Chapter 12
The hall met him again with heat and smoke and the thin echoes of music while Embers glowed in the great fireplace. A piper tried a last tune and let it fade. Laughter still rose in places, but it sounded far away to Logan, like a storm heard from land.
He snatched a cup from a passing tray and drank from it. The taste was rough and practically burning. He drank again.
The noise did not return to him, but the room kept its distance.
Dancers finished a set and made way for talk. He looked at the space where Emma had stood earlier. Empty floor, a ribbon glinting near a table leg, one curl he could still see in his mind where it had slipped free.
The emptiness felt conspicuous, as if the hall had been built around a point that no longer held.
David stood near the edge of the dance floor with two guards from the south wall. He spoke of nothing urgent. He looked at ease, like he had earned it. He did not see Logan at first.
Logan crossed to him. He set the cup on a table with more force than he meant. When he spoke, he kept his voice low, controlled, and dangerous. “Ye put yer hands on me wife.”
David blinked, surprised out of his ease. “Aye, me Laird, during the set.” He kept his voice calm. “Someone had to dance with her, me Laird.”
The words struck harder than Logan had expected. They sounded like instructions in a place where he did not want to be taught.
Heat rose up his spine, and the old lines of command pulled tight.
“Ye cannae do that again.”
David nodded. “Me Laird, it is me opinion that ye let yer wife—”
“Next time ye tell me yer opinion about me wife, I will cut out yer tongue,” Logan threatened, cutting him off.
He did not raise his voice. He did not need to.
The threat sat in the quiet like a blade laid on a table. The space around them shrank immediately.
David lowered his gaze at once. “Forgive me, I meant nay slight.”
Logan let the words land and did not answer.
He felt the attention of the hall like a hand on his back. It was not an open challenge. Concern lived in it, the kind older men wore when they assumed a leader had taken a step that would cost him. He wondered if they saw weakness in him simply because he could not dance.
The thought irritated him more than the men themselves.
He looked back at David. The man had steadied him in worse weather than this. He had bled for him. He had set a line in a dance so his bride would sleep safely on her first night.
The truth of that pressed against his temper and would not move.
He drank again to dull the feeling. The ale went down fast and hard. It did not dull the fact that Emma had laughed when David spun her. She had looked alive in a way that had nothing to do with Logan standing at a wall and watching them.
He hated that. He hated that another man’s hands had made the hall feel welcome.
He turned slightly to see who was watching him. Two elders near the fireplace lowered their heads immediately and pretended to share a story, but he knew better. Further down, a kitchen maid wiped a bench and kept her head bent with discipline.
Everyone heard, even when they chose to hear nothing.
Logan’s authority tightened in reply. He could feel it in the set of his shoulders and his jaw. He had built a life on certainty. The night had taken that and shaken it until small truths fell out. He did not like the mess of them.
He did not like being vulnerable.
It did not even matter that he had made Emma come undone twice before returning to the hall. A part of him still felt inadequate. She was English. They loved to dance. And he could not ask her not to simply because he could not.
David lifted his head a little. “Do ye need me for the last watch, me Laird?”
“Nay.” The word came too quickly. Logan pulled it back into steadiness. “Take yer rest.”
“Aye.” David did not move. “For what it is worth, the people like her.”
Logan shot him a look. “I daenae care what people think.”
David gave a short nod. “As ye say.” He stepped back to clear the space and joined the men he had left.
Logan stood where he was and listened to the crackle of the fire. He looked once more at the dance floor. Pride tried to rise with the picture, but something else outmatched it.
He ground his teeth. Was that jealousy?
He did not know where to put the feeling, so he placed it on the nearest shelf. Authority. It was the only part of him he felt free to trust at the moment.
He reached for the cup and found it empty.
A maid passed with a flagon and froze under his stare. Logan lifted the cup, and the maid refilled it and fled. He drank and set the cup down more gently this time. The rim left a wet ring on the table. He watched it narrow as the ale soaked into old wood.
He turned his head and found the same elders looking again.
One lifted his chin an inch, a gesture that could have been respect or a warning.
Logan did not care to choose. He looked past them to the door that led to the yard.
The air beyond it would be cold and clean.
It would perhaps alleviate the heaviness that had lodged behind his ribs and provide some cold relief.
His heart was still pounding from his earlier arousal, and the low heat and hum of voices from all corners did not help at all.
He watched as David spoke low to his men and then left. He circled wide to avoid crossing Logan’s path and checked a window latch without needing to. The habit of competence, steady even when no one asked for it.
Logan resented the ease of it for a moment and knew he was being unfair. He set his palm flat on the table and pressed until the wood roughened his skin. The anger he felt over this whole thing was unjustified. It did not belong to Emma or David.
It belonged to him.
He had left a room on his wedding night because his wife had asked him to prove that he could listen. He had listened and come back to the hall to be the man his clan expected.
