Chapter 3
Chapter Three
“Iam going to be sick,” Elspeth said, her fingers clutching the velvet edge of her seat as the carriage lurched over one last rocky crest.
“Ye arenae.” Katherine adjusted the heavy pearl at Elspeth’s ear.
“I am. I can feel it in me throat.”
“That is nerves. Nerves and the ruts of the road. They feel identical until ye stand up.” Katherine sat back within the cramped interior, her eyes sweeping over Elspeth’s frame. “Ye look beautiful.”
Elspeth looked down at the fine, flowing pale blue silk catching the light. While the tiny pearls threaded through her dark curls had been Becky’s doing, the gown had been Katherine’s idea.
Her own contribution was the soft kid gloves, pulled tight over her knuckles simply because she needed something to do with her hands before she tore at her own skin.
Outside the carriage window, Bickerson Castle cut a massive, imposing silhouette against the black sky. Candlelight flooded from every narrow window, torches flared in iron brackets flanking the great stone entrance, and the distant reedy wail of bagpipes drifted down through the crisp evening air.
It looked like a grand celebration.
She forced air into her lungs, reminding herself of the cold truth: it was a market, and she was the goods.
“Katherine.” She kept her voice down to a harsh whisper.
Across from them, Liam sat in silence, reading a small tract by the light of a handheld lantern—his preferred method of managing any situation that did not allow him to draw a sword.
Beside him sat her father, his eyes fixed on the approaching castle.
“I want ye to ken that I understand ye were trying to help. Back in the solar. When ye suggested this auction over Dunmore.”
“I was helping.”
“Aye,” Elspeth murmured, her pulse fluttering in her wrists. “And I also want ye to ken that if this goes badly tonight, I intend to blame ye for the rest of me days.”
Katherine’s mouth twitched into a sharp smile. “That is fair.”
The carriage ground to a halt, the iron wheels scraping against the gravel courtyard.
Her father was out before the footman had properly lowered the wooden step. He appeared at her open window, his features instantly shifting into attentiveness, pleasantness, almost warmth. It was the most unsettling look he possessed, because it was fake.
“Chin up,” he said quietly, his voice cutting through the damp air. It was the closest he had come to encouragement in recent memory. “Smile. Show them yer teeth.” He paused, his grey eyes lingering on her face for a cold beat before adding, “The good ones.”
He turned and walked ahead into the light without waiting for her.
Elspeth stared, her breath catching. She looked at Katherine.
“Show them yer teeth,” Katherine repeated with mocking solemnity.
“I will throw ye in a ditch before midnight,” Elspeth muttered.
“Ye’ll have to find one first. Come.”
The Great Hall was warmer than Elspeth had expected, louder, and thick with the heat of too many bodies.
Someone had taken genuine trouble with the display.
Hundreds of tallow candles were banked in clusters along the stone walls, their shifting firelight turning the oak beams and high banners a rich amber and gold.
Long tables were heavy with dark wine and small plates of roasted meats and sweets, a sign that Bickerson understood women ate in direct proportion to their anxiety.
The pipes had given way to a lone fiddle player near the hearth, the music bright and fast enough to raise the heavy ceiling.
Everywhere she looked, women in fine velvet and silk gowns were leaning together, laughing too quickly, their fingers constantly twitching to touch their hair or adjust a collar.
She recognized that high, brittle laugh. She was likely making the same sound.
“Lady MacDougal.”
Their host materialized through the crowd, a broad-shouldered man with a thick red beard going grey at the edges.
His face was clearly handsome, but it had settled comfortably into something better, something genuinely warm and weathered.
The sort of face that made men straighten and women lean in without quite meaning to.
He moved through the room unhurried, as though the gathering had assembled around his schedule rather than the reverse and no one seemed to mind.
Laird Bickerson took Katherine’s gloved hand and sketched a bow that was neither performative nor perfunctory. “Ye’ve returned. I wonder what this says about me gathering.”
“Only wonderful things, me Laird,” Katherine said smoothly, her posture perfect. “Me husband and I are here in support of me dearest friend.” She stepped aside, gently drawing Elspeth forward into the light. “Laird Bickerson, this Lady Elspeth MacRae.”
Laird Bickerson turned his gaze to her, and his piercing eyes caught her completely off guard. There was no calculation in them, no appraisal. “Lady Elspeth. Welcome.” He paused, his voice dropping lower, for her ears only. “I hope the evening treats ye well.”
It was a small, simple courtesy, but it made her chest ache.
She managed a smile that felt almost real. “Thank ye, me Laird.”
He bowed again and moved on to greet the next arrival, and Elspeth let out a long, shuddering breath.
Then the crowd folded her in. Despite the tight blue silk, the heavy pearls, and the wretched knowledge of why she was being paraded, something in her core began to unclench.
To her left, a young woman in amber velvet was arguing cheerfully with another to her right about whether the dark-haired laird standing by the far window was from Argyll or Perthshire. The distinction apparently mattered enormously for reasons Elspeth could not follow.
A servant pressed a cup of spiced wine into her hand, and she drank it without thinking. It was sweet, warm, and sharp with cinnamon. She thought absently that this was very cunning of Bickerson; it was exactly the right vintage to make a terrified woman believe things might turn out fine.
“The one in green,” the woman on her left said suddenly, turning to her as though they had been mid-conversation for hours. “Do ye think he is truly as dour as he looks, or is that just his face?”
