CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Hold it as if ye mean tae keep it.”
Grizel looked down at the practice sword in Malcolm’s hand, then back up at him with the grave patience of a woman preparing to endure an unnecessary lecture.
“I do mean tae keep it.”
“That,” Malcolm said, “is precisely what concerns me.”
They stood in the lower yard behind the old storehouse, where the castle wall broke the worst of the sea wind and the noise of the main training ground came only faintly through stone and distance.
He chose a more hidden corner, and told himself he had chosen it because Grizel did not need half the clan watching her as she attempted to learn to defend herself.
All of that was true. It was not, however, the whole truth.
The whole truth stood before him in a dark gown chosen for practicality and ease of movement, with her hair braided over one shoulder and her chin lifted as though the wooden blade had personally offended her.
He had brought her here because he could not bear the thought of her being cornered again with nothing but courage in her hands.
“Feet first,” he told her.
“I have feet.”
“I had noticed.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Then why begin there?”
“Because ye are holding yourself like a lady at supper, nae a woman who means tae avoid being killed.”
He stepped closer and pointed toward the ground. Grizel’s sleeve brushed the back of his hand when she shifted, and Malcolm’s entire attention gathered there like a man watching a spark land near dry tinder.
“Widen yer stance,” he ordered.
She looked down and moved one foot half an inch.
“More.”
She moved it another fraction, though with the air of a woman granting a concession to lesser minds. Her skirts shifted about her boots, revealing a flash of ankle before the hem settled again. Malcolm forced his eyes away and came to stand at her side.
“Weight here.” He touched two fingers lightly to her hip, then removed them at once. “Nae all in yer heels. If ye lean back, ye fall back.”
“I am nae going tae fall.”
“Every person who falls says so first.”
“I have excellent balance.”
“I have seen ye nearly slip on wet deck boards, trip over a rope, misjudge a stair, and walk into a chair leg because ye were too busy arguing with Tavish tae watch where ye were going.”
Her face warmed at once. “That chair was badly placed.”
“It had been in the same place for forty years.”
“Then it was long overdue for correction.”
Malcolm stared at her. She looked back at him, entirely unrepentant. He should not have laughed. He did not, precisely. But breath escaped him, and that was bad enough.
Her expression softened in victory.
Dangerous creature.
“Lift the blade,” he instructed.
She did, but too high.
“Nae. Lower.”
She lowered it… again, too far.
“Not at yer knees.”
“I was adjusting.”
“Badly.”
Before he could stop her, she took the weapon fully from his hand and swung it in a sharp, experimental arc.
The blade cut through empty air with enthusiasm and no judgment whatsoever.
Grizel’s wrist turned wrong, her balance followed after it, and for one long, ridiculous heartbeat, Malcolm watched his future wife attempt to disarm herself with all the confidence of a general ordering cavalry.
He caught her by the waist before momentum carried her sideways. The wooden sword struck the dirt with a dull thud.
Grizel’s hands had landed against his chest. Her braid had swung forward over her shoulder, and her breath came once, quickly, against the open edge of his collar. She looked not frightened but offended, as though gravity had shown poor manners.
Malcolm looked down at her.
“That,” he said evenly, “was nae defense.”
Her fingers tightened once against his shirt before she withdrew them.
“I was testing the weight.”
“The weight tested ye back.”
She stepped out of his hold with as much dignity as could be managed by a woman who had nearly conquered herself. “Give it here.”
“Nae.”
“Malcolm.”
“Nae.”
“I understand now.”
He looked at the blade lying at their feet, then at her. “Ye understood before, as I recall.”
“A moment ago I understood in theory. Now I understand in practice.”
He sighed. “Show me yer hands.”
She lifted them with faint impatience, palms open. Malcolm retrieved the practice sword and placed the grip into her hands properly this time, closing her fingers one by one around the leather-bound hilt.
At least, he meant to close them one by one. But her hands were small inside his, and he felt a living warmth that travelled under his skin before he could stop it.
“Here,” he told her. “Thumb closed. If ye leave it loose, the weapon leaves ye.”
“Aye.”
He moved behind her, because there was no other way to correct the angle. He set his hands over hers. Grizel went very still. So did he.
The yard seemed to empty of sound. There was only the line of her body before his, the careful rise of her breathing, and the blade held between them like the most inadequate barrier ever forged.
“Like this,” he explained.
He guided the sword forward. Her arms moved beneath his. Her shoulder brushed his chest, then did so again when he corrected the turn.
“Ye are too close,” she murmured.
Malcolm stared at the side of her face. “I am instructing ye.”
“I did not say ye were failing.”
His hands tightened slightly over hers.
“Again,” he urged.
