Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The storm had finally broken by midmorning, leaving the bailey slick and steaming under a pale wash of sun. Claire had spent the better part of an hour pacing the length of her chamber, restless with days indoors, when she found her cloak and made for the door.
"Ye cannae go out there, mistress." Molly planted herself in the doorway, shawl held out like a shield she fully intended to use. "Laird MacRae gave orders."
"Laird MacRae," Claire said, tugging the shawl free, "is nae me keeper."
"He's the Laird, mistress. Everyone in this keep answers to him, down to the dogs in the kennel and the fish they pull from the loch." Molly crossed her arms. "Ye especially, seein' as he'd skin the lot of us if anythin' happened to ye."
"I am only going as far as the lower bailey."
"Ye said that about the kitchens last week, and I found ye in the stables an hour later, feedin' apples to a warhorse twice yer size and near gettin' yer fingers bitten off for the trouble."
"He looked hungry."
"He looked half-wild, mistress, same as ye're lookin' right now." Molly sighed, the fight already draining out of her. "If Laird MacRae catches ye out in this, he'll have me head on a pike, and I've grown rather fond of it where it sits."
"Then I shall tell him I slipped past you while ye were dozing by the fire." Claire wound the wool around her shoulders, already moving for the door. "I only need air that doesnae smell of parchment and woodsmoke."
"The men are trainin' today," Molly called after her, one last attempt. "Nae a place for a lady."
"I've watched men train before."
"Nae like this." Something in Molly's voice made Claire pause with her hand on the latch. "They say the Laird's fightin' like a man possessed."
Claire filed that away, said nothing, offered a small smile, and left.
The corridors hummed with restless energy, servants moving faster, voices dropping when she passed.
War had a smell — oiled leather, boiled linen, and silent fear.
She saw maids folding bandages, a boy hauling a whetstone without looking up.
Rain hit her as she pushed through the doors, cold and sudden, flattening her curls.
She welcomed it; it was the only honest thing in the castle.
"Lady Claire!" Douglas's voice cut through the mist. He stood near the training yard fence, soaked through, his beard dripping.
"Good morning, Douglas."
"Miserable mornin', more like." He nodded toward the ring, where a dozen men circled and struck at each other through ankle-deep mud. "What brings ye out in this?"
"The library was suffocating me."
"The keep's tense today. Everyone kens it."
"Is that why they're training in a downpour?"
"The Laird means to beat the fear out of them before it can settle." Douglas huffed something that wasn't quite a laugh. "Mind yer step, the stones here are slick as ice."
Claire came to rest against the wooden fence, scanning the churned field, and found him without meaning to, the way her eyes seemed to find him now without any instruction from her at all.
"Shield up, Angus!" Finn's voice rolled across the yard, cutting clean through the rain.
"Me arm's spent, me Laird!"
"Ye think a blade cares if yer arm's spent? Brace yer feet and go again."
He wore a plain linen shirt and kilt, no plaid or leather, soaked by rain until it clung to him.
She saw a scar on his shoulder and ribs, signs of a hard life.
Her mouth went dry as she watched him move, biting her lip between her teeth and dragging it slowly free.
She only realized she'd done it when the cold air made her aware.
"He fights like a man tryin' to outrun somethin'," Douglas said quietly beside her.
"Has he stopped at all since dawn?"
"Nae once."
Guilt settled low in her stomach. He is punishing himself, she thought, and I am the reason why.
Finn disarmed Angus in three brutal moves and sent him sprawling into the mud without breaking stride. "Dead. Next."
"I'll take a turn, me Laird," Rabbie offered, stepping forward with more courage than sense.
"Daenae swing wild," Finn warned, circling. "Anger makes a man predictable, and predictable men die first."
Claire watched the whole exchange without blinking, watched rainwater trace a slow line down the column of his throat and vanish beneath his collar, and felt a low pull deep in her belly, insistent and unwelcome given the circumstances.
"He's too fast for them," she murmured.
"Too fast for most men in these hills," Douglas said, not without pride. "That's why he's the Laird."
Finn swept Rabbie's legs out from under him a moment later, dropping him into the mud beside Angus.
"Dead." He straightened, chest heaving, and turned to survey the rest of the men, who had gone very still, very interested in the mud at their own feet. "Are the rest of ye cowards, then?"
"We're exhausted, me Laird," Angus muttered from the ground.
"Then be exhausted on yer feet." Finn wiped rain from his eyes with the back of one scarred hand, tipped his face up into the downpour, and stopped.
He'd found her.
The violence in him didn't vanish, not exactly, but it changed shape, banked itself down into something quieter. His eyes held hers across the muddy field, and she felt her pulse pick up in her throat, a fast, visible flutter she was certain he could see even from that distance.
"Douglas," he said, without looking away from her. "Take the drill. Shield walls till their arms give out."
"With pleasure, me Laird." Douglas grinned, already climbing the fence. "Right, ye sorry lot, form a line!"
