Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
That morning, the castle stirred.
Rose watched from her window as the courtyard woke with a sudden, restless energy. Carts groaned over the stones, overflowing with grain, earth-clotted turnips, and bundles of fresh-cut boughs.
English riders were still hunting the roads, and Logan’s guards remained at their posts with hands near their blades, yet the castle hauled barrels of ale as if joy were a necessity that danger could not forbid.
Below, a servant girl laughed as she swatted a stable boy away from her basket of apples.
"Take those tae the kitchens," a woman called after them. "And dinnae let Cook see ye eating the feast before Lughnasadh begins."
Lughnasadh was a harvest ritual, a gathering of the clan against the coming winter. But looking down at the bustle, she realized it was more than just a feast; it was a defiant act of memory, a way to light fires while the days still held enough warmth to keep the darkness far away.
Below, two men carried a long branch wound with ivy toward the hall entrance.
“There’s still the beams tae dress,” one said, shifting the weight on his shoulder. “And the high garlands. We’ll nae finish before noon if half the men are still at the gate.”
“Aye, and someone must see tae the trestles,” another answered. “Christina wants the blue cloth near the laird’s table.”
Rose’s fingers tightened slightly on the stone.
For no sensible reason, her thoughts went at once to the gown lying over the chair in her chamber, deep blue and softer than anything she had expected to wear here. Logan had chosen the color.
The knowledge had not left her.
It had sat quietly beneath everything else, under the dagger lessons, under the reports of riders, under the meals where she tried not to look too often toward the place where Logan sat.
Sometimes she succeeded. Sometimes she looked up and found him already watching her, only for his gaze to move away with that same restraint that made her feel both safe and unsteady.
A cart wheel struck a stone below, jolting Rose from the thought.
Another bundle of greenery slipped from the back of a cart and scattered across the courtyard.
A young servant groaned, bending to gather it, while another laughed and helped.
Everyone had work in hand. Everyone but her.
Rose stood above them in a borrowed chamber, doing nothing but watching others labor for a feast she had no right to attend, as though she belonged there.
The thought sat poorly with her.
She turned from the window, changed into one of the plainer gowns Christina had lent her, pinned back her hair, and made her way downstairs before she could reconsider.
The corridors were fuller than usual, servants passing with folded linens, boys carrying candles, women calling instructions from one chamber to the next.
The Great Hall had become the center of all motion.
Its long tables had been pushed aside or covered, benches stacked near the walls, rushes being swept and replaced.
Rose paused near the entrance.
A woman carrying a length of cloth nearly collided with her, then stopped short. “Me lady.”
“I beg your pardon,” Rose said at once. “I did not mean to be in the way.”
“Ye’re nae in the way,” the woman said quickly, though her harried face suggested nearly everyone was. “We’re only trying tae finish before Christina comes and decides we’ve done it all wrong.”
Rose almost smiled. “May I help?”
The woman blinked. “Help?”
“If there is something useful I might do.”
For a moment, the woman seemed uncertain whether to accept. Then her gaze moved to the scattered greenery on one of the tables.
“There are garlands tae be tied,” she said. “If ye’ve a mind fer it.”
“I do.”
Rose moved to the table and began working.
At first, her fingers were stiff with unfamiliarity. The greenery was rougher than it looked, small stems scratching lightly at her skin, leaves cool and damp against her palms. The smell of it rose sharply, cutting through the smoke and wool of the hall.
She followed the example of the woman beside her, binding bunches together with cord, smoothing uneven leaves, tucking smaller branches into gaps until the whole thing looked less like a desperate bundle and more like a decoration.
After a while, one of the younger servants brought the finished garlands toward the far wall, where others had already begun hanging them from lower hooks. Rose watched them stretch upward, laughing as one nearly lost his balance on a bench.
“The high beam still needs daein’,” the woman at the table muttered. “And none o’ these lads have the sense tae place it properly.”
Rose looked toward the beam in question. A garland had been left half-hung, one end secured while the other drooped awkwardly down, just beyond easy reach.
“I can try,” she said.
The woman turned sharply. “Me lady?—”
“I shall not climb,” Rose assured her, already taking the loose end. “Only reach.”
