been the stone that kept the wind from her people, the iron that kept the ledger balanced, the cold, bloodless ruler who did not feel because feeling was a luxury the MacLarens could not afford.
But walls did not laugh with six-year-old boys in libraries. Walls did not feel their blood turn to fire at the touch of a man’s wrist.
Margaret watched her for a moment longer, the tenderness in her face shifting back into her usual, wicked amusement as she noted the direction of Alba’s gaze.
“Though for the record,” Margaret added dryly, her shoulder bumping against Alba’s with enough force to rattle the pins in her hair, “if Sebastian MacGregor breaks yer heart, Fergus has already volunteered to bury him somewhere unpleasant. Under the pigsties, most likely. He’s very particular about his spade work. ”
Alba laughed despite herself, a sudden, sharp sound that echoed softly through the quiet gardens. The tight, painful knot that had been sitting in her chest since the night before seemed to loosen, just a fraction, letting the cold air reach her lungs.
“He is a very large man, Margaret,” Alba said, her lips curving into a genuine, teasing smile as she looked at her cousin. “Fergus would need a very large spade.”
“He has two,” Margaret replied instantly, her eyes dancing. “And three brothers who dislike the MacGregors on principle. We’ll make a day of it.”
Alba did not answer with words. Instead, she reached out and took Margaret’s hand, her fingers wrapping around her cousin’s small, warm palm. The gesture was simple, but as she squeezed, she felt the last of the rigid, administrative frost inside her begin to give way.
She looked up at the glowing windows of her home—the home she had defended, the home she had feared for, the home that was no longer just a ledger to be kept.
As she stood in the damp garden with her cousin’s hand in hers, she realized she was waiting for a beginning.