CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“Stand still, me lady, or the cord will sit crooked,” Eilidh urged.
Grizel obeyed, though only because the woman kneeling before her held a pin between her teeth and looked capable of using it as a weapon.
The upper solar had been transformed into something between a bridal chamber, a war office, and a storehouse under siege.
Formal garments lay across the bed in careful layers: linen, wool, red binding, a narrow sash worked with the MacAulay pattern, and a heavier cloak lined for the shore wind.
At the opposite end of the room, Malcolm stood over a map spread across a chest, speaking to Duncan, Tavish, and a messenger still wet from rain.
“Double the watch above the lower road,” he said. “And nae fires on the western rise unless numbers are confirmed.”
“Aye, me laird.”
“If Fraser’s ships are sighted before dusk, signal with white cloth, nae smoke. I willnae have Drummond reading our welcome from the sea.”
The messenger bowed and left at once. Grizel watched him go, then looked back down as one of the women adjusted the red cord at her wrist. The gesture should have belonged only to the wedding.
Instead, the same hand that tied the bridal mark had moments earlier passed a roll of bandages to a boy at the door.
Everything doubled as something else. A chest of wedding linen was carried past bundles of arrows.
A maid brought in polished clasps and left with a list of households moved inside the walls.
Two women discussed the order of the rite while outside the open door, men dragged timber toward the lower gate.
At that moment, Malcolm looked up. Then, Duncan started giving him the report, and although he was listening, he crossed the room toward her.
“Nae,” he said, stopping beside Grizel. “Nae that fastening.”
The maid froze. “Me laird?”
“If she has tae move quickly, it will catch.” He reached without thought and adjusted the side fastening at Grizel’s waist, loosening one tie and drawing another through with practiced efficiency. “Here. Let it sit beneath the fold.”
Grizel went still. His hand was at her waist. He touched her as though he had already earned the right to correct what might endanger her body, as though the line between armor, garment, and person had vanished. Malcolm finished the knot, tested it once, and stepped back.
“There.” Then he turned to Duncan. “Continue.”
Duncan, with admirable discipline, did. The women resumed their work.
Grizel said nothing, not because she had nothing to say, but because the words gathering in her mouth were not suited to a room full of servants, soldiers, pins, maps, and war.
Still, she felt the place where his fingers had been long after he had returned to the chest and the map.
The final garment settled over her shoulders a few minutes later.
It was heavier than she expected. It didn’t feel uncomfortable, but rather significant, as if the cloth meant to remind her that she was being dressed not only for a vow, but for being seen making it.
The red sash lay across her front. Her hair had been drawn back and braided with a narrow thread the color of Malcolm’s sails.
Eilidh studied her with fierce satisfaction.
“There,” she spoke. “Now ye look as ye ought.”
Grizel looked down at herself. She did not know whether that was true.
She looked like a woman being claimed by a clan while the same clan sharpened blades beyond the door.
Then Malcolm looked up again. For one moment, she did not feel like a symbol at all, only a woman being looked at by a man who had forgotten, briefly and dangerously, to hide what he wanted.
Then someone entered with another message, and Malcolm’s face closed.
The day resumed. More orders followed. After a while, the room emptied.
The maids carried away spare cloth. Tavish left to inspect the cleared passage.
Duncan went below to speak with the gate watch.
Eilidh departed with the ceremonial comb clutched triumphantly in one hand, having apparently discovered it exactly where she had left it.
Only Malcolm remained. Grizel stood near the window, watching men cross the yard below with timber beams balanced on their shoulders. Beyond them, two women carried baskets of flowers toward the chapel room while a third hauled a bundle of spear shafts in the opposite direction.
“Are the wedding preparations and war planning meant tae happen side by side?” she asked.
He came to stand beside her and looked down into the yard.
“They are both necessary because neither will wait for the other.”
The words settled between them with the weight of a vow and the certainty of an order. Grizel looked back outside.
Neither would wait… not love, not war.
Grizel lowered her eyes to the fastening at her waist, the one Malcolm had adjusted without thinking. The knot sat hidden beneath the fold, secure enough to let her move if she had to run. She touched it once, lightly.
Servants passed in and out behind them again, carrying the last of the cloth, a tray of ink, two candles, and a bundle of folded banners.
The castle continued arranging itself around a wedding and a siege with the grim efficiency of people who had accepted that joy and danger could arrive at the same hour.
Grizel stood beside Malcolm in her formal garments, feeling the hidden fastening at her waist and the heaviness of the cloak upon her shoulders.
The rite would come. So would Drummond.
And neither, it seemed, intended to wait.
That evening, Grizel couldn’t help but ask. “If he comes during the wedding, what will ye dae?”
Despite the question, Malcolm’s quill did not stop moving. She sat in the chair near the hearth with her hands folded loosely in her lap, though she had long ago ceased pretending she was only resting there. She had been watching him for the better part of an hour.
“End it before it reaches ye.” The answer was quiet.
Grizel looked at him across the warm, dim space between them. “End it how?”
He wrote another line. She waited. He did not look up.
“Malcolm.”
The quill stopped. This time, the pause lasted. The fire cracked softly in the hearth, sending sparks up the blackened throat of the chimney.
