CHAPTER THIRTEEN
They continued walking in silence, but the quiet didn’t last long. Grizel took the wrong turn almost at once, but Malcolm let her lead the way. The corridor narrowed too sharply, angling away from the passage that would have led them back toward the courtyard.
He ought to have told her. He ought to have corrected her before she found herself in the narrow storage passage where barrels of salt fish and sealed casks were stacked high against the stone, but all he wanted to do was let her lead and observe her.
He watched the sway of her skirts, the proud line of her back, and the loosened strands of hair brushing her nape where the pins had begun to fail.
His.
The thought struck too low and too fierce. Malcolm’s jaw tightened.
Not yet.
Then footsteps sounded nearby. Grizel turned at the same instant he moved.
He caught her lightly by the waist and drew her behind the stacked barrels, into the narrow spill of shadow between casks and wall.
She made the smallest sound of surprise, and then she was there, caught between stone and his body, close enough that he felt the quick rise of her breath.
He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t just turned back with her, they were doing nothing wrong, there was nothing to hide. But he felt like he was in a trance like state, and all he wanted was to be near her.
Firelight from the corridor barely reached them. It touched one side of her face and left the other in shadow. Her eyes were lifted to his, wide and bright in the dimness, and her mouth, God help him, was parted as though she had been about to protest and forgotten how.
He had his hand still at her waist. He did not remove it.
The heat of her came through the fabric of her gown, warm and living beneath his palm. She was tense, but not pushing him away. Her fingers had caught at the front of his coat, perhaps for balance, perhaps in alarm, and now they remained there, curled lightly into the cloth.
The servant’s footsteps faded.
Neither of them moved.
Malcolm felt every inch of the space between them, because there was almost none.
The rise of her breasts with each breath brushed against him.
The faint scent of salt, smoke, and woman tested his control.
He could see the flutter of her pulse at her throat.
He wanted to put his mouth there with a violence that nearly shamed him.
Fourteen days.
There were only fourteen days until she stood before his clan and became his wife in full, fourteen days until the nearness of her would no longer be accident, mistake, or shelter from passing servants.
The thought tore through him with dark, merciless force.
Grizel swallowed. “Did ye build this castle tae confuse guests?”
Her voice was quiet, but not steady.
Malcolm’s gaze dropped to her mouth, and they looked more kissable than ever. “Guests are nae meant tae wander.”
Her eyes flashed, even in the dark. “Then perhaps hosts ought tae make themselves useful and give directions.”
“I did.”
“When?”
“When I followed ye.”
That should have annoyed her. He saw it begin with the lift of her chin and the quick spark of indignation. Then, from somewhere beyond the corridor, Tavish’s laughter carried faintly through the stone, followed by some teasing remark too distant to catch.
Grizel laughed once despite herself. It was soft, brief, and unwilling.
It almost ruined him.
He watched her mouth curve and then try to recover itself. He watched the brightness move through her face before pride could shutter it. Something possessive and deeply satisfied unfurled in him.
Soon, she would not be a guest wandering his passages.
Soon, she would know this castle’s turns, its hidden stairs, its cold corners and warm rooms. Soon, she would pass through these halls not as a stranger, but as a woman who belonged here.
His people would learn her step. His household would bend around her presence. His chamber…
He stopped the thought too late. His hand tightened at her waist. Grizel’s laughter died. Her eyes returned to his. The air changed.
It thickened, sharpened, and drew close around them until the distant celebration seemed impossibly far away.
Malcolm could feel the battle inside himself then, brutal and silent.
Every disciplined part of him ordered distance.
Every other part wanted to lower his head and take the mouth she kept so stubborn and proud, to feel whether she would go soft beneath him or fight him first.
Worse, he wanted both.
“Malcolm,” she whispered.
It was not a warning. That made it more dangerous.
His name on her lips moved through him like flame catching dry wood. He bent a fraction before he could stop himself. Her breath touched his mouth. Her fingers tightened in his coat, and for one suspended instant he thought she would pull him closer.
He would have gone to her. But she did not and some last, savage piece of his control held.
He turned his head just enough that his mouth passed near her cheek instead of claiming hers. Even that almost undid him. Her skin was warm. Her breath shivered. His lips hovered near her ear, not touching, but close enough that the smallest movement would make it so.
“Dinnae look at me like that,” he said roughly.
Her voice came thinner than before. “Like what?”
“Like ye dinnae ken what ye are doing tae me.”
She went still. Malcolm closed his eyes for one brief, punishing moment.
He could not remember the last time he had been this close to losing command of himself, not in battle, not in rage, not in any storm that had tried to break his ship apart beneath him.
Only here, in the dark, with Grizel Calder trapped between him and the wall, looking at him as if she were frightened not of what he might do, but of what she might allow.
