Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
The noise of the Great Hall died the moment Sebastian cleared the upper turn of the stone stairwell. The frantic scraping of the fiddles and the steady thrum of the drum became nothing more than a dull vibration under the soles of his boots.
He had told Hamish he was heading to the Eastern Tower to ensure Lady MacKenzie had been provided with enough dry wood for her hearth. It was a proper Laird’s duty.
He turned down the dark gallery instead, his strides long and unhurried, tracking the scent of cold rain drifting through the arrow slits.
He found her in the small Solar.
The room felt entirely desolate. The heavy oak tables where she usually sat—surrounded by the inkwells, wax seals, and endless stacks of MacLaren ledgers—had been wiped completely bare.
Her trunks were already lined up by the Lower Gates, waiting for the dawn.
The only light left in the room was the deep, pulsing red of a dying bed of peat embers and the sharp, silver moonlight cutting through the open window.
Alba stood by the stone sill, her profile framed against the dark expanse of the winter sky.
Sebastian stepped inside, the heavy timber door clicking shut behind him. She did not startle at the sound. She remained still, her shoulders squaring beneath the dark green wool of her gown.
“Lady MacKenzie’s quarters have been supplied,” Sebastian said, his gravelly voice sounding rough in the quiet space.
He stopped several paces away, the formal lie tasting thin and useless between them. He did not want to talk about her cousin. He did not want to talk about the MacKenzies at all. He looked at the pale line of her throat, then straight into the silent finality of her posture.
“So ye’ve made yer decision,” he said abruptly. “Ye’re leavin’.”
Alba turned her head slowly, breaking her gaze away from the moon to look at him. The silver light caught the sharp, defensive edge of her jaw, leaving the rest of her face in deep shadow.
“Aye.”
The single word was flat, devoid of the heat she usually threw at him during their daytime arguments. Sebastian felt his jaw tighten. He took two slow steps forward, his boots heavy against the floorboards, closing the distance until the draft from the open window clipped his own shoulders.
“That’s yer answer then?”
Alba folded her arms tightly against her chest. It was a silent retreat behind her own walls, a physical bracing against the cold room and the sudden weight of his presence. “What answer did ye expect?”
“The truthful one.”
Her eyes flashed instantly, a dangerous, golden spark igniting in the darkness of her pupils. She despised the implication, her pride flaring like dry tinder. “Careful,” she warned, her voice dropping to a low, commanding tone.
“Nay.”
Sebastian did not back down. He took the final step, crossing into the square of moonlight until he stopped directly before her. His towering frame blocked out the faint, red glow of the hearth, trapping her between the stone sill and his chest.
Up close, her scent was intoxicating. It was not the sweet lavender of her cousin or the heavy grease of the Hall; it was the clean, sharp tang of iron ink, rain-soaked wool, and a scent that could only be described as her own that made his lungs ache.
The silver light poured over her features, illuminating the slight, stubborn curve of her lips and the faint indents of her dimples as she gritted her teeth against him.
It was insufferable. She looked entirely ready to fight him, even as she prepared to ride away.
* * *
“Answer me honestly,” he said, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly vibration that was little more than a breath away from her face.
Alba’s pulse thumped wildly at his proximity, a sudden, erratic pounding against her ribs that made it hard to breathe in the cold air.
Curse the man.
Curse the towering, broad-shouldered certainty of him, and curse the way the small Solar seemed to shrink until there was nothing left in the world but the heat radiating from his chest. She could smell the winter storm on his wool cloak, mixed with the bitter tang of iron and the faint, sweet scent of the spiced ale from the Hall below.
She braced her heels against the stone floor, her fingers curling into tight fists within the folds of her sleeves to keep from trembling. She needed a shield. She needed a blade. Instead, she used the only weapon she had left, the blunt, unyielding truth of her own anger.
“Why do ye want to marry me?” she demanded suddenly.
Sebastian opened his mouth automatically, a sharp, defensive retort clearing his lips. But then he stopped, his jaw locking into a rigid, shadowed line as his dark eyes searched her face.
Her heart stopped. In the dead, suffocating silence that followed, the distant hum of the fiddles through the floorboards seemed to vanish entirely.
