Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
The Great Hall had quieted to the low, comfortable murmur of a household settling into evening.
Tonight’s simple supper was laid out. Cold mutton, dark bread, the last of the soft cheese, and a jug of red wine.
The long tables had been mostly cleared of Clan members.
A few of his hardened men remained at the far end, speaking in low, rumbled voices over their horn cups.
Brian had been deposited, loudly protesting, into Hamish’s care an hour ago; he had presumably remained vertical for approximately fifteen minutes before deep sleep took him sideways.
Sebastian sat at the head of the high table with the heavy supply ledger open in front of him, and read absolutely nothing in it.
Saints, what is she doin’ to me?
Across the table and three seats down, Alba was eating with one hand and reading with the other.
A folded document was propped precariously against the wine jug, one she had been relentlessly working through since before the bread had even arrived.
She turned a page without once looking up.
She reached for her cup without looking up.
She made a sharp, small notation in the margin of the parchment with the blunt end of a silver pin she had apparently been keeping hidden in her sleeve; a preparedness he had stopped being surprised by.
“Cook says the salt’s runnin’ low,” a kitchen maid said, suddenly appearing at Alba’s elbow. “We’re nearly through what’s stored in the South Room.”
Alba looked up from the document, her gaze instantly focusing.
“Use the Northern Stores first.” She turned the page back to check a previous entry, then flicked it forward again.
“And stop storin’ the root vegetables directly beside the apples, or they’ll rot twice as fast. Keep them separated.
Turnips and parsnips to the far left of the lower shelf, away from the fruit entirely. ”
“Aye, me Lady.” The girl left.
Sebastian observed the exchange, his jaw tight, and said nothing.
He closely watched the next one, too. A question arose about the linen order for the upper corridor, answered before the frantic girl had even finished asking it.
Alba spoke with a rapid specificity about thread count and which untrustworthy supplier on the Southern Road gave honest weight, suggesting she had been managing this particular detail long before the girl had even been employed here.
Then came the candles. Then, the goats. Apparently, two of the MacGregor goats had been integrated into the MacLaren herd without adequate consideration of temperament, and the resulting situation had fiery opinions that desperately needed managing before morning.
Every single answer came the same way. It was not performed, not carefully considered; it was simply present.
It was a bone-deep familiarity resulting from three years of meticulous attention to every small, unremarkable detail; a quiet attention focused on building the Keep into something that safe, functional and sustainable.
She belongs here.
He had known it since the road, when she looked at his heavily armed men, calculated the lethal odds, and calmly offered him safe passage into her home to protect her people.
He had known it since the village square and the chaotic kitchens.
He had known it. But watching it happen across a quiet supper table, apparently, was entirely different from just knowing it.
He set the ledger aside with a heavy thud.
“Leave us,” he said.
The command landed heavily across the Hall.
His men looked up instantly, read the tension in the room, and began moving.
The kitchen girl, who had returned with a follow-up question about the candles, reversed course.
Hamish, who had appeared in the doorway at some point without Sebastian ever noticing, vanished back into the shadows.
Alba’s people were slower to react. John O’Connor hesitated, his eyes locking onto her.
She gave him a slight, reassuring nod.
Only then did he leave. The others followed in his wake.
Sebastian watched them wait for her signal. He watched her give it as though it were entirely natural, entirely unremarkable.
He hated it, yet he needed it.
Both of those crushing facts were true, and he had unsuccessfully tried to omit either.
The vast Hall settled into a heavy silence. The fire at the far hearth had burned down to a deep, steady amber glow. It was throwing long, flickering shadows across the stone floor, the oak tables, and the woman sitting three seats away from him, who had not, he noticed, put down her document.
“Ye undermine me constantly,” he said, his voice cutting through the quiet.
Alba looked up. She did not look guilty. She looked genuinely, cleanly confused, her dark brow drawing together.
“Excuse me?”
“The servants.” He kept his voice level, factual, stripped of everything that was not the plain, brutal shape of the problem. “They come to ye first. Every question, every decision, every small thing that keeps this Holdin’ runnin’. They walk right past me to find ye.”
