Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
“Another request from Lady Kincaid, me laird.”
Baird didn’t look up from the parchment he was marking. “Another?” he echoed, feeling weary. “She’s already sent three this morn. What is it now?”
Kenny cleared his throat, sounding far too amused. “Tools, me laird. And seeds. And… ah—”
Baird finally raised his head. “And what?”
Kenny held out the paper like it might bite him. “Plants. Many plants. A list longer than me arm.”
Baird scowled and snatched the parchment.
He read the list: heather, wild roses, foxglove, lavender, holly, ivy, and a dozen of herbs and flowering shrubs.
Each of them was carefully noted in her hand.
Davina had neat handwriting. It was just like her, graceful yet steady. And it was also ambitious.
“She wants tae replant the entire cursed garden,” Baird muttered.
Kenny shrugged. “Aye. Looks that way.”
Baird set the parchment down, leaning back in his chair. “Daes she nae ken there are more important matters? We’ve Sinclair raids on the borders. Food shortages. Winter coming sooner than any of us want.”
Kenny raised both brows. “Aye, but the lady’s requests dinnae touch the clan’s coffers overmuch. She’s been careful. I heard she asked for what she can grow herself and what can be found nearby.” His tone softened. “She’s nae wasteful.”
Baird’s jaw tightened. He knew. He’d seen the way she worked in the kitchens, the way she asked questions about supplies. He had seen how she respected the people. She wasn’t wasteful. That wasn’t the problem.
He picked up the parchment again, going over the list. A faint ache pressed behind his ribs when he reached the line that read climbing roses, red or pink. His mother had loved roses. She used to hum while pruning them.
“Should I refuse her request?” Kenny asked cautiously.
Baird hesitated, longer than he wanted to admit. “It’s the first time it’s been touched since me maither passed.”
Kenny nodded. “Aye. That’s true.”
Baird rubbed a hand over his jaw, staring at nothing. He could see the garden as it once was, so lush, warm and full of color. He could hear his mother’s laugh, light and rare and beautiful, echoing through the vines. He shut the memory down with a breath.
“Should I tell the lady tae halt her plans?” Kenny pressed. “At least fer the time being?”
Baird considered it. If he denied her, Davina would accept it politely.
He knew she would, but it would crush something in her, something that seemed important, even if he didn’t understand why.
And deep down, he knew he didn’t want to disappoint her, not when she already walked the halls of her own home with guards because he’d failed to keep his own brother safe.
“Nay,” Baird said finally. “Let her continue.”
Kenny nodded slowly. “Aye, me laird. She’ll be pleased.”
Baird looked down at her careful handwriting again, the list that was hopeful and alive.
“She’s trying,” he murmured, “tae make this place her home.”
Kenny smiled faintly. “Seems she’s making it ours again, too.”
Baird ignored the comment. He simply slid the paper over to Kenny. “Ye can sign it.”
Kenny did as urged. “Shall I bring it tae her?”
“Nay.” Baird cleared his throat. “I’ll dae it.”
Kenny blinked, then hid a smirk. “Very well.”
As Kenny left the room, Baird held the request in his hands for a long moment. He wasn’t sure he was ready to see that garden changed, but he wasn’t going to fight her on it. He stood and headed toward the door.
Baird crossed the bailey with the signed parchment in hand, expecting to find Davina calmly speaking with gardeners or perhaps sketching plans for the space. What he didn’t expect was laughter, and it stopped him short.
Davina was in the middle of the overgrown mess, with her skirts hitched up to her knees and her hands covered in dirt clear to the wrists. Her hair was tumbling loose from its pins as she tried and mostly failed to tame a stubborn patch of weeds.
Three castle children knelt in the soil beside her.
Whether they were helping or hindering was hard to tell.
One boy handed her fistfuls of weeds as if that were a great honor.
A little girl clapped every time Davina dug up a root.
Another child was using a stick as a pretend sword against a particularly large thistle.
Davina was laughing at all of it, bright as summer in this forgotten patch of winter.
All Baird could do was stare. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had laughed in that garden.
He cleared his throat. “And what… exactly is happening here?”
Davina turned, and he could see how her face was flushed from work and delight. “What daes it look like?”
“It looks,” Baird said slowly, “as if ye’re fighting the dirt.”
“The dirt started the fight,” Davina said primly. “But I’m winning now.”
The children snorted. One pointed at a massive thorny bush. “She hasnae won against that one yet.”
