Chapter 13 #3
“He frightens me because when he looks at me, I feel it in places I spent three years makin’ certain nae living soul could reach.
” The words came slowly, reluctantly. “Because I notice him. His hands. His jaw. The way he stands like he’s darin’ the room to test him.
” She shook her head once, sharply. “I have been noticin’ him since day four.
I didnae even realize it until it was already too late to stop. ”
“And if ye stay?”
“If I stay, if I sign the papers and let the deadline pass and live beneath his roof while he looks at me the way he looked at me this afternoon…” Alba stopped.
Her throat worked once. “I will lose meself, Philomena. Nae to cruelty. Nae to bein’ reduced to whatever’s required of me.
To somethin’ I have no defense against, because I have never once needed a defense like that before. ”
Philomena’s expression had gone unusually soft, all the teasing entirely gone from it. “Ye’ve never said that aloud before.”
“I have never let meself think it long enough to say.”
For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The torches moved below, slow and steady, marking out the new shape of the courtyard.
“He’s quite handsome, though,” Philomena said casually.
Alba snapped her head around to look at her.
“For a brute,” Philomena added, her face perfectly blank. She kept her eyes on the courtyard. “Objectively. If one were assessin’ it objectively.”
“We are nae assessin’ it.”
“Of course nae.” A short pause. “His shoulders are extraordinary, though.”
“Philomena.”
“I am only sayin’ what’s visible from the window.”
“Then look at somethin’ else.”
“There’s rather a lot of him to accidentally look at, me Lady. He takes up considerable space.”
Alba pressed her fingers briefly over her eyes, blocking out the light.
“When Margaret’s carriage arrives,” she said, dropping her hand back to her lap, “ye’re welcome to come with me. I would want ye to come.”
Philomena looked at her then, the playful deflection entirely gone from her face. “I’d follow ye anywhere. Ye ken that.”
“I ken.”
“Though I will say…” She stopped.
“Say it.”
Philomena looked back down at the courtyard below. “He doesnae look like a beast from up here. Nae the way I expected.” She tilted her head slightly against her palm.
Alba did not want to look.
She looked anyway.
Sebastian stood beside the last of the massive supply wagons at the far edge of the courtyard, speaking quietly to Hamish. He was in his linen shirt despite the biting cold, his wool doublet left somewhere inside. His dark hair was pushed back roughly from his face.
The flickering torchlight reached him from the left, catching the sharp line of his jaw, the vast breadth of his shoulders, and the way he held himself even at this brutal hour—straight, present, carrying the physical weight of two hundred people as though it were simply the natural shape of his body now. He had stopped noticing the burden.
Hamish said something. Sebastian’s chin dropped once in a sharp acknowledgment, and he turned to watch the last wagon being secured.
The ache arrived unexpectedly. It was subtle, quiet, and completely unwelcome, settling deep beneath her ribs where she had no reason to feel anything for a man who had taken her home by force. He had given her a week to decide whether to surrender the rest of her life to him.
Fool.
She was not certain which of them she meant.
She pulled her gaze back to the window frame, her knuckles turning white. She focused on the cold stone of it, solid and real beneath her fingers. She clung to the simple, physical fact of the wall.
She had exactly one day left on his deadline.
Margaret’s letter had already been sent.
The sensible thing—the only self-preserving, rational, intelligent thing—was to ride hard north when the answer came.
She needed to put enough distance between herself and this man that her heartbeat went back to doing what heartbeats were supposed to do.
The foolish plan she had made on day one had not worked. She did not want it to work. That was the crushing truth she had been sitting with in this Solar for the better part of an hour, and she had not yet found a way to make it bearable.
She did not want to drive him out. And she could not surrender. The space between those two choices was getting smaller with every passing day, pressing in hard from both sides until she could barely find the air to breathe.
Philomena’s hand found hers on the stone bench.
Below, Sebastian turned away from the wagon. He said something brief to Hamish and walked back toward the Keep. He did not look up. He never looked up when she was watching him from a window, as though he extended her that much privacy at least.
The courtyard torch guttered violently in a sudden gust off the cliff.
Alba looked at the black, churning water beyond the Eastern Wall, at the mountains swallowed entirely in a dark cloud, at the sky that had nothing useful to offer. She understood one thing about the cold with the clarity she usually reserved for account ledgers.
If she stayed one more week beneath this roof, there would be damage done to her soul that could never be undone.
The question, the one she had been refusing to answer for days now, was whether she had already stayed too long.