Finn dropped his practice sword into the mud and walked toward her, unhurried, each step deliberate in a way that made her fingers curl around the wooden rail until the grain of it pressed white lines into her palm.
"D'ye enjoy watchin' Highland men beat each other bloody, Claire?" he asked, stopping on the other side of the fence.
"I enjoy watching ye terrorize them." She lifted her chin, aiming for teasing and landing somewhere closer to breathless. "Though I confess, after last night, very little startles me anymore."
His eyebrows lifted a fraction, and the corner of his mouth pulled sideways, not quite a smile, more the ghost of one he hadn't decided to let through yet. "Ye should be by the fire."
"I was going mad by the fire." She gripped the rail tighter, needing somewhere to put her hands that wasn't him. "I needed the sky."
"The sky's grey."
"It's better than the library ceiling."
He came closer, close enough that the heat of him reached her even through the rain, an absurd, impossible thing, warmth radiating off a man standing in a downpour. "Ye slept short."
"As did ye. Ye left before the sun was even up."
"War council."
"And a training ring to conquer, apparently." She glanced pointedly at the mud caked up his trousers.
"Demons to wrestle," he said, low, and the words landed somewhere just beneath her ribs.
I am one of those demons. I am the complication he cannae afford right now, and still I keep walking toward the fire.
"Did ye win?" she asked softly.
"I never win. I only survive the round." He flexed his bruised knuckles, gaze dropping to them for a moment.
"Ye're bleedin'."
He hadn't noticed the shallow cut at his collarbone until she said it, just visible above the open collar of his shirt, a thin dark line against wet skin. Without thinking, she reached a hand toward it over the rail.
"A scratch," he said, though he didn't pull away.
"It should be cleaned properly."
"I've taken worse wounds shavin'." A tired smile tugged at one corner of his mouth, and her stomach dipped the way it had the first time she'd jumped a fence on horseback as a girl, that same lurching, giddy drop.
"Ye are impossibly stubborn."
"A requirement of the position." He caught her wrist before her fingers reached his skin, his grip warm and sure, and instead of pushing her hand away, he drew it down slowly until her palm rested flat over the wild drum of his heart.
She could feel it hammering under her fingers, fast and uneven, nothing like the calm control on his face. "Ye're shiverin', lass."
"I'm nae cold." It was, perhaps, the least convincing lie she had ever told, and her voice cracked slightly on the last word to prove it.
"Ye're a terrible liar," he said, and she recognized her own words handed back to her from the night before.
"And ye're too observant."
"I observe what matters to me." His thumb moved slowly over the racing pulse at her wrist, back and forth, unhurried, and her breath caught somewhere high in her throat.
Her tongue darted out to wet her lips, a helpless motion, and she sensed his gaze drop and fix there, his jaw clenched as if by restraint. He leaned over the rail, and the world narrowed to the charged space between them, the rain, wet wood, and the heat of his skin bleeding into hers.
"Ye shouldnae look at me like that," he said, voice rough.
"Like what?" She didn't move away.
He didn't answer with words. His free hand braced against the fence near her waist, caging her without touching.
His gaze dropped to her mouth, lingering long enough to make her breathe stutter.
The rain kept falling, cold and running down her neck, unnoticed.
Behind him, she heard Douglas barking orders, wood striking wood, a world that hadn't stopped while hers did.
"Finn," she whispered, and it was half a plea and half a warning.
He tilted his head, close enough now that his breath was warm against her cold, rain-slicked skin, close enough that she could count the individual drops of rain caught in his dark lashes.
His mouth found hers before either of them decided it should, slow at first, then deepening the moment she made a small sound against his lips and curled her fingers into his shirt.
“Finn…”
The horn split the air, interrupting the moment.
"Riders approaching!" the watchtower guard bellowed, and the iron warning bell began to toll a heartbeat later, harsh and relentless.
Finn went rigid. Whatever had been building between them shattered instantly, replaced by the cold, coiled alertness of a man already calculating threats.
He stepped back from the fence, and the loss of his heat hit her like a physical thing, a sudden emptiness where warmth had been a second before.
"Sound the alarm!" Douglas roared, abandoning the drill, real steel already in his hand.
"Enemies?" Finn shouted up to the tower, snatching his leather cuirass from the fence post.
"Nay, me Laird! They bear the stag! Allied riders!"
"Open the gates!"
He turned back to her, and the man who had leaned over that fence a moment ago was gone, replaced by the Laird. "Go inside, Claire."
"Finn…"
"Go inside." No room in it for argument. He was already pulling the leather over his head, already half turned toward the gates, already a hundred miles from the fence and the rain and whatever had almost happened between them.
She held his gaze a moment longer, her chest still tight from wanting something that hadn't come, then wrapped the sodden shawl tighter and turned back toward the keep. She didn't look back. She didn't trust herself to.