CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The practice blade struck too hard. The young warrior opposite Malcolm staggered back over the churned grit of the yard, then caught himself against a training post, which shuddered under his weight.
Malcolm lowered his sword.
“Again.”
The lad swallowed. “Me laird?—”
“Again.”
The word cut sharper than the blade had done.
Around them, the training yard had fallen into a wary hush.
The men shifted uneasily where they stood.
Their laird’s temper remained leashed, but every man present could feel its heat.
Malcolm saw the stiffness in their shoulders, the way the younger warriors watched his hands before his face, the way the older ones kept their expressions carefully emptied, as if they had weathered storms enough to know silence was sometimes the strongest roof.
“Yer guard drops when ye turn,” he told the lad. “If that had been steel, I would be speaking over yer corpse.”
“Aye, me laird.”
“Then stop offering yer ribs tae any fool with a blade.”
The young man flushed, set his jaw, and lifted the practice sword again. Malcolm attacked. Steel rang out across the yard. Each blow was clean. Each carried more force than instruction required.
He knew it on the third strike. So did Tavish.
Malcolm stepped back before the lad stumbled again. Control returned, not easily, but because he dragged it back by the throat.
“Enough,” he said. “Pair off. Shields tae the left. Blades tae the right. Again from the opening stance.”
The men moved at once, too quickly to be casual. Tavish, who had been leaning near the gate with his arms folded and one boot braced against the wall, pushed himself upright. His usual look of easy amusement had gone very still.
“That was lively,” he pointed out
Malcolm did not turn. “Train or leave.”
“I would train, but I am fond of me bones remaining in their current arrangement.”
“Then leave.”
Instead, Tavish came farther into the yard, just like Malcolm expected him to.
“Ye are pushing them harder than usual.”
“They need it.”
“Some of them, aye. Nae all. And nae like this.”
Malcolm lifted another practice blade from the rack and examined the edge for splintering. “If ye have discovered tenderness, brother, take it tae the nursery.”
Tavish gave a short laugh, but there was no humor in it. “This isnae about tenderness.”
“Nae?”
“Nae. It is about Ardbrack. It is about Drummond’s men slipping near enough tae touch what ye consider yers.”
The wooden sword stilled in Malcolm’s hand.
Tavish’s gaze did not waver. “It is about Grizel.”
Her name moved through the yard like a struck bell. Malcolm turned.
“Stop speaking.”
The command cracked across the training ground.
Men stilled again. A sword lowered. A shield dipped.
Even the horses beyond the far fence tossed their heads at the sudden change in the air.
Tavish did not step back, though any sensible man would have done so.
But Tavish had never suffered from an excess of sense where Malcolm was concerned.
His brother’s eyes moved briefly to Malcolm’s hand. Malcolm looked down. His fingers had closed around the practice blade so hard that the leather binding creaked. He released it, too late, the yard had seen.
For one dangerous moment, Malcolm felt the old black pressure rise behind his ribs, the urge to silence and command. It came hot and fast, the same old warning he knew better than his own pulse.
Control, he thought. Control, damn ye.
He set the blade down very carefully.
“Continue,” he ordered the men.
No one moved. Then a soft voice came from near the archway.
“Is this what continuing looks like?”
Malcolm closed his eyes. When he opened them, Grizel was stepping into the yard. She wore a dark cloak despite the hour, with the hood fallen back from her hair. The healer’s orders had clearly meant nothing to her beyond a set of suggestions to be admired and ignored.
She walked carefully, favoring her injured leg only enough to prove she had some sense of pain and not enough to satisfy him.
Eilidh lingered in the shadow of the arch, looking as though she had attempted to stop her and had discovered, as many did, that Grizel Calder was easier to advise than to direct.
“Ye should be resting,” Malcolm reminded her.
“And ye should be training men, nae frightening them intae forgetting what they already ken.”
One of the younger warriors stared hard at the ground. Tavish’s mouth almost curved.
Malcolm’s jaw tightened. “Ye should return inside.”
“Nae.”
The answer was quiet.
