Chapter 2
Chapter Two
The fence had been leaning since Tuesday.
Magnus had noted it on his morning walk, noted it again at midday, and by Wednesday, he had decided the post needed replacing rather than resetting.
He had the new timber cut and shaped by Thursday dawn. That was how he preferred to solve problems: quietly and efficiently, before anyone else could have an opinion about it.
He drove the last stake home just as the sun broke the jagged eastern ridge. The iron mallet fell in a steady, heavy rhythm, each crushing blow traveling up through his wrists and shoulders with a satisfying finality.
Below him, the glen lay wrapped in grey and gold, the mist thick in the low places, the loch a dark, motionless mirror at its center. He could feel the mountain the way he could feel his own pulse.
He set the mallet down and gripped the raw wood with both hands, shaking it with his full weight. Solid.
Behind him, the sound of wet grass crunched underfoot.
He turned. The grey ewe, the one he had privately named Nothing because she was more trouble than everything else combined, had already worked her fat middle through a gap in the lower section. She stood directly in the center of his newly repaired boundary, staring at him.
Magnus stared back, his face a mask of stone.
She did not blink.
“Nay,” he said, his deep voice cutting through the morning stillness.
The ewe merely twitched her ears.
He crossed the grass in four long strides, clamped his hands around her thick, woolly middle, and hauled her back through the gate.
She gave a token, half-hearted kick against his thighs and then went limp, accepting defeat as she always did.
He dropped her onto the correct side of the wood, latched the gate, and checked the iron mechanism twice.
Nothing was already eyeing the farther wire line.
“Daenae,” he warned.
He turned and strode away before she could prove him wrong.
The inspection of the granaries took the better part of an hour.
Magnus moved down the dark rows methodically, digging his hand deep into the sacks to check how dry the grain was, noting which bundles required rotation, and calculating the winter surplus against the figures he carried in his head.
They were not written anywhere. He held them there, private and guarded, the way he held most things.
The numbers were good. Better than good.
Three years ago, the grain surplus had been a meager one, requiring as much prayer as planning to survive the frost. Now, there was enough to trade and still sleep soundly.
He allowed himself a brief flash of satisfaction.
It lasted precisely four seconds before he crushed it, refusing to let it turn into complacency.
He was mentally reviewing the eastern trade figures, renegotiating the wool rate with the inventory merchant who had been short-weighing his scales since September, when he heard the boots coming. He recognized the tread.
He turned slowly.
Duncan was at the front, leading the march, and behind him were three elders: Angus, Fearchar, and old Tormod, whose bad knee usually predicted rain better than the sky. Today, the sky to the north was clear, meaning Tormod’s limp was born of discomfort over the conversation they had rehearsed.
Duncan caught his eye and threw him a sharp, warning look.
They are serious. I tried.
Magnus waited, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Me Laird.” Angus stepped forward, his posture stiffening into the formal distance they used only for official clan business. “Ye werenae at the morning meeting.”
“I was repairing the fence.”
“Aye.” Angus cast a glance toward the hill. “We noticed.”
“The fence required it.”
“Aye. The thing is, me Laird—”
“How many meetings have ye missed in the last six months, me Laird?” Fearchar interrupted, his old voice sharp.
Magnus remained silent. He knew the number precisely. He simply saw no reason to defend his labor.
Tormod shifted his weight off his aching joint. “Thirteen years,” he croaked, his eyes locking onto Magnus’s scarred face. “Thirteen years ago, ye came back to a broken clan. Empty cottages, salted fields—near enough—and granaries rotting to dust.” He paused, letting the memory hang.
Magnus did not need a reminder. He remembered that cursed day with permanent, bleeding clarity. It was the very thing that had forged him.
“And now, look at us,” Tormod continued, his voice softening. “The people eat. The children survive the winter. The trade routes ye built are real, me Laird. This prosperity is real. Ben Cruachan breathes again because of ye.”
“Then we are agreed,” Magnus said flatly. “The clan is well.”
“The clan is well,” Angus allowed carefully. “But there is the matter of what comes after. Who will lead when ye fall? Who will inherit? The succession is…”
“Uncertain,” Fearchar finished.
The word settled heavily in the damp air.
