Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
The wedding feast was cancelled.
Lilias watched from the doorway as servants stripped the Great Hall, pulling cloths from tables, carrying platters back to the kitchens untouched.
The musicians had already been dismissed.
The flowers had started to wilt. Everything that had been arranged with such careful hope that morning was being systematically undone, and there was something almost merciful about the speed of it.
Almost.
She turned away before the last table was cleared.
Catriona appeared at her chamber door within minutes, carrying a basin of warm water and a clean linen shift draped over one arm. She said nothing about the day. She simply set the basin down, wrung out the cloth, and handed it to Lilias without ceremony.
Lilias pressed it to her face and held it there for a long moment.
The water smelled faintly of lavender. Someone had thought of that. She didn’t know who, but she felt the small kindness of it settle somewhere in her chest alongside everything else the day had deposited there.
“Sit,” Catriona said, gesturing to the stool near the window.
Lilias sat. The maid began unpinning her hair, working through the braids section by section. Outside the window, the last color was draining from the sky. The courtyard below was quiet. The flags hung still.
“Catriona,” Lilias said. “Tell me about Ailean Fraser.”
The maid’s hands paused for only a moment before continuing. “What would ye like tae ken?”
“Anything.” She kept her voice even. “He was meant tae be the second son. I prepared fer Ewan. I didnae prepare fer him.”
Catriona was quiet for a moment, working through a braid with gentle fingers. “He’s lived in his brither’s shadow his whole life. Never wanted the lairdship, from what the servants say. Spent more time on the water than in council chambers.” A pause. “He’s nae Ewan.”
“Nay,” Lilias said. “He isnae.”
The fire shifted. She didn’t say anything else, and Catriona, to her credit, didn’t push.
“And Torcall Fraser,” Lilias said, after a moment. “Tell me about him.”
“Now there’s a different question entirely.”
“What did he expect from today? Before Ewan died.”
Catriona was quiet for a few strokes of the brush. “He arrived two days ago. Told the steward it was family obligation.” She separated a section of hair and worked through a tangle with patient fingers. “But the servants talk. They said he’d been asking questions about things.”
Lilias absorbed that. “He thought the Council might consider his claim.”
“Aye. And they might have, if Ailean hadnae been standing there breathing.” Catriona set the brush down and reached for the shift. “Direct blood takes precedence. The elders chose quickly. Torcall wasnae pleased, though he smiled well enough.”
“He always smiles well enough.”
“That’s what makes him dangerous.” Catriona shook out the shift and held it up. “Arms up.”
Lilias obeyed, feeling the cool linen settle over her shoulders. The weight of the day’s dress was gone, and she felt simultaneously lighter and more exposed.
“There’s something else,” Catriona said, moving behind her to fasten the laces.
“The priest spoke tae the Council after ye left. About the consummation.” Her hands were steady and matter of fact.
“Without it, the Crown has grounds tae question the marriage’s validity.
Which means grounds tae question the lairdship. ”
“Which means Torcall has an opening.”
“Aye.” The last lace was fastened. Catriona stepped back and met her eyes in the small bronze mirror propped on the windowsill. “He’s patient, that one. He’ll wait fer any crack.”
Lilias looked at her own reflection. Her hair fell loose past her shoulders, dark auburn in the candlelight. She looked younger without the braids and the formal dress.
She had come here to marry Ewan Fraser. Cold, controlled, predictable Ewan, who would’ve kept his distance and asked nothing of her beyond competence and heirs.
She had prepared herself for that. She’d made her peace with it on the long ride to Castle Fraser, talking herself through every practical detail and refusing to look too closely at the rest.
She had not prepared for his brother.
The man with the loose blond hair and the deep water eyes who had stepped between her and a blade without hesitation.
She had not prepared for the way her pulse had betrayed her the first moment she saw him standing to the side of the Great Hall, the way he’d looked more alive than any man in the room in his riding leathers and Fraser plaid.
She’d told herself it meant nothing. She’d been walking toward her betrothed at the time.
She was considerably less certain now.
The bells rang the hour. Nightfall.
Catriona picked up the candle from the table. “It’s time,” she said quietly. “I’ll escort ye tae the laird’s chamber.”
Lilias stood, smoothed the shift, and lifted her chin.
“Then let’s not keep him waiting,” she said.
The corridor felt very long.
She was aware of the cold stone beneath her slippers, of the way the candle threw their shadows long against the walls, of the fact that she had faced a blade at her throat that morning with more composure than she currently felt walking toward a man who had done nothing to frighten her.