He forced his hand from her waist and set it against the stone beside her head. It was not enough distance, but it was all he could manage.
He could still feel the narrow passage between them, the darkness of it, the closeness, the heat of her waist beneath his hand. He felt, most of all, the discipline it had taken not to do what every reckless part of him had wanted.
When she lifted her gaze to meet his, only the faint color high in her cheeks betrayed her.
“Me laird?” she addressed him, but the title was too formal after the way she had breathed his name in the dark. That was a signal for him to retreat, whether he wanted to or not.
Malcolm looked at her. “Aye?”
She pouted at first, as if she disliked the request even before it was ever spoken. “I require help returning tae me chamber.”
Something in him eased at the admission. “Dae ye?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Dinnae make me regret asking.”
“I wouldnae dare,” he answered, pressing his hand to his chest.
“Ye would,” she frowned playfully.
“Aye,” he grinned. “Likely.”
He assumed she first fought to hide that smile which eventually won, and shone upon him like the morning sun.
“I dinnae yet ken the way,” she explained more quietly.
Malcolm nodded and turned down the corridor. “Then come.”
She fell into step beside him, the red cord rubbing against her wrist. Neither spoke.
Their footsteps moved through the castle with the muted rhythm of people who had walked too close to danger and were pretending they had not.
Torches burned in their sconces. Somewhere distant, the celebration carried on, laughter and music softened by stone.
Then, he heard Grizel speak. “Yer people look up tae ye.”
Malcolm glanced at her. “Is that praise?”
She paused. “It is an observation.”
“Yer observations often carry a blade,” he mused.
“So dae yer answers, me laird.”
That almost pulled a smile from him. They passed beneath a low archway and turned toward the quieter wing where her chamber had been prepared. Grizel looked at the walls, the doors, the shadowed alcoves, as if learning the bones of the place already.
“Ye are hard on them,” she pointed out.
“A laird who is soft gets men killed,” he added.
She continued, more carefully. “Hard, but nae careless. I have seen that already. The sailors on the dock, the healer ye sent, and the way the servants move without flinching when ye speak, though they hurry all the same. They trust the shape of yer temper, I think.”
Malcolm’s stride did not falter, but the words struck deeper than he expected. Most people saw the command, the violence when it was needed, the silence and the reputation.
Grizel, after only days, had begun looking beneath it. That was dangerous, too.
“Ye have been busy judging me house,” he told her, raising an amused eyebrow.
“I have been busy deciding whether I have flung myself from one danger intae another.”
His jaw tightened. “And have ye?”
Her answer did not come at once. They reached the turn outside her corridor, where the noise of the celebration faded almost entirely. The quiet there was different from the storage passage, less urgent but no less charged. Malcolm felt the space between their bodies like a living thing.
“At first,” she admitted, “I thought perhaps I had.”
He looked at her. She met his gaze, proud as ever, but there was something more fragile beneath it now, something honest enough to make him still.
“And now?”
“I think,” she said softly, “that danger is nae always the same as cruelty.”
Malcolm had no answer. He had lived so long making himself useful through danger that he had nearly forgotten anyone might separate the two. That she had done so unsettled him more than suspicion would have. Suspicion he knew how to meet. Trust, even the beginning of it, was far harder.
He turned away first and resumed walking. “Ye should be slower tae decide such things.”
“I am nae deciding yet,” she replied. “I am noticing.”
“Aye,” he muttered, hiding a smirk. “That is worse.”
This time she did smile, albeit faintly. He saw it from the corner of his eye and felt it as if she had touched him.
When they reached her chamber door, Malcolm stopped. He did not step too close. He did not allow himself that mistake again. Still, the doorway seemed narrow, and the air between them too aware of what had already happened and what had almost happened.
“This is yers,” he told her.
These were her rooms, separate from his rooms. They were to have separate doors, separate beds, separate nights. All of it was temporary now, measured not in walls or distance, but in days.
Fourteen of them.
Grizel seemed to feel the same thought pass through the silence, for her gaze dropped briefly, then lifted to his again with a wariness that did nothing to hide the heat beneath it.
“Thank ye,” she smiled.
It should have been simple. It was not.
Malcolm inclined his head. “Sleep, Lady Grizel.”
“Ye as well, me laird,” she replied. “And I dinnae mean it like an order, but rather, as advice.”
A breath of amusement escaped her, soft and unwilling. It nearly drew him closer. Instead, Malcolm stepped back.
He left before he could change his mind, before he could reach for her wrist, her waist and her mouth. He walked away through the dim corridor with his hands empty and his control barely intact.
Behind him, her door closed softly. The sound followed him as he walked away, and the silence left in its place did not feel like peace.
It felt like waiting.