CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The morning after the storm, the castle woke like a wounded animal. Malcolm was up before the first grey light had properly broken over the sea. Grizel, who slept on the bed, while he himself slept on the sofa in the corner, was already gone.
By the time he left his chamber, men were already moving through the yard with timber balanced on shoulders, ropes slung over arms, and their tools clanging at belts.
Rain still dripped from broken gutters and spilled from the edges of rooflines in thin, bitter streams. The air smelled of wet stone, torn earth, smoke, and salt.
Somewhere above the east passage, a section of slate had come loose in the night, and near the outer wall, two men were clearing fallen masonry from a place where the wind had torn through old weakness and made it visible.
The castle had held… barely.
Malcolm moved through the damage with the hard focus of habit.
He gave orders at the stable arch. He sent men to check the lower cove.
He spoke with Iain about the night watch, then crossed the yard to inspect the weakened wall near the storage rooms. Every matter touched another.
Roof damage meant stores might be spoiled.
Broken walls meant easy entry. Loose stones meant injury.
Drummond’s watchers, if they were near enough, would see weakness if weakness was allowed to remain.
So it would not remain.
“Reinforce that beam before ye touch the slate,” he told one man. “If it drops, ye will lose the whole corner.”
“Aye, me laird.”
“And send two men tae the north path. Nae one uses this weather as cover tae come near unseen.”
Another nod followed, and another order was carried.
Malcolm turned toward the lower yard and stopped. Grizel was standing near the damaged storehouse with her skirts lifted slightly from the mud. Her hair was pinned too hastily to last, the red cord still at her wrist beneath the cuff of her sleeve.
For one brief, intrusive moment, he saw her as she had been the night before, in his chamber, with firelight on her face and her mouth beneath his.
Her hands tightening in his shirt as if she had forgotten every reason to keep distance between them.
Heat moved through him, insistent and inconvenient.
Then she turned her head and began giving orders. Malcolm went still.
At first, he thought she was asking a question.
Then one of the younger men shifted a stack of boards at her direction.
Another hauled a basket of tools closer to the wall she indicated.
Fenella stood nearby with her arms folded and an expression that suggested she had decided to tolerate the world only because Grizel had temporarily organized it.
Grizel pointed toward the roof. “Nae there first. If the rain comes again before nightfall, the grain store matters more than the outer shed. Cover that opening, then send whatever dry cloth can be spared tae the shelves below.”
The man hesitated. “But Sorley said tae clear the fallen stones?—”
“And the stones will be arranged while the grain spoils?” Grizel asked.
He blinked.
Fenella gave a low grunt. “She is right.”
That settled it. The man turned and called for two others.
Malcolm watched as Grizel moved into the center of the work as if she had been born there.
She did not raise her voice. She did not plead for attention.
She simply looked, understood, and acted.
She sent boys carrying small tools away from the heaviest work, redirected two stronger men toward the unstable beam, asked for counts from the linen room, and told one servant to fetch sacks before the lower stores grew damp.
The men followed, as men usually did when they recognized organized authority in place of inconsequential orders.
Malcolm’s chest felt suddenly constricted. He expected her to be clever. He had known that already. He expected pride, courage, stubbornness, and all those qualities that made her as troublesome as she was compelling.
But this was different. This was not Grizel defending herself in his hall, or sparring with his men, or speaking boldly because danger had cornered her.
This was Grizel entering the workings of his world and finding her place before anyone need grant her one.
She did not hover at the edges waiting to be given space. She made herself necessary.
That should have pleased him. It did.
It should have worried him. It did.
He crossed the yard toward her. She noticed him only when his shadow cut across the muddy ground beside her.
“Me laird,” she said, far too calmly for a woman he had kissed breathless only hours before.
His jaw tightened at the title.
“Lady Grizel.”
Her eyes flickered once, quick and bright, as though she heard what he did not say. Then she looked back toward the damaged storehouse. “The western shelves will take water if the covering isnae fixed before evening. The roof above the passage can wait longer.”
“I see that.”
“And there arenae enough hands where they are needed.”
“I see that, too.”
For a moment, they stood too close amid the noise of the yard. Around them, men carried timber, women hurried with bundled cloth, and hammer blows rang against wet stone.
Malcolm looked at the workers she had already set into motion. “Thank ye for taking control.”
The words were brief. Still, Grizel’s face changed.
“Ye are welcome,” she smiled.
He wanted to say more. He wanted to ask whether she had slept well, whether she regretted the kiss, whether she had spent the morning carefully not thinking of his chamber as he had spent it carefully not thinking of her there.
Instead, he turned to Iain, who was calling his name from the gate. Duty again… always duty.
“I will return,” Malcolm told her.
“Of course,” she retorted playfully. “I wasnae waiting tae be supervised.”
“Nae,” he said, looking once more at the work unfolding around her. “I can see that.”
Then he left before the words could turn into something softer.
The morning lengthened. Malcolm moved between roof and gate, harbor and hall. He sent word to the patrols, checked the weakened outer stones, and gave orders for fresh watch rotations. Yet no matter where he went, his attention returned to the storehouse yard… to her.
He saw her in flashes between duties. Grizel was taking inventory from Eilidh with a focused frown.