It was, she realized almost immediately, a ridiculous distinction.
The beam was higher than it had appeared. Rose lifted onto the balls of her feet carefully, stretching one arm up with the greenery clutched in her hand, but her fingers barely brushed the hook. She lowered herself, adjusted her stance to spare the ankle, then tried again.
The garland slipped and brushed her cheek with cold leaves.
A small sound of frustration escaped her.
“Come now,” she whispered beneath her breath.
She tried a third time, reaching higher, her free hand braced against the wall. The ache in her ankle sharpened. She ignored it. The hook was just there, close enough to offend her.
A shadow fell over her from behind.
“Are ye arguing wi’ the beam?”
Rose froze.
Logan’s voice came from behind her, far too close for a room filled with people.
She turned her head slightly, finding him standing a few paces away, arms loose at his sides. His expression was solemn except for the faint amusement at the corner of his mouth.
Heat rushed to her cheeks.
Her chin lifted. “I had nearly secured it.”
“Nearly,” he repeated.
The word should not have sounded like a caress. It did not. Of course it did not.
She turned back toward the beam. “If you have come to mock me, Laird MacKenzie, I must tell you that I am occupied.”
“Logan,” he corrected, as he always did.
Her fingers tightened around the greenery.
“Logan,” she said, and hated how quickly her body answered the name.
He came closer.
Rose felt his warmth at her back. She kept her eyes fixed on the hook above her, though every part of her had gone quiet in anticipation.
“You are still too far,” he said.
Rose glanced back, ready to insist she could manage, but before the words could leave her mouth, his hands settled at her waist. Her breath caught.
Then he lifted her.
The ground fell away beneath her feet so smoothly that the sound of the hall seemed to vanish for a heartbeat. Logan’s hands were firm at her waist, his strength effortless. Rose’s fingers flew up, clutching the garland, and she reached for the hook with a sharp, unsteady breath.
“Now,” he said, his voice beneath her, calm and low. “Secure it.”
Rose forced herself to move.
Her fingers found the hook, looped the cord over it, then adjusted the greenery until it sat properly along the beam.
It only took a moment. And yet, suspended there by Logan’s hands, with the pressure of his palms burning through the fabric of her gown, Rose felt time stretch impossibly thin around her.
“There,” she said, though her voice came out softer than she intended.
Logan did not set her down at once.
It was barely a pause, only a breath longer than necessary, his hands holding her as if he had forgotten that he ought to release her.
Rose looked down.
His face was tilted up toward hers. The amusement had gone and something else had taken its place. It struck through her with such force that her fingers tightened around the loose leaves still caught in her hand.
Then he lowered her.
Her feet met the floor carefully, his hands still at her waist until he was certain her ankle held her. Even then, they lingered.
Then he stepped back. The air felt colder without him there.
Rose smoothed her gown at once, because her hands needed something to do. She did not dare look toward the servants, though she felt their awareness prickling over her skin.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Ye shouldnae strain the ankle,” Logan replied.
“I was being useful.”
“Aye.” His mouth curved faintly. “Dangerous habit.”
“Is usefulness dangerous?”
“It seems tae make ye climb things ye shouldnae.”
His gaze remained on her face, and for a moment the hall moved around them in muffled fragments: cloth shaken open over tables, a boy laughing near the hearth, someone calling for more cord.
Rose stood with Logan before the newly hung greenery, and everything that had almost happened in the courtyard some days earlier seemed to stand with them too.
She could not bear it.
“I should help with the ribbons,” she said quickly, turning toward the nearest table. “Christina mentioned there were blue ones to be sorted.”
Logan’s expression shifted, as if he knew perfectly well that she was fleeing and was choosing not to stop her.
“Aye,” he said. “Dinnae overdo it.”
“I would never.”
His brow lifted.
Rose inclined her head and moved away with all the dignity she could gather. She managed three steps before she realized her hands were trembling. She tucked them into the folds of her skirt and kept walking.
By the day of the feast, the castle had been transformed.
Rose stood in Christina’s chamber while the other woman circled her with the deep blue gown in her arms.
“Hold still,” Christina said.
“I am holding still.”