She crossed the yard until she stood near him, close enough that he could see the faint shadow of pain beneath her eyes and the determined color she had forced into her cheeks.
The sight of it struck some raw place in him.
He saw her pale beneath the fallen stall.
He felt her tremble against him on the ride back.
He heard the small catch in her breath when the healer touched her bruised leg.
And he kissed her afterward. The memory came with appalling force: her hand at his jaw, her mouth soft and certain beneath his, her voice telling him he was not his father.
Malcolm looked away first. Grizel did not.
“I am nae something ye need tae fix,” she spoke. “Nor something ye must guard so closely that I have nae room left tae breathe.”
His hand moved before he could stop it, reaching for the hilt of the blade he had set down. His fingers closed around it, not to raise it or to strike, but only to hold something, to have control of something.
Her gaze dropped to his hand. So did Tavish’s. Malcolm let go at once. The wooden sword settled back upon the rack with a dull knock that seemed to echo too long.
“I know ye were frightened,” Grizel continued as she approached him. Her voice lowered, as the other men pretended to do anything else other than listen.
“I wasnae frightened.”
Tavish made a sound that might have been disbelief if he had been less fond of survival.
Grizel’s expression did not change. “Then what word would ye prefer? Annoyed? Mildly inconvenienced? Temporarily displeased by falling timber?”
Malcolm’s eyes cut to hers. She lifted her brows. Even hurt, tired, and too pale for his liking, she met him blade to blade with nothing but words and that infuriating composure of hers.
“I prefer,” he replied, “that ye obey the healer and return tae bed.”
“And I prefer that ye stop acting as though me injury were proof that ye failed at something nae man could have prevented.”
The words landed and he turned aside.
Tavish stepped forward then, with all softness gone from his face. “She is right.”
Malcolm didn’t look at him. “That is becoming a tedious phrase.”
“It will become less tedious when ye listen.”
“Tavish.”
“Nae.” His brother’s voice sharpened. “Ye may command the yard, the ships, the guards, and every fool who eats yer bread, but ye dinnae get tae command truth intae silence because it troubles ye.”
The yard seemed to shrink around them. Grizel stood very still. Malcolm felt her attention like a hand laid upon his chest.
Tavish nodded toward her. “This isnae how a man behaves over a political arrangement.”
Malcolm’s expression went cold. Tavish saw it and continued anyway.
“Ye can call it duty if it steadies ye. Protection if it sounds cleaner. Strategy if ye want to dress it in council words. But I was on that road yesterday. I saw ye carry her out of Ardbrack as if the village could burn so long as she was breathing. I saw the look on yer face when she couldnae stand.”
“That is enough.”
“It isnae.”
Malcolm took one step toward him. The men in the yard froze. Tavish did not. He only held Malcolm’s stare with the reckless courage of a brother who had spent his whole life trusting that the man before him would never truly turn his strength against him.
That trust struck Malcolm harder than accusation. He stopped. His hands were fists at his sides. Slowly, he opened them. Tavish saw that, too. His expression changed, aching with a knowledge neither of them had ever put into speech.
“Ye crossed the line days ago,” Tavish said quietly. “Mayhap before that. Mayhap the moment she stepped on tae yer ship and made every man aboard look dull by comparison.”
Despite herself, Grizel let out the faintest breath. Under any other circumstance, Malcolm might have told his brother to cease making poetry out of disaster. He said nothing.
Tavish turned his attention back to him. “Ye arenae acting like a man waiting tae marry for land or peace or Crown convenience. Ye are acting like a man already bound and angry that nae one had the courtesy tae ask his permission.”
Malcolm looked toward the far table where reports lay pinned beneath a stone, as if ink and orders might give him ground to stand on.
“The prisoners need questioning,” he said.
Tavish’s mouth tightened. “There it is.”
“And the village must be watched.”
“Aye.”
“The western road doubled before nightfall.”
“Aye, all very useful.”
Malcolm reached for the top report. “Then make yerself useful.”
“Malcolm.”
He did not turn.
“Brother.”