Grizel was stepping out of the path of a heavy beam without seeming to interrupt her own sentence.
Grizel was accepting a damp cloak from one of the women only to pass it to a shivering boy instead.
Grizel was arguing with Fenella and, by some miracle, winning.
Each glimpse lingered longer than the last.
By midday, he found his way back to her as if by accident.
She was standing beside a half-repaired wall, studying the stacked stone with mud at the hem of her gown and a streak of dust near her cheek.
She looked tired, though she would sooner have challenged the sea to single combat than admit it.
A small group of workers waited for instruction while two men held a timber support in place.
Malcolm stopped beside her. “That brace willnae hold if ye set it so low.”
She looked at him. “I ken.”
Of course she did.
He took the other end of the support from one of the men and lifted it higher. “Here.”
The worker glanced between them. “Me laird, should we move it tae the outer side instead?”
Grizel opened her mouth, but Malcolm spoke first.
“Nae. Dae as Lady Grizel told ye. She wants the inner strain held before ye mend the facing stone.”
The man nodded at once. “Aye, me laird.”
Malcolm’s gaze did not leave the timber. “And next time, ask her tae repeat the order before ye assume it wrong.”
A small silence followed.
The worker flushed. “Aye. Me lady.”
Grizel said nothing, but Malcolm felt her look at him. He kept his attention on the brace because looking back would have been too much, and the moment was worse than tender. It was recognition, plain and practical, offered in front of his people without ceremony.
They worked side by side after that. No announcement was made.
No decision was spoken aloud. Malcolm simply remained, and Grizel simply allowed it.
Together, they shifted men from one task to another, checked the angle of the support, moved salvageable stone from broken rubble, and sorted what could be repaired before nightfall from what must be secured temporarily.
Their shoulders brushed once when both reached for the same length of rope. Neither mentioned it. Both noticed.
The yard seemed to move like a living thing around them.
Malcolm gave fewer orders than usual. Grizel gave more. He watched the way the men began to look to both of them, not evenly perhaps, not yet, but naturally enough to make something in him go quiet.
This is how it might be.
The thought came without permission. She didn’t need to be merely a wife in his hall, or merely a name to satisfy the Crown. She could be the woman beside him.
At one point, a young worker dragged a bundle of warped boards toward the wrong doorway.
“The dry stack,” Grizel called. “Nae the burn pile.”
He looked confused. “These are split, me lady.”
“Nae through the grain. They can be cut for braces.”
The man hesitated, then glanced at Malcolm as if seeking the true order.
Malcolm’s temper stirred. He stepped forward. “Did ye hear her?”
“Aye, me laird.”
“Then why are ye looking at me?”
The man went red. Grizel’s head turned toward Malcolm sharply.
He kept his voice even, but every man nearby heard it. “Lady Grizel gave ye the order. Follow it.”
The worker bowed his head. “Aye, me lady.”
He hurried away with the boards.
Grizel waited until he was out of earshot before she spoke. “Thank ye.”
Malcolm looked toward the wall, where rainwater still darkened the stone. “Ye were doing me job well. He couldnae see that as plainly as I dae.”
She went still beside him. The answer had been too blunt, too revealing, perhaps. But it was true, and he had no better one ready.
After a moment, she smiled. “I was merely helping.”
“Aye.”
“That is not the same.”
“It can be.”
The words settled between them. Malcolm felt her gaze on his profile, felt the questions she did not ask.
He did not turn to meet them. If he did, he would remember the warmth of her mouth.
He would remember the way she had asked where she was meant to stand, and how easily the answer had come, even though he had spent his life refusing to need anyone there.
Beside me.
A hammer struck somewhere nearby. A gull cried overhead. Wind moved over the open yard, carrying the scent of wet earth and smoke.
Still, neither of them stepped away.
Grizel stood close enough that the sleeve of her gown brushed his arm.
She was close enough that the red cord at her wrist touched the back of his hand when she shifted.
Malcolm looked down at it, at that strip of color against her skin, and felt the fierce, dangerous pull of everything that had not yet happened but already felt inevitable.
In days, she would stand with him before priest and clan. In days, she would be expected to stand with him in all things.
The thought should have been heavy, and it was, but beneath the weight of it lay something far more dangerous.
Want.
It was not want only for her body, though God knew that was trouble enough. But for this, for her beside him in the yard, her voice carrying over his people and her presence fitting into the life he had built so fiercely alone.
He had wanted women before. He had never wanted a future with one.
That realization landed hard enough to make him draw a slow breath.
Grizel noticed.
“Are ye displeased?” she asked in a whisper.
Malcolm looked at her then. Her face was pale with fatigue, her hair was wind-loosened, and her gown was marked with mud and dust. She looked nothing like a courtly bride and everything like a woman who had stepped into a damaged morning and made it answer to her.
“Nae,” he said.
Her eyes searched his. He gave her no more than that. He could not, but perhaps she heard what he could not say.
Her expression softened, only briefly, before pride returned to guard it.
“Then we should move the last of the boards before the rain begins again,” she told him.
“Aye,” Malcolm nodded. “We should.”
They turned back to the work together.
And for the rest of the afternoon, no one in the yard seemed foolish enough to question whether Lady Grizel Calder had the right to give orders beneath MacAulay walls.