Grizel rose. She crossed the distance between them with the strange care of a woman approaching a blade left unsheathed on a table. When she stopped beside the writing table, he still had not looked at her.
“Dae ye mean killing him?” she asked.
Silence followed, not denial. It was the truth, standing between them without needing to be named.
Grizel closed her eyes for one breath. She had wanted that man dead once.
In Calder, in the first wild terror of learning what her father had arranged, she had thought Drummond’s death would be justice, freedom, perhaps even renewal.
On the ship, when his men had reached for her, she would have welcomed any blade that removed him from the world.
Even now, after all he had done, after the outpost and the letters and the threats gathering like storm clouds around the wedding, some part of her still believed the world would breathe easier without Beathan Drummond in it.
But wanting a monster stopped was not the same as wanting Malcolm marked by the stopping. That difference had become cruelly important.
She moved closer and sat on the edge of the desk. The position placed her almost beside him, almost above him, close enough to see the ink staining one finger and the faint tension at his jaw.
“Look at me,” she whispered.
For a moment, she thought he would refuse. Then Malcolm lifted his eyes.
“I dinne want him tae have me,” Grizel said softly. “I dinnae want him tae win. I dinnae want him near this castle, near yer people, near me. But I also dinnae want ye tae become a man who cannae come back from this war.”
His eyes widened, in pain perhaps, or anger that had found no proper enemy.
“Ye think I can choose the shape war leaves me in?” he asked.
“Nae. But I think ye can choose what part of yourself ye surrender tae it.”
Grizel knew enough by now not to imagine Malcolm’s hands were clean. The sea had not shaped gentle men. He had fought, taken, punished, survived. Yet there was a difference between a man who had done violence and a man who let violence become the only language left to him.
“I am afraid,” she confessed.
His hand turned beneath hers, closing around it. “He willnae touch ye.”
“I ken.” Her throat tightened. “That isnae the only thing I fear.”
Malcolm’s grip changed, not loosening, not tightening, merely becoming more conscious of itself.
Grizel leaned nearer. “I am afraid of what he may make ye become in order tae stop him.”
For several seconds, Malcolm said nothing.
Then he stood. Because she was seated on the edge of the desk, the movement brought him close at once.
“I already am that man,” he told her, “if ye are the one standing in the center of it.”
Grizel’s breath caught. The words were not tender.
They were too dark for that, too roughened by truth.
Yet they struck her with more force than gentleness might have done, because he did not mean he wished to be cruel.
He meant he would go where cruelty waited if that was the road that brought him to her.
He meant there was no safe version of himself left when she was the one threatened.
She looked up at him, her hand still caught in his.
“Malcolm,” she whispered.
His gaze dropped to her mouth. They had stood at the edge of this too many times the last few days, always interrupted by duty, pride, fear, or the terrible discipline he wore like armor… not now.
Grizel lifted her free hand and touched his face. His eyes closed for half a heartbeat. When they opened, they were darker. Malcolm’s hand came to the side of her neck, and then his mouth was on hers.
The kiss did not begin gently. It began with the force of too many refusals ending at once. Grizel made a small sound against him, and his other hand caught at her waist, drawing her close until she stood between him and the scattered maps.
She had been kissed by him before. She had thought she knew, therefore, what wanting him felt like. She had known nothing.
Grizel rose against him, her hands closing in his shirt, and kissed him as if answers could be given with more than words. For a moment, his forehead rested against hers, and his grip at her waist tightened.
“Tell me tae stop,” he whispered.
She opened her eyes. His face was close enough that she could see the war raging inside him, the desire, the fear of it, and the terrible hope that she would save them both by refusing what neither of them wished to refuse.
Grizel slid her hand down to cover his at her waist.
“Nae.”
He kissed her again, slower now, deeper, as if he had finally understood that she was not leaving, and that understanding might yet destroy him. Grizel answered with everything she had been guarding.
When he lifted her against him, she did not protest. When he pressed her against the wall behind her, she held onto him. She felt his hand raise the hem of her gown, and then, the sound of his belt unbuckling. She raked her fingers through his dark locks, keeping her lips locked with his.
“I want ye, Malcolm,” she murmured through the kiss.
“Grizel…” he said hoarsely, and she whimpered when she felt his manhood pressed against her.
She didn’t want him to be slow. She didn’t want him to be gentle. He understood perfectly.
She welcomed him inside of her with the readiness of a waterfall.
Pleasure unfurled the moment her heat enveloped him, as he stretched her, filled her to the very brim, claiming her as his very own, now and forever.
He rocked his hips into her, deeper and harder with every thrust, expelling a grunt of air with each motion.
She knew that he liked this as much as she did, and that knowledge only seemed to heighten their pleasure.
The mindless rocking continued, as they drank each other’s breaths.
She dug her fingers into his back, while his lips pressed against her neck.
He smelled like rain and the woods, like a man she wanted to have by her side.
A moment later, she was pushed into the abyss of pleasure, and she couldn’t keep herself quiet.
He pulled away, staring into her eyes, relishing her pleasure.
One more thrust, deep inside of her, and he finished as well. Their frantic yearning had found its vent, and now, their breathing echoed in the silence of the chamber.
Grizel settled against him, her hand resting over his heart.
Outside, the castle watched for war. Inside, she closed her eyes and listened to Malcolm breathe.