Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Three days had passed since the road. The courtyard was already unrecognizable.
Sebastian stood near the iron gates with two of his men, speaking quietly over a rough, rain-spattered map of the outer stone walls, and watched his people move through MacLaren Castle. He observed them filling every space, making it impossible to imagine the place had ever been vacant.
Heavily loaded supply carts rolled through the archway in a steady, muddy stream. Weapons were stacked against the eastern wall, steel catching the dim light. Grain barrels lined the covered stone walkway in precise rows; his quartermaster was already counting aloud in a monotonous drone.
It was efficient. It was brutally necessary.
It still sat like a heavy weight of lead inside his chest in a way he had absolutely no intention of examining.
He saw her before she ever reached him.
Alba MacLaren stood rigid at the top of the courtyard steps with her arms pinned straight at her sides and her spine so taut it could have been used to level building stone. She was watching one of his men carry a thick barrel of winter grain across the slick cobbles.
“Careful with those barrels.” Her voice came out sharp, cutting through the damp air with absolute authority. “If ye crack them open now, they’ll spoil before first frost.”
The man, a scarred MacGregor warrior who had faced down three of Malcolm Kerr’s soldiers at a river crossing six weeks ago without so much as blinking, came to a sudden halt, looked up at her, and immediately adjusted his grip. Sebastian noted that.
She came down the stone steps toward him. There was thick brown mud smeared along the hem of her green riding cloak. Neither thing appeared to concern her in the slightest.
“Enjoyin’ yerself?” she asked, her blue eyes freezing over as she stopped before him.
“Nay.” He glanced across the bustling courtyard before returning his gaze fully to her. “This wasnae me first choice either.”
“And yet ye still invaded me home.”
“I brought starvin’ people to shelter.”
“Ye brought an army.”
“A small one.”
She stared at him, her chest heaving slightly beneath her stays. The sheer, unadulterated disbelief on her face was almost entertaining to him.
“The neighborin’ clans already ken MacLaren stands vulnerable,” he said, cutting in before she could find the breath for her next word.
“The bloody wars in the North are done. Whatever is comin’ is movin’ south.
Ye ken that already.” He watched the grim realization move across her sharp features despite every effort she made to prevent it.
“How long before someone far less cooperative came for yer walls?”
Her jaw tightened so hard a small muscle jumped in her cheek. She looked away toward the gates, then snapped her gaze back. “We were doin’ just fine.”
“Were ye?”
The heavy silence that followed was the most honest thing she had said to him yet.
“I want yer men out of the East Wing,” she said, shifting her stance.
“Denied.”
Her eyes widened, flashing with sudden fire. “Denied?”
“Aye.” He held her furious gaze without a flicker of difficulty. “Ye’ll survive the disappointment.”
She took one provocative step closer, closing the distance until he could smell the rain on her skin. “Ye arrogant brute.”
Sebastian pushed off the timber gatepost, towering over her. “Lead me to yer study. We have things to discuss.”
He walked ahead without waiting for her consent. Behind him, he heard her sharp, furious intake of breath, and that was entirely sufficient to satisfy him.
* * *
Her private study smelled of peat smoke, old parchment, and amber whisky, with maps lying around.
Alba shut the heavy oak door behind her with a firm click and turned to see Sebastian MacGregor already comfortably seated in her chair.
Her chair, behind her desk, with her own amber whisky poured into two glasses he had no right to touch, looked completely at home in a room he had been inside for about thirty seconds.
She stayed rooted near the stone hearth. She did not touch the whisky he pushed toward her side of the desk.
“If this is another attempt to justify what ye’ve done,” she said, her voice dropping into a low, dangerous register, “save yer breath.”
“Yer people need protection.”
“They had protection.”
“They had walls.” His voice was perfectly level. Infuriatingly level. “That isnae the same thing as protection.”
Alba pressed her back teeth together until her jaw ached. The absolute worst part, the part she would sooner die than give him, was that the beast was not entirely wrong about the Northern Wars moving south.
She had lain awake enough cold nights running the exact same terrifying calculation herself. Walls without men behind them were an invitation to raiders, not a defense. She knew it. She had simply chosen never to finish the thought aloud.
“What exactly do ye want from me?” she said, her hands clenching under her cloak.
He looked at her straight across the desk. There was no preamble. No softening of the blow.
“Marriage.”
The single word landed between them like a flat stone falling into mud.
Alba looked at him, her breath catching. A cold sensation swept through her chest, quickly followed by a blazing heat. She recognized the second feeling much more clearly. It was pure, unrestrained fury.
“Are ye mad? Absolutely nae.”
He said nothing, his dark blue eyes unblinking.
“Nay.” She stepped forward, her leather boots snapping against the floorboards.
“Ye storm into me home with swords drawn, take me castle, take me chair, pour me own whisky…” She stopped abruptly.
She took one careful, shaking breath through her nose to steady herself.
“And now ye expect me to hand ye me name as well. Because ye asked.”