Davina gasped dramatically. “Aiden, ye betray me!”
The child giggled and fell over into the grass. Baird fought a smile. He failed.
Davina dusted her hands on her apron. “Well? Are ye going tae stand there gawking, or have ye come tae be useful?”
“Useful?” Baird repeated, mock affronted. “I am the laird.”
“And I am the lady,” she shot back. “Rank nullifies. Pick up a shovel.”
That made the children burst into cackles.
Baird raised a brow. “Is that how ye speak tae yer husband?”
“Only when he’s being unhelpful,” Davina said sweetly. “If ye plan tae stand around judging, at least dae it quietly.”
This caused even more laughter from the children.
Baird folded his arms. “And what if I choose neither? If I choose tae simply leave?”
Davina shrugged and turned back to her patch of weeds. “Then the great laird runs from a garden. What a tale that’ll make.”
“Ooh!” the children cheered loudly.
Baird handed the parchment to a nearby gardener who was already shaking with silent laughter, and then strode into the mess.
“Move over,” he muttered.
Davina blinked. “Ye’re helping?”
“Aye, well, apparently I’ve been shamed intae it by the children.”
“We didnae!” One of them squealed.
“Ye did plenty, lad,” Baird said, taking a spade. “Encouraging her.”
Davina knelt back to her work, and now, her eyes were shimmering with amusement. “Show me what ye can dae then, mighty laird.”
“Oh, I’ll show ye,” he said, and plunged the spade into the earth with far too much force.
The children clapped. “Our laird is strong!”
Davina leaned close to pretend to whisper to them. “He likes when ye say that.”
Baird shot her an amused look. “Dae I now?”
“Aye,” she retorted, being utterly unbothered. “It feeds yer ego.”
The smallest child tugged Baird’s sleeve. “Me laird, what’s an ego?”
Baird pointed directly at Davina. “Ask the lady. Hers is bigger.”
Davina gasped, and her hand theatrically flew to her chest. “Mine? Why, I am the very picture of humility!”
The children dissolved in giggles so loud a nearby guard had to hide a grin.
They worked like that for a while, pulling weeds, clearing paths and exchanging quips.
Baird found himself… smiling. He was actually smiling.
There was dirt under his nails, a thorn scratch on his wrist, sweat beading at his temples and still, he was smiling despite it all, or perhaps, exactly because of it all.
At one point, Davina crawled under a tangle of brambles to reach a buried stone. Baird grabbed her ankle before she disappeared entirely.
“Careful,” he warned. “Ye’ll get yerself stuck and I’ll have tae rescue ye again.”
Davina twisted around to glare at him. “Ye didnae rescue me the first time. I merely uhm… tripped.”
“One does nae merely trip intae a villain’s knife,” Baird deadpanned.
One of the children gasped. “She fought a villain?!”
Davina groaned. “Dae nae encourage him.”
Baird smirked. “Aye, I’ll tell ye all about it—”
“Nae, ye will nae—”
“How she nearly fainted—”
The children gasped again.
Davina’s eyes went wide with mortification. “That is a terrible exaggeration!”
Baird leaned in, teasing her. “Is it, now?”
That was when she threw a clump of dirt at him, and it hit his boot.
The children shrieked with laughter.
Baird bit back a laugh of his own and tossed the dirt back, lightly. It sprinkled her skirts.
Her jaw dropped. “Ye did nae.”
“Oh, but I did,” Baird replied, straightening like a man preparing for war. “Now what will ye dae about it?”
The answer came faster than he expected. Davina scooped a full handful of mud, actual mud this time, wet from a puddle, and hurled it straight at him. It hit his shoulder with a glorious splatter.
The children screamed with unrestrained delight. Baird stared at the stain, then slowly lifted his gaze to Davina. She was doing her best to look innocent, and she failed spectacularly.
“Well then,” he said, letting his voice drop into a low rumble, “ye’ve declared it, have ye?”
“Declared what?” she asked, inching back.
“War.”
Before she could flee, Baird lunged, not to catch her, but to scoop up a massive clump of mud and fling it with impressive force. It splattered across her skirts. She let out a horrified laugh that echoed off the garden walls.
“Ye monster!”
“Aye,” he said, rolling up his sleeves. “And I’m married tae ye.”
The children took this as their cue to dive wholeheartedly into the fray.