The man Emma wanted and the man he was did not match cleanly inside him. They were so mismatched that he almost felt the seam.
The last tune faltered and eventually ended, giving way to talk and the scrape of benches. Logan drained his drink and let it hit hard. The cup knocked over the table when he set it down, and the sound made people nearby jump. He did not apologize.
He gave the hall another long look and found nothing there that soothed. He turned away from all of it and told himself it was strength. But the voice in his head said otherwise.
He did not like that voice.
Well, it was a good thing that none of this mattered. He would leave for the sea tomorrow and come back a much better man. Even Emma would appreciate him for it, eventually.
By dawn, before the first strip of light slithered through the horizon, Logan left his chambers without speaking to anyone and crossed the yard, where the mist hung close to the ground. The stables smelled of horse and hay, and a lantern swung by the door and made a soft circle on damp stone.
David stood just inside, checking the wooden planks around him almost out of habit rather than need. He looked up when Logan entered. The set of his shoulders had hardened, and the temper that had flared in the hall had cooled to something tighter, more controlled, more dangerous for its precision.
“Me Laird,” David greeted. “I take it ye are preparing to leave?”
Logan nodded. “Aye. But I just needed to take one last look around the castle. Ye ken, memorize it before I leave. ‘Tis a good thing I found ye anyway.”
David’s eyes widened. “It is?”
“Aye. I had a few things I needed to tell ye before I leave. Ye will be responsible for me wife’s safety,” Logan commanded.
“Aye, me Laird,” David answered at once.
“This isnae just a task ye can do on yer free time, David,” Logan warned. “I want ye to guard her at all times. Especially when she isnae with her maid.”
“Aye, me Laird.”
Logan outlined more of what waited beyond the walls. Ships, sails, and the kind of water he might face out at sea.
“I expect reports,” he added. “Regular when there is nothing. Immediate if there is something to speak of. Do ye understand?”
“Aye, me Laird.” David listened like a man drawing a map in his head.
“Ye make sure she is comfortable,” Logan said. “Her rooms decorated the way she likes. Her meals served when she asks. Her security fixed and kept.”
“Aye, me Laird.”
Logan’s face darkened. “Without talking to her, let alone touching her.” The last words came out in a growl that belonged to night and steel.
David flushed to the hairline and looked down at his boots.
“I assume ye can do that perfectly, David?”
“Aye, me Laird,” he replied, flustered. “I meant nay harm in the hall.”
Silence fell between them as a horse shifted and bumped a stall door with its shoulder. The mist pressed against the open half of the stables like a quiet breath.
Logan studied David and felt the tug of fairness. The man had done what a hall would ask for on a wedding night.
He quickly dismissed the thought.
Not now. He could not afford doubt.
“I hope nothing happens before I return,” Logan said. “But if it does, I trust ye to be able to lead the men or hold off the worst until I return.”
“Aye.” David hesitated. He worked his jaw once, as if to move a word to the right place. “Just asking here, me Laird. Are ye certain about leaving so soon?”
Logan did not let the question sit.
“The clan needs money,” he said. “Stability. Strength. There are promises out there that must be fulfilled and paid for. I willnae see us suffer when the winter comes.”
That was a real excuse. A true one. What he refused to mention was the other true excuse. He did not say that he was afraid to stay and find what marriage might ask of him in daylight.
David nodded. “Aye, me Laird.” Doubt still lived in his eyes, but he set it aside with the discipline that had made him useful for weeks.
“That is all,” Logan grunted.
David sketched a quick bow and turned to see to the lanterns, while Logan stepped back into the yard.
The mist had thickened. He stood a moment to let the cold air put some reason into his thoughts, then continued to walk towards the door. The castle rose quietly above him, its windows a scatter of pale squares where servants were finishing last night’s work.
He went to his chamber and packed without ceremony.
Shirt, spare laces. The knife that had been given to him by his pirate friend Pete before he left for the castle, and a few other items of convenience.
He paused once with a clean shirt in his hand and looked toward the door that led to the corridor where Emma slept.
He did not go to her.
He threw the shirt in the bag, crossed the room, and put his hand on the knob. The best thing to do now would be to knock and explain things to her. But he did not.
He opened the door and left the room.
The stables held the same quiet as before. A groom had brought his mount forward and stood with the reins looped over a post. The horse stamped once and blew steam into the lantern glow.
Logan checked the girth and the bit out of habit, then mounted without a word. David appeared at the door and took a half step as if to speak, then seemed to think better of it and remained where he was.
He rode out of the courtyard and did not look back once he had passed the wall. He had learned at sea that a man who turned to see what he left behind gave the darkness ahead of him some terrible ideas. He fixed his gaze ahead, watching as the first wave of morning light threaded through the sky.
He would come back soon.
Emma would not even have the chance to miss him.