She watched the slight twitch of his throat, her mind racing through the possibilities, her soul secretly begging for him to say something that had nothing to do with contracts.
She wanted him to say he could not breathe when she was not in the room. She wanted him to say he was drowning.
“Brian needs someone to care for him,” Sebastian said.
The statement was flat. Practical. Deliberately stripped of any texture that might give her a toehold.
Alba felt her face hurt; a sharp, physical tightening of the muscles across her cheekbones and behind her eyes took hold.
I am just an asset.
“I see,” Alba said, her voice dropping into a cold, hollow register that sounded entirely detached from the frantic hammering in her chest. She looked away from him, her gaze fixing on the bare stone of the wall where the moonlight did not reach.
“Me servants, yer servants, are excellent. They will take good care of him. He does nae require a Lady of the house to see to his porridge or ensure his linens are dry.”
She turned, her skirts rustling sharply against the floorboards as she began to walk away, to escape this suffocating perimeter before the tears she refused to shed could compromise her administrative armor.
Sebastian caught her wrist before she could take a single step.
The contact was instant, a fierce flash of heat that sharply exploded between them, where his heavy, calloused fingers pressed against her thin skin. Alba went stiff, her breath catching in her throat as the raw, brute power of his grip held her in place.
“Alba,” he grunted, his voice rougher now, the gravel catching deep in his chest.
Daenae call me name!, she thought desperately, her eyes closing as the sound of it ripped through her defenses. Daenae call me name!
When he used her title, she was the Lady MacLaren, a woman with a Castle and a Clan to defend. But when he said her name in that low, ragged cadence, she was just a woman standing in the dark, stripped of her ledger, stripped of her ice, entirely vulnerable to the man who had broken her Gates.
Sebastian’s thumb brushed deliberately once against the sensitive, pale skin on the inside of her wrist, right over the frantic, leaping rhythm of her pulse.
The rough friction of his hands against her skin was excruciatingly sweet, like a direct current of heat that traveled straight up her arm and settled deep in her belly.
He stepped closer, his chest nearly touching the green wool of her bodice.
“Are ye sure?” he whispered, his eyes dark and heavy as they locked onto hers. “Are ye certain ye want to ride out that Gate tomorrow, Alba?”
Her breath caught softly, a tiny, fractured sound in the quiet Solar. She wanted to tell him the truth. She wanted to look him straight in his shadowed eyes and tell him that she was certain of one thing.
But his gaze was paralyzing her. The sheer, predatory intensity of his dark eyes held her in place, stripping away her words until her tongue felt heavy and useless behind her teeth.
She did not speak. She stood there, her lips parted, her chest heaving against the tight constraints of her stays, and she knew her hesitation would cost her.
In the game they were playing, silence was an invitation.
Sebastian did not wait for her to find her voice.
He reached out with his other hand, his broad palm cupping the back of her neck, his fingers tangling roughly into the loose, dark curls of her hair as he hauled her against him. He brought his mouth down on hers, kissing her hard.
Alba gasped softly against his lips, the sudden, bruising force of the collision knocking the remaining air from her lungs.
But before her brain could form a single logical protest, the wall of ice inside her shattered completely.
The fierce, suppressed hunger of the last seven days rose up like a wildfire, and she kissed him back with an equal, desperate intensity that terrified her.
Her fingers flew out from her sleeves, her hands clawing blindly at the heavy, rough wool of his dark cloak, twisting the fabric into her palms. Heat exploded instantly between them.
Sebastian let out a low, feral growl against her mouth, his teeth grazing her lower lip before his tongue pushed past her teeth, consuming her with a dark, heavy dominance that left her weak-kneed.
His large hands slid down her spine, the thick calluses on his palms catching against the grain of her green gown, until they settled tightly at her waist. He lifted her slightly, pressing her hips firmly against the unyielding line of his belt, letting her feel his hard desire through the layers of their clothes.
Alba’s hands slid upward, abandoning his cloak to tear at the laces of his leather doublet, her fingers driving through the openings to find the thick, roaring warmth of his dark wool shirt beneath.
She climbed him, her arms wrapping around his neck, her fingers tangling into the short, coarse hair at the nape of his neck as she pulled him down deeper into the kiss.