She obeyed. The second motion was better than the first. The third was nearly good. The fourth was ruined entirely when confidence seized her before skill could catch up.
“I have it now,” she said, and tried to turn into an attack.
The practice blade came across too wide, struck Malcolm’s forearm rather than his guard, and bounced back toward her own shoulder. Malcolm caught the weapon with one hand and caught her elbow with the other.
Grizel turned to face him. Color had risen in her cheeks. Whether from exertion, embarrassment, or something far more dangerous, he did not know. He did not want to know… he wanted very much to know.
“I slipped,” she mustered.
“Aye.”
“The ground is uneven.”
He frowned. “Pick up the sword.”
She did, though more carefully now. That ought to have pleased him. Instead, the care in her movement unsettled him more deeply than her recklessness. It meant she was learning.
“Again,” he ordered.
She scowled through most of it. After six attempts, she stopped trying to overpower the weapon.
After ten, she stopped leading with her shoulder.
After twelve, she finally understood that defense was not a matter of dramatic motion but of economy, timing, and the unsentimental art of remaining alive.
“There,” Malcolm said when she turned his slow strike aside with something close to correct form. “That was better.”
Her eyes lit before she could hide it. The sight struck him harder than it should have done.
“Again,” she demanded.
He almost smiled. “Ye are enjoying this.”
“I am enjoying improvement.”
“Same sin, different name.”
This time she did smile, and the simple pleasure of it proved far more distracting than it out to have been.
He stepped in, raised his blade, and moved slowly enough for her to follow.
She blocked, late but not hopelessly. He corrected her wrist. She tried again.
He tapped her guard. She adjusted. He reached in, shifted her elbow, angled her hips, and set one boot against the side of hers to move her stance.
The distance between them narrowed without ceremony.
At some point, instruction became a series of small collisions.
Her shoulder grazed his. His knee pressing briefly against her skirt to turn her stance.
Her breath catching when his palm settled at her waist to keep her from overreaching.
His voice near her ear. Her face turning half toward his before both of them remembered the blade between them was not enough distance to count.
“Stop looking at me,” he ordered.
“I am watching what ye are doing.”
“With yer eyes on me face?”
“That is where most of yer commands come from.”
“Watch the blade.”
“I am capable of watching two things at once.”
“Nae yet, ye arenae.”
She struck at him then. It was a poor strike, born of irritation rather than form, but it came fast enough that he had to step back before laughing outright.
The blade glanced off his guard and slid wide.
Her momentum carried her forward. Malcolm caught her before she could stumble, one hand closing around her upper arm, the other bracing against the small of her back.
Her body stopped inches from his. Her eyes lifted. Malcolm forgot, for one shameful moment, everything he had ever known about swordfighting.
A man could die this way, he thought. Not with a blade through the heart, but from standing too close to a woman who looked at him as though she had not yet decided whether to argue or come nearer.
“Ye overreached,” he said.
It was not the sentence he had meant to speak. It was, however, the safest one available.
“So I gathered.”
He should have stepped away. He did not. The training yard gate creaked. Malcolm’s head turned sharply. Tavish stood in the open gate with one hand still on the latch.
For once in his life, his brother said nothing. His gaze moved from Malcolm’s hand at Grizel’s back to Grizel’s hand still caught in the front of Malcolm’s shirt, then down to the fallen practice blade at their feet, then back to Malcolm’s face.
A lifetime passed in that single look. Then Tavish’s eyebrows lifted. Tavish took one careful step backward, then another.
Grizel blinked and followed Malcolm’s gaze. “Tavish?”
He held up both hands. “I have seen nothing.”
Malcolm released Grizel so abruptly that she nearly lost balance again. He caught her elbow at once, cursed himself silently, and let go more carefully. Tavish’s mouth twitched. Malcolm imagined throwing him into the sea. It was a comforting thought.
“Did ye need something?” Malcolm asked.
“Nae.”
“Then why are ye here?”
“Poor judgment.”
“Then correct it.”
“I am doing so now.”
And with that, Tavish turned on his heel and left.
Grizel turned back to Malcolm, looking baffled. “Why did he leave?”
Malcolm bent, picked up the practice sword, and placed it back into her hands.
“Self-preservation.”
The words came out dry enough to crack stone. Malcolm looked at her and felt the old, hard structure of his life shift another inch out of its proper place.
He had survived storms that split masts, raids in moonless coves, kings’ decrees, hungry winters, mutiny whispered through wet rope, and the long shadow of his father’s blood. He had learned to command himself because command was the only safe shape he knew.
And now one woman with a practice sword and no patience for instruction was making nonsense of him.
“Again,” he said, because it was either that or touch her for no defensible reason at all.