That seemed deeply unfair. She had a talent for managing difficult situations.
She’d always been better in a crisis than in the quiet that followed.
The quiet, it turned out, was where everything she’d been holding at arm’s length all day finally caught up with her.
Catriona stopped outside a heavy oak door at the end of the corridor and knocked twice. A brief pause. Then Ailean’s voice from within, low and even.
“Aye.”
Catriona opened the door, stepped inside long enough to place the candle on the table, and then stepped back out with the discretion of a woman who understood when her presence was no longer useful. The door closed behind Lilias with a sound that seemed much heavier than it had any right to be.
The chamber was larger than hers, and warmer. A fire burned in the hearth, casting unsteady amber light across the stone floor and the heavy curtains drawn against the night. The room smelled of woodsmoke and leather and something quite distracting.
Ailean was standing near the hearth.
He had removed his coat. His sleeves were rolled to the elbow, forearms bare, and he was looking into the fire with the concentrated expression of a man working through something he hadn’t yet resolved.
The firelight caught the angles of his face, the line of his jaw, the way the loose strands of his hair fell forward slightly at his collar.
He turned when the door shut.
He was, she thought for the second time that day, entirely unfair to look at.
She had known that since the moment she had seen him that morning, all contained energy and sharp blue eyes.
That assessment had not improved with proximity.
If anything, standing in a firelit chamber in a linen shift while he looked at her with that steady unreadable attention was considerably worse than the Great Hall had been.
The silence stretched between them. She refused to be the one to break it.
“I willnae pretend this isnae strange,” he said.
“Aye,” she said. “It is.” She looked down at her hands briefly, then back up at him. “I appreciate that ye dinnae.”
Something shifted in his expression. Not quite amusement, but close enough to make her pulse do something inconvenient.
“Aye.” He held her gaze. “I willnae force ye. I want that said plainly, before anything else. Nay taenight. Nay after what happened.” He looked away for a moment, jaw tight. “Nae ever, if it comes tae that.”
She looked at him steadily. “The Crown requires proof.”
“Aye.” He said it without apology or elaboration, and then he crossed to the nearest chair and sat to remove his boots, setting them aside. Then he stood and unfastened his trousers.
Lilias looked at the middle distance with great dignity.
“Ye can look away if ye like,” he said, and there was something in his voice that might have been dry humor. “I’m nay going tae dae anything worth watching.”
“I wasn’t looking.”
“Ye were deciding whether tae look.”
She had no response to that, mostly because it was accurate.
He disappeared behind the screen in the corner and she took the opportunity to breathe properly for the first time since the corridor.
When he reappeared he was wearing a plain linen shirt and nothing else below the knee, carrying a small dagger with a blade no longer than her hand.
He met her eyes once, checking that she understood what was coming. Then he sat on the edge of the bed, drew the shirt aside, and cut cleanly across the outside of hise.
She didn’t look away and made herself watch instead.
The cut was controlled and precise, the motion of a man who understood what was necessary and saw no point in theatre.
He didn’t make a sound. Blood welled and ran in a thin line down his leg.
He pressed his palm to it, then to the white linen of the sheets, leaving a mark that answered the Crown’s requirement without sentiment or ceremony.
Then he reached for the folded cloth on the bedside table and bound the wound tightly.
He had done all of this, she realized, so she wouldn’t have to.
She stood in the middle of the chamber in her linen shift and looked at a man who had saved her life in a stairwell, married her in a stripped hall, bled onto linen so the Crown would have nothing to question, and was now lowering himself to the cold stone floor beside the bed with a folded blanket, leaving the full width of the room between them.
“The bed is yers,” he said. He settled with his back against the wooden frame, long legs stretched before him and closed his eyes.
Lilias climbed into the bed. Pulled the covers up. Stared at the canopy above her and listened to the fire and the wind pushing against the shutters and the particular quality of silence that existed between two people who were strangers and also, somehow, married.
“Ailean,” she said quietly.
“Aye.”
“Thank ye.”
A pause. The fire shifted.
“Dinnae thank me yet,” he said. “Tomorrow’s going tae be worse.”
Despite everything, she almost smiled. She thought that was probably the most alarming thing that had happened to her all day, and the day had included a great deal of competition.
She closed her eyes. Outside, the sea wind pressed against Castle Fraser and the night settled in around them, and Lilias Grant, who had come here to marry one man and ended the day bound to another, lay in a laird’s bed and wondered what exactly she had walked into.
She suspected she was going to find out very soon.