Gregor tried to stop them. “Oi! Nay! Stop that, ye daft wee savages!”
Then a mud ball hit him square in the chest.
Iain wheezed. “That was the lady’s aim, Gregor! Nay ours!”
Davina shrieked laughing. “I have a good aim! Dinnae lie tae the poor man!”
Baird couldn’t help it. He took advantage of her distraction and lobbed another mud ball. It caught her in the shoulder.
“Ye fiend!”
“Me dear husband, ye mean!” he corrected smugly.
“Oh, I’m well aware!”
That only encouraged him. The children were rolling in the mud, throwing handfuls at everyone indiscriminately. Gregor surrendered to chaos with surprising enthusiasm. Iain retaliated like a man defending his homeland.
Ailis clapped her hands over her mouth at the archway. “Saints preserve us, the laird is covered in mud!”
Her warning came too late. One of the children, little Isla, aimed a mud ball half her size at Baird’s back. It hit him with a wet splat.
Baird froze. The garden collectively gasped.
Isla stared in utter horror at her tiny, dirt-coated hand. “I… I didnae mean… I thought—”
Baird turned slowly. With her little knees shaking, Isla attempted to hide behind Davina’s skirts.
Baird pointed at the child, suppressing a grin. “Traitor.”
Isla squealed in delight and fled. Davina laughed so hard she nearly fell backward.
“Leave the poor bairn alone, Baird!” Davina cheered.
“She threw first blood!”
“I threw first blood!”
“Aye, and I punished ye fer it! She’s next!”
He chased Isla three steps before she ducked behind Iain, who took a mud ball to the shoulder on her behalf and groaned dramatically. “Me laird… ye wound me…”
“Lady Kincaid!” Gregor shouted from behind a tree. “Aim fer the laird!”
Davina howled, scooping mud with a warrior’s precision. “Gladly!”
Someone hit him directly in the stomach.
Baird gasped. “Who dares?!”
“All of us!” the children cried in unison.
And that was it. The clan’s respected laird, feared by rival families and known for strategic brilliance, launched a full assault that ended in two gardeners caked in mud, three children shrieking with wild joy, the lady covered from shoulder to hem in messy brown streaks and the laird himself looking like he had fought a war in a peat bog.
Finally, breathless, muddy, and entirely undone, Davina pushed a wet strand of hair from her face and looked up at him. Her eyes sparkled. Her cheeks were flushed. And Baird knew he had never seen a more mesmerizing woman before.
“Ye’ve mud on yer face,” he said, though she quite obviously had mud everywhere.
“So dae ye,” she replied, stepping closer. Her dark eyes sparkled with mischief. “More than I, I think.”
“Aye?” He lifted an eyebrow. “I doubt it.”
“Ye shouldnae,” she said, tilting her head as she examined him. “Ye’ve a streak right… here.”
She lifted her hand to his cheek, brushing her muddy thumb along his skin. The touch was light, merely a swipe of mud and nothing more, yet his breath caught all the same.
He wished she would pull away. And he wished that she wouldn’t.
A faint blush rose along her throat. He noticed it before she seemed aware of it herself.
“I thought ye were meant tae be leading the charge,” he murmured. “Instead, ye’ve let the bairns best ye.”
“They surprised me,” she said, pulling her hand away, and despite everything he should not be feeling about that woman who was supposed to marry his brother and now was married to him, he mourned the loss of her touch.
“And also, they had help,” she added mischievously.
He arched a brow. “From me?”
“Aye, from the laird who pretended he didnae see the handful flying toward me back,” she told him. “I saw ye laugh.”
“I didnae laugh.”
“Ye did.” Then, she reached up with her other hand and smeared a bit of dirt on his jaw. “Just like ye’re daeing now.”
He wasn’t laughing, although the desire for it was overwhelming.
“Ye look…” He paused, because the right word, as always, refused to come easily. Beautiful felt too bold, radiant too soft, and alive too intimate. “Happy,” he settled for the simplest, yet deepest one.
Davina blinked at that. “Dae I?”
“Aye.”
She seemed to search his face and he wondered what she saw. The guarded man? The scarred man? The man who had dragged her into a marriage neither of them chose?
He didn’t have time to ask, even if he wanted to, for the children ran back, breaking the spell, and Davina shook her head, rushing them back into the house.
“I think it is time fer us all tae clean up!”
Baird listened, just like the children did, but he found himself aching for the moment when they would be alone again.