Chapter Five #2
She looked at her friend. “I am glad,” she said, though her voice wavered. “I need you.”
Sorcha’s eyes, warm and kind, held hers. “It has been a big day. You got married. You are now mistress of this castle.” Just then her gaze lingered on Destiny’s wedding attire. “You are still wearing your dress. I would have thought . . .”
“That my husband would have removed it by now to take what was his on our wedding day?” Destiny paused, then added, “He did not want me.” It was not the entire truth, but it was all she was willing to admit right now, even to her best friend.
“That is impossible.” Sorcha scowled. “I saw the way he looked at you when you came to stand beside him in the great hall. What I saw was interest, perhaps even desire.”
Destiny shrugged. “He has his reasons, I am certain.”
“Good heavens, you only met him yesterday,” Sorcha said gently. “Give it time.” She paused, then added with a small, knowing breath, “Six months felt like a lifetime to me, and I walked into that marriage no more prepared than you did.”
Destiny nodded. She knew this story well, had lived beside Sorcha through the aftermath. “Your father chose him,” she said softly. “And then he was gone.”
“Aye,” Sorcha said. “Killed in battle before the year turned.” Her voice remained steady, as though the sharpest edges had long since dulled. “And because I carried no child, I was sent back as though the marriage had never truly existed.” She lifted one shoulder. “But it existed. It changed me.”
Destiny swallowed. “Six months is long enough to learn a man.”
“Long enough to learn yourself,” Sorcha corrected gently.
“Long enough to discover that fear can soften, and confusion can shift into something else, even when a marriage begins without choice.” She offered a faint, encouraging smile.
“I did not love my husband when I wed him. But I learned to understand him. Sometimes that is where everything else begins.”
“Perhaps I have already passed the I hate you stage,” Destiny admitted quietly. “I am so confused by what I am feeling.”
Sorcha’s eyes warmed. “Tell me,” she said, settling near the window, the daylight outlining her familiar form. “You talk. I will listen.”
Destiny’s throat tightened. “I—” she began, then stopped. The weight of her doubts and her emerging emotions pressed on her anew. “This feels like the first day I must wear two faces. That of the bride to the castle, another as the wife to Cameron, and maybe more.”
Sorcha leaned forward, hands clasped. “You are all those things, but not all at once, and that is as it should be.”
Destiny turned from the window, folding her hands in her lap.
The lace at her sleeves felt stiff, as though even cloth conspired to constrain her.
“His people expect strength, grace, steadiness. Twelve years have passed since the last woman held influence in this castle. They may well think me weak before I even try.”
Sorcha’s eyes softened. “We all begin somewhere. Strength is not the absence of fear.”
Destiny’s fingers twisted in her lap. “When I stand beside Cameron, his pull on me is strong. In those silent moments, when no one watches, something in me wants to give in. But I fight it.” She closed her eyes as if ashamed.
“I refuse to become proof that my father, who sold me into this, was right about choosing him. I will not admit he was wise in this trade.”
“You are not the bargaining piece you fear you are.” Sorcha’s voice held gentle, firm resolve.
Destiny opened her eyes, looking at Sorcha with desperate intensity.
“But it feels like that sometimes. My attraction, it terrifies me. If I surrender to it, what will people say? What will I become? A woman who yearns too much, who pleads too much? And worse, one who vindicates an uncaring father’s bargain. ”
She paused, as if the weight of her own words startled her.
Then she added more quietly, “Yet when I catch him watching me, or when he speaks with tenderness behind closed doors . . . I want to believe he sees me. Not the marriage, not the obligation, but me. And if that is true—” She swallowed, biting her lip.
“If that is true . . . I do not know whether I have the strength not to yield.”
Sorcha stood and moved closer.
She placed a hand lightly on Destiny’s shoulder. “You have more strength than you know,” she said. “And you have more claim to his heart than a shrewd arrangement could ever give.”
Destiny turned to face her friend, her eyes troubled. “Then how? How do I guard myself from surrendering while also letting him see me? How do I prove I belong, not because of a father’s deal, but by who I am without overstepping, without begging?”
Sorcha paused, measuring her words, then spoke in a low voice.
“Begin by revealing yourself where it matters. I heard from the servants that you have already done that by showing compassion to the Mackenzie prisoner. Let your kindness and your insight speak for you. Let Cameron and all his clan see that your heart is steady, your resolution unwavering, with gestures, with small acts of loyalty, of mercy, of bravery—even when no one is watching.”
Destiny’s shoulders sagged, heavy with the burden she had carried alone too long. “So, I walk a line between wanting and restraint, between proving and not forcing?”
“Aye,” said Sorcha. “I know you are capable of such. And while doing that, let Cameron know your fears, your internal struggles, but do not demand he bear them for you. Lean on him, aye, but not as a crutch. Stand beside him, share the weight.”
Destiny closed her eyes, drawing in a slow breath. The tension between desire and duty, between fear and hope, spun inside her. But in Sorcha’s presence she felt a flicker of courage.
Filled with newfound determination, Destiny looked up and met Sorcha’s gaze. “I will try. I will prove I deserve his faith and the faith of his clan.”
Sorcha squeezed her hand. “You are not alone.”
Destiny felt the shift in herself. A fragile blend of fear and resolve. There, in the quiet company of her truest friend, she began to believe she might find her footing yet.
*
After the midday meal, Destiny could no longer put off her role as mistress of Foulis Castle.
Despite how she had come to be here, she must do what was expected of her.
At her side stood Davina Featherstone, chatelaine of the castle, in a deep wine-coloured bodice and soft wool skirt.
She laid a gloved hand lightly on Destiny’s arm.
“Mistress, let me introduce you to the household staff. These men and women labour under your roof now.”
Together they crossed the worn flagstones of the hall. The fire in the hearth roared low but steady, the logs glowing orange-red, sending up occasional sparks that danced across old tapestries of the Munro clan. The air smelled of polished wood, candle wax, and the faint musk of centuries.