That did it not because of the word itself, but because of the way Tavish said it, infusing it with the memory of childhood in it, of two boys in a house where footsteps could change the weather, of Tavish smaller and afraid, of Malcolm learning too young that standing between danger and what one loved did not always save it.
Malcolm’s throat tightened.
“Dinnae,” he said.
Tavish came no closer. “I ken what ye fear.”
“Ye ken naething.”
“I ken enough.” Tavish glanced once at Grizel, then back at him. “I ken ye think wanting something gives it power tae ruin ye. I ken ye think holding too tightly makes ye him.”
The air left the yard. Malcolm turned very slowly.
“Stop.” The word was low.
Tavish’s face had gone pale, but he did not retreat.
“Ye arenae him.”
Malcolm’s jaw worked once. “I said stop.”
For a long moment, Tavish looked as though he might press further.
Perhaps he wanted to. Perhaps love made men stupid in different ways.
Then Grizel moved, only enough that the hem of her cloak brushed Malcolm’s boot.
Her nearness reached him. The worst of the fury ebbed, leaving behind something colder and more difficult to bear.
Tavish saw that as well. He exhaled and stepped back. “Aye. I will stop.”
No one in the yard seemed to breathe. Tavish sheathed the small blade he had not drawn, though his hand had hovered near it without thought. His gaze moved between Malcolm and Grizel, taking in more than Malcolm wished any man to see.
“But I ken what ye arenae saying,” Tavish said. “And so does she.”
Grizel’s face did not change, but her eyes lowered for a heartbeat. Malcolm hated him for that. He loved him, too. The combination was intolerable.
Tavish’s usual grin returned faintly, but it was weary now. “Try nae tae break the whole yard before ye admit it.”
Then he turned and walked out beneath the archway. The men resumed only after he had gone, and even then cautiously, as if every clash of practice steel had been wrapped in cloth.
Malcolm stood motionless, with the grey sky pressing down upon him.
Grizel remained near. He could feel her without looking.
That was the trouble. He knew the shape of her silence now.
He knew when it was anger, when thought, when pain carefully folded away.
This silence held all three and something else besides.
Concern.
“I didnae come here tae make a spectacle,” he heard her say.
“That is fortunate, since ye have made several without intending tae.”
Her mouth almost moved. “Was that meant tae be humor?”
“It was meant tae make ye go inside.”
“Poorly done, then.”
He looked at her despite himself, which was a mistake. Her hair undulating in the wind, her face more drawn than it ought to be, her posture too proud for a woman who should have been resting. She had every right to demand answers from him, to press, to turn Tavish’s words into a weapon.
She did none of it.
She simply stood there, watching him as though he were not a danger to be escaped or a puzzle to be solved, but a man who had been wounded and had mistaken the scar for law.
“I am nae trying tae trap ye intae saying what ye dinnae wish tae say,” she told him.
His laugh was short and without amusement. “Ye have a gift for doing so without trying.”
“Then perhaps ye have a gift for hiding things badly.”
“I have hidden them well enough for years.”
“Aye,” she said softly. “From people who didnae ken where tae look.”
The words struck him in the chest. He turned away, because he had to. The yard, the men, the reports, the castle wall… anything was safer than her face. The practice blades rang out behind them, hollow and distant.
At last, she stepped back. And he realized that her stepping back had nothing to do with what he wanted, it was all her, she chose to give him the space he had not known how to ask for.
“I will go inside,” she told him. “Nae because ye told me tae, but because if Eilidh finds me here much longer, she will blame ye and I dislike being the cause of injustice.”
She crossed the yard with measured steps, hiding the pain in her leg as best she could and failing just enough to make his hands curl again at his sides.
Eilidh met her at the arch, scolded her in a whisper, and took her arm with the brisk authority of a woman who feared no laird when a patient had disobeyed.
Malcolm watched until Grizel vanished into the shadowed passage. Only then did he realize the yard had quieted again. He turned back to his men. Every gaze dropped at once.
“Again,” he ordered, but this time his voice was not sharp, just tired.
The blades lifted. The training resumed. Steel rang beneath the grey morning sky, but Malcolm’s attention remained fixed on the empty archway long after Grizel had gone.