Elspeth followed her gaze across the floor. The man in question was standing rigid, his thick arms folded tight over his chest, his mouth set in a hard line that suggested either deep, solemn thought or a mild case of indigestion.
“I think,” Elspeth said carefully, her lips curving, “that it might just be his face.”
The woman burst into a loud, genuine laugh, and just like that, Elspeth was pulled into the circle.
Names were exchanged, dresses admired, and the sharp, nervous energy of the room faded into easy warmth.
She laughed at a ridiculous story about a laird who had arrived with his mother to vet the brides.
She offered a firm opinion on whether the fiddle player was merely showing off or his fingers could not keep the pace.
She ate two small pastries from a passing tray without even registering the taste.
For a few minutes, she forgot about the shadow hanging over her.
Then a heavy hand touched her elbow, and her father appeared.
“Laird MacAllister,” he said, his voice low, gravelly, and too close. He gestured with his wine cup toward a heavyset, red-faced man sweating near the hearth. “Good lands. Fair coin in his chests. He’s looked over here twice already.”
Elspeth’s smile vanished. “He is also approximately yer age, Father.”
“Alliances daenae require age.”
“I will handle it.” Her voice came out steadier than she felt.
Her father studied her face for a brief beat. Then he turned and moved back into the crowd.
Elspeth watched his retreating back, and the warmth of the hall suddenly vanished. She was still on display. She was here to be bought. The sweet wine, the fast music, and the women laughing could not change reality. They only softened its sharp edges.
She looked around the hall, watching the lairds—older men, younger heirs, some watchful, some openly bored—and understood they were all performing the same arithmetic her father was. She was just a figure in their ledgers.
Suddenly, and with a violent clarity of thought, all she wanted was to be back in Katherine’s quiet solar, holding a terrible novel with nowhere else to be.
“There.” Katherine materialized at her shoulder. “Daenae look yet. Look at me first. Are ye listening to me?”
Elspeth forced her gaze up from the floor. “I am listening.”
“There is a laird,” Katherine whispered, angling her body so they both faced away from the far end of the hall. “Far end of the hall, near the stone pillar. Dark coat, no expression whatsoever.”
Elspeth took a slow sip of her wine. “That describes at least half the men in this room, Katherine.”
“This one has presence,” Katherine insisted, her voice dropping to a fierce whisper.
“And I have been asking the old women questions. Extensive lands. Significant livestock, which I ken sounds dull. But hear me out, Elspeth. He trades across the whole of Scotland. The man is genuinely wealthy, nae just performing for the neighbors. And from what I’ve gathered, he has a massive estate and desperately needs someone capable of actually running it. ”
Elspeth turned the pewter cup slowly between her palms. “What is he like?”
“Powerful. Capable.” Katherine hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Quiet.”
“Quiet.”
“Which isnae a flaw in a man. Quiet means he willnae spend yer entire marriage talking over ye or shouting orders at ye.” Katherine reached out, her fingers curling around Elspeth’s arm.
“Elspeth, ye have practically managed yer father’s household since ye were fourteen years old.
Ye ken accounts, provisioning, staff. Ye have been running an estate without the title or the respect.
Demonstrate that to him. Show him that ye can do exactly what he needs, and he will choose ye over every superficial girl here. ”
Elspeth looked down at the soft kid leather of her gloves. She considered it, letting the thought take root in the small, embarrassing part of her mind that she usually kept locked away. The part that read novels about Highland moonlight late at night when the ledgers were closed.
A capable laird, quiet enough to listen when she spoke. Someone who needed her for her mind, for real things, and might in time come to want her for herself. Someone who perhaps had a library where the fire burned low. Someone who might, in the evenings, when the work was done—
She caught herself, her jaw tightening. She was foolishly dreaming again.
He probably doesnae compose poetry. He probably composes nothing at all except livestock inventories and timber costs.
But a small, involuntary smile touched her lips anyway, and Katherine caught it instantly.
“There,” Katherine said, her face lighting up with satisfaction. “That is the face. Keep that face exactly as it is.”
“I am nae making a face.”
“Ye are. It’s called smiling. It is lovely. Keep it.” Katherine squeezed her arm once, quick and full of heat. “Daenae worry so much about what ye cannae control.”
Elspeth nodded.
She turned back to the bright hall, the glittering candlelight, the fast fiddle, and the women laughing over their wine. She held the small warmth of that specific thought carefully, knowing it could turn to ash in seconds, knowing she had almost no say in whether it survived the room.
Across the crowded floor, her father had positioned himself near the doors, his eyes tracking her movements.
She stood straight in her pale blue silk, fixed her eyes on nothing in particular, and tried to believe that the evening might, against every piece of logic she possessed, end well.
The fiddle played on, the notes high and piercing. Near the hearth, a broad-shouldered stranger had stopped mid-sentence. He was not looking at the fiddler, or the wine, or the woman beside him waiting for his answer. He was looking at Elspeth, and he had been for some time.
She did not know his face or his name.
A staff struck stone once, hard, and the hall fell silent in a single breath.
“Me Ladies.” Laird Bickerson’s voice carried to every corner of the hall without rising. “Shall we begin?”
Elspeth turned away, determined to ignore that prickling feeling running down her back. It made her feel like everything was about to change.