Magnus reached down, picked up his mallet from the post, and walked toward the granary wall to set it away. He was not avoiding them. He had a tool to store, and he could hear their badgering perfectly well from six feet away.
“I have no need of a wife,” he said. “I have said so.”
“Ye’ve said so for eight years,” Duncan chimed in from the side, unhelpfully.
“And I have been right for eight years.”
“Me Laird.” Angus stepped into his path, his face tight with exhaustion. “A laird needs heirs. And a lady beside him, someone to manage the household, the people.”
Magnus stopped.
He did not raise his voice. He merely turned his gaze upon Angus. It was the heavy, dark look that had broken men twice Angus’s size. The murmuring immediately died down.
“Ben Cruachan prospers,” he said, each word dropping like stone, “because I rebuilt it. The cottages stand because me hands repaired them. The people eat because I negotiated the terms.” He looked at each of them, his eyes hard.
“The livestock multiply because I ken more about sheep than any man in this glen. If I desired a wife, I would have taken one.”
Outside, the wind rattled the dry thatch, but silence descended on the granary.
Fearchar was the one to break it; he had never learned to yield. “If ye willnae choose,” he spat, his chin trembling with defiance, “then the elders will choose for ye. That is our right by law, and I’ll nae apologize for it.”
The silence that followed was thick.
Magnus went perfectly still. He knew he had been backed into a corner. His jaw clenched, the muscles tightening until the scars along his cheek pulled taut. His eyes fixed on the empty air.
Someone deciding for him. Someone walking into the life he had pulled out of the ashes with his own bleeding fingers and rearranging it for their own comfort.
Before the rage building in his chest could break, Duncan stepped between them. He placed a firm hand on Magnus’s forearm—not to hold him back, but to ground him—and leaned in close.
“Bickerson’s auction,” he muttered quickly. “Week’s end. Ye go, ye choose, ye come back with a woman of yer own choosing. Better yer requirements than theirs, Magnus.”
Magnus looked at his cousin. Duncan held his gaze, unblinking.
The requirements.
Magnus weighed the word. He had strict parameters for everything.
The granaries had to be dry, the ledgers had to balance, the fences had to hold, and the livestock had to remain inside them.
His life worked because it was ordered and predictable.
Introducing an unknown variable chosen by three old men was a vulnerability he could not permit.
“Very well,” he acquiesced.
Duncan blinked, a flash of surprise crossing his features. He clearly had not expected the logic to bite so quickly.
Magnus turned back to the elders. “One auction. One wife. I will attend. I will choose.” He leveled his gaze at Angus, then Fearchar, then Tormod. “After which the matter is closed, and ye daenae raise it again. Any of ye.” He snatched his ledger from the shelf. “That is how it will be done.”
He strode past them, his heavy boots echoing on the stone floor.
Behind him, the old men exhaled. A shaky sound of relief.
Within seconds, Duncan’s steady footsteps caught up to him, trailing him into the bright morning light. Magnus could practically feel the smugness radiating from his cousin.
The silence stretched until Duncan finally broke it.
“What sort of wife do ye seek, then?”
Magnus did not slow his stride.
The question was absurd. He had an eastern field to inspect and an inventory merchant to break, and he had absolutely no desire to contemplate a woman he had never met.
“Magnus,” Duncan prodded.
Four more paces, then Magnus stopped, his voice dropping an octave.
“Quiet,” he said flatly. “Practical. Sensible.” He paused, his mind flashing briefly to the fence line. “Someone who can care for me goats.”
Duncan came to a dead halt, but Magnus kept walking.
A moment later, laughter erupted. Loud, bright, and completely unrestrained, echoing off the stone walls of the granary.
“I promise ye, me Laird,” Duncan called after him, “ye willnae regret this!”
Magnus did not look back. He already knew he would.
He detested gatherings. He detested the noise, the uncalculated chaos of small talk, and the smooth-tongued lairds who traded promises they never intended to keep.
In less than two days, he would be standing in Bickerson’s crowded hall, surrounded by hundreds of desperate families and ambitious men. He had given his word to choose.
Just then a cold, heavy truth settled in his gut.
He was bringing an unknown woman back to Ben Cruachan. A stranger who would sleep in his home, touch his ledgers, and see the scars he kept buried beneath his heavy tartan.
He had built a fortress to keep the world out, and now he was willingly opening the iron gate.