Something dark and dangerous moved fast through his dark eyes. It was there and gone in a heartbeat.
“Careful, Lady Alba.”
“Or what?” The reckless words came out before she could properly weigh them.
He stood up slowly.
The heavy oak desk still stood between them, but it suddenly felt like almost no barrier at all.
He was big in a way that was not just about height.
The kind of massive, intimidating size that came from a warrior’s body tested repeatedly in blood and still standing.
The room was small. The fire behind her had burned down to low, glowing embers.
She was suddenly painfully, inconveniently aware of all three facts at once.
She did not step back.
Sebastian exhaled once, slowly, the broad planes of his chest expanding, and when he spoke again, his voice had dropped into something rougher, deeper, and infinitely more careful.
“I need stability before winter freezes the passes.” His voice had dropped, rougher now, the controlled surface of it cracking slightly at the edges.
He moved around the side of the desk, not toward her, standing in open space. “Me people need land.” A pause, his gaze dropping briefly to the floor before coming back up. “Me nephew needs safety. A home that willnae be taken again.”
His throat moved as he said it. One swallow, barely visible, was quickly controlled. Alba’s anger caught that, just slightly, enough to make her heart stutter.
“I made a vow to me brother.” The words came out quieter than everything before them.
He was not asking for sympathy. He was simply laying a fact down between them.
“The night he died, he didnae ask me to protect Brian. He already kent I’d do that.
What he asked…” Sebastian stopped. His jaw worked once.
“What he made me swear was that I’d give the boy a home. A family. A mother.”
The word sat in the air between them, heavy and specific.
“He was six years old and he’d just watched his father turn back into a burnin’ Hall.” Something moved across Sebastian’s face, brief and unguarded, before it was locked away again behind the hard planes of his expression. “I swore it. And I daenae break me vows.”
Alba said nothing. She was very still.
“If we marry,” he continued, his gaze locking onto hers, “MacLaren stays protected. Yer title remains untouched. No clan will dare challenge a holdin’ with me name standin’ behind it.”
“Beside me,” she corrected sharply. “That was yer word on the road.”
“Aye.” His arms stayed loose at his sides.
“Ye meant over me.”
“Nay.” A beat. “I have nay personal interest in ye. Me nephew needs a capable woman to care for him. Ye’ll do just fine.”
The absolute flatness of his delivery was almost impressive.
Ye’ll do.
Alba turned the words over in her mind and felt the shape of them land with their full, precise weight.
Not a compliment. Not an insult. A cold assessment of her utility delivered in her own home, behind her own desk, beside her own hearth.
As though the only question worth asking was whether she met the minimum requirements for a role she had never been consulted about filling.
She had spent three years proving to every gray-haired man on the Clan Council that she was more than a widow keeping a seat warm. Three years of riding out in every storm, signing every contract herself, standing in every difficult room without flinching. She had earned every inch of what she had.
And this man had walked into her home four hours ago and reduced it to: ye’ll do.
“And if I refuse?” she asked, her voice dropping to a whisper.
“I will give ye until Sunday to decide.”
“That is one week.”
“Aye.”
One week.
One single week to claim her name, her lands, and every hard-won, grueling inch of authority she had fought for from traditional men who spent three years waiting for her to crumble under the weight of her widowhood.
One week before the cynical Clan Council watching her fold under a stranger’s blunt ultimatum or walk away forever from the only home she had ever fought for.
She turned her back on him toward the fire because she desperately needed one moment she could entirely control.
She heard him move behind her. Not toward the exit, stepping closer to her.
He stopped just over her left shoulder, standing so close that the powerful warmth of his large body reached her through the cold air in the room. She stared hard at the low flames in the hearth, keeping her breathing steady and her hands perfectly still at her sides.
His voice came in a dangerously low tone, right near her ear, a rough vibration against her skin. “After Sunday, ye either marry me…”
The crackle of the fire. The steady lash of the rain against the high window. The distant, echoing sound of his men in her courtyard settled into her castle as if they had always belonged there.
“Or,” Sebastian whispered quietly, his breath stirring the loose curls near her neck, “ye leave the castle.”
Alba did not move an inch.
She stood frozen in her own study, in front of her own hearth, in the home she had maintained alone since before the blood even dried on the stone floor of her wedding night, and she felt the heavy walls press close around her as if they were waiting to see what she would do next.
She heard him straighten up and step back. The unhurried, agonizing sound of him picking up the whisky cup from her desk, taking a slow sip, and setting the glass down with a soft thud.
Then the heavy door opened and closed, and she was entirely alone.
The long breath she had been holding captive left her all at once in a ragged gasp. Her hands were shaking violently. She pressed them flat against her thighs, smoothing the green wool of her dress, and looked at the dying fire with cold, furious clarity.
Sebastian MacGregor had made one very significant, fatal mistake tonight. He had given her a week. And Alba MacLaren had never once in her life needed more than a single day to plan a war.