“Ye are holding still like ye’re preparing fer judgment.”
Rose turned her head just enough to give her a look.
Christina grinned. “There. That’s better. I was beginning tae worry the dress had frightened all the spirit out o’ ye.”
Seeing the dress laid out in the morning light made her almost dizzy. The blue looked deeper now, richer against the pale linen beneath it. When Christina helped her into it, the fabric fit Rose better than she expected, drawn in at the waist, the sleeves falling gracefully.
Rose looked at her reflection in the polished metal mirror and scarcely recognized the woman there.
She still looked English. Of course, she did.
Her posture gave her away, her careful hands, the lift of her chin, the way she seemed to be asking permission from the room even when standing alone inside it.
Yet the gown revealed something too. Her eyes looked brighter against it, her skin warmer, her face wilder than she was used to seeing it.
Christina came to stand behind her, looking over her shoulder with open satisfaction.
“Aye,” she said. “Logan was right.”
Rose’s stomach dipped.
“About the color,” Christina added, far too innocently.
Rose lowered her gaze at once. “It is a beautiful gown.”
Christina laughed, then reached for the comb on the table. “Sit. Let me dae yer hair before ye decide tae hide in the curtains.”
“I was not considering that.”
Christina began working through her hair with gentle fingers. “Liar.”
The word was so lightly said that Rose felt herself smile despite the restless flutter in her stomach.
She had spent too long on her hair already before Christina had arrived.
That was the humiliating truth. She had brushed it, then pinned it, then unpinned part of it because it looked too severe, then tried to arrange the loose pieces in a way that seemed accidental without actually being so.
It had taken an embarrassing amount of concentration to appear as if she had not tried at all.
“There now,” Christina said after a while, drawing back a section and fastening it with a small pin. “Are ye always this particular?”
“I simply wish to look appropriate for the feast.”
“Aye,” Christina said, her mouth curving. “Appropriate.”
Rose met her eyes in the mirror. “It is a clan celebration. I would not wish to appear disrespectful.”
“Of course.”
Christina finished pinning her hair, leaving soft pieces near her face, then stepped back and studied the result with narrowed eyes.
“There,” she said. “Pretty enough tae cause trouble.”
Rose’s breath caught. “Christina.”
“What? I said pretty. Nae scandalous.”
“That is hardly reassuring.”
“It wasnae meant tae be.”
Rose stood up. The soft fabric of the gown moved beneath her fingers. She looked once more at her reflection, trying to see only the propriety of it, the suitable fit, the respect due to the occasion.
But beneath those safer thoughts, one remained, bright and shameful.
Would Logan notice?
She hated herself for wanting it.
No, not hated. She was embarrassed by it. Frightened by it. Made softer and more foolish by the hope that when she entered the hall, his gaze might lift and still, even for a moment.
Christina watched her in the mirror.
“Ye’re very concerned wi’ looking pretty tonight,” she said.
Rose’s head turned at once. “I am concerned with looking proper.”
“Ah.” Christina nodded gravely. “And pretty by accident.”
“The celebration deserves effort.”
“O’ course.”
“It has nothing to do with…” Rose stopped.
Christina’s brows rose.
Rose’s face heated. “With being pretty.”
“Mmm.”
Despite herself, Rose laughed, though it came out breathless and thin. “You are impossible.”
Rose wanted to ask what Christina meant. She wanted, desperately, not to ask. So she did what she knew how to do.
She straightened her spine and lifted her chin.
“We should go down before we are late.”
Christina’s smile returned, but gently now. “Aye. We should.”
Rose moved toward the door, each step careful, the hem of the blue gown whispering over the floor.
Her nerves tightened the closer they came to the stairs.
Music had begun somewhere below, faint but lively, the notes rising through the stone like an invitation.
Voices followed, laughter, movement, the promise of warmth and too many eyes.
Rose paused at the top of the stairs, one hand resting lightly against the wall.
Below, the hall glowed with firelight and movement, and she told herself it was only the noise that made her heart beat so quickly, only the crowd, only the strangeness of stepping into a clan celebration in a gown chosen for her.
But beneath every proper excuse, one small, shameful hope remained. She wanted Logan to look up. She wanted him to see her.