She set the document down, her movements unhurried and deliberate. “It’s been ten days, Sebastian.”
“I am aware of how many days it’s been.”
“Then ye’ll understand that ten days isnae sufficient time to transfer the trust of people who watched me arrive as a frightened lass of eighteen with two trunks and a dead husband within a fortnight, and who've looked to me as their Lady every day since.” She folded her hands over the parchment.
“Ye may have taken the stone walls, the iron gate, the Great Hall. Ye may have yer name carved on the outer door and yer men stationed on every landin’.
” A heavy pause landed between them. “The people are nae architecture, Sebastian. They daenae transfer with the deed.”
“They will.”
“Perhaps.” Something shifted behind her eyes, quick and razor-sharp. “Eventually. When ye’ve earned it.”
“I daenae have eventually. I have now. I have a Holdin’ that needs to function, a Clan that needs feedin’ before the mountain passes freeze, and a Council that will question the legitimacy of this entire arrangement if the household isnae runnin’ under a single, unified authority.”
Her expression did not soften, but her chin lifted one defiant degree. “That sounds like a ye problem.”
Sebastian stood up slowly and deliberately, giving her plenty of time to read the deadly intent in his movement. He circled the end of the long table toward her, not in a hurry or overtly threatening, just closing the physical gap.
She did not flinch. She did not move her chair back.
“Alba.” He stopped a mere two feet from her, close enough that she had to tip her chin back to maintain his gaze. “I daenae play games.”
Her horn cup came down on the table with a sharp, definitive click. She was on her feet in the same motion, the heavy wood of her chair scraping hard against the stone flags.
For one suspended second, they stood at the same height, close enough that he could see the amber candlelight dancing in the dark of her eyes. A sudden flush had climbed into her cheeks, and it was not entirely born of anger.
“I do nae either,” she whispered. Her voice was low, fiercely controlled.
“Ye took me home, Sebastian. Ye walked in here with drawn swords, ultimatums, and a deadline, and ye honestly expect me people to forget me existence and redirect themselves to ye in a fortnight?” Her eyes flashed hard, dangerous.
“Forgive me for findin’ that expectation somewhat unreasonable. ”
His name in her voice. It moved through his veins the same way it had in the dark corridor.
That involuntary physical response, the way his entire attention sharpened and narrowed all at once to the specific frequency of her.
He had not managed to build a single defense against it in ten days.
He was beginning to doubt he ever would.
Damn her!
He exhaled once, slow and deliberate, and placed one large hand flat on the oak table beside her. He was not blocking her escape. He was simply present, his massive weight leaning in, closing the space between them to something that required both of them to be agonizingly aware of it.
“They trust ye,” he said.
It came out entirely differently than he had intended. There was something raw in it that he had not planned to put there and could not take back.
Alba blinked.
It was a small shift that moved through her expression. A brief, unguarded softening at the very edges, visible for half a second before she caught it and ruthlessly pressed it back down behind her composure. But he had been studying her face for days, and he caught it.
“Aye,” she said, her voice dropping lower than before. “They do.”
The fire settled in the hearth with a low, soft collapse of glowing embers. The candlelight between them threw warm, unsteady shadows across her face, across the single dark curl that had come loose from her braid to fall against the line of her jaw.
Sebastian looked at her.
The fury was still vibrantly present in the line of her shoulders and the sharp set of her mouth. Her hands were flat on the table now, braced, her knuckles carrying a faint white pressure. Beautiful, furious, and entirely immovable.
He was going to say the next thing because it desperately needed saying, and because no version of this conversation ended well if he did not.
“I need ye for Brian,” he said, his voice dropping, stripped of its harsh edges.
“I need ye to help run this Castle. Nae because the contract requires a wife. Because he needs what ye give him, and I daenae have it to give him meself.” He held her gaze, forcing her to look at him.
“And because this Holdin’ runs when ye’re in it, and it doesnae when ye’re nae.
I have been practical enough to stop pretendin’ otherwise. ”
He let the truth of that sit heavily between them.
“And ye need a home,” he continued, pushing further. “Nae a cousin’s spare room. Nae refuge. Yer home.”