Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
It felt like Alba was avoiding him. Which only made him more aware of her absence everywhere.
The excuse, if anyone dared to ask, would be Margaret’s arrival. The flurry of MacKenzie outriders, the baggage carts, and the endless catching up that women seemed to require.
But the truth was a far heavier, uglier thing to swallow. He had avoided her, too. Ever since that night in the dim corridor, when she had exploded in his hands, all wild heat and fierce, desperate friction, only for him to pull back. To reject her.
Damn me.
He had spent his entire life mastering the art of restraint on the battlefield, knowing exactly when to hold the line and when to strike. Yet, looking back at her wide eyes as he’d stepped away in that corridor, he knew he had handled her with all the grace of a blunt axe.
He noticed the shift first in the morning light.
There was an empty seat beside Brian during breakfast, the bench looking oddly long and bare without the dark woolen curve of her skirts filling it.
He noticed it in the silence near the kitchens later that morning, a space where her voice usually carried through the chatter of servants and maids, keeping the entire castle running on her specific, unyielding rhythm.
He noticed it, most of all, in the fact that nobody was arguing loudly in the courtyard anymore.
Somehow, over the course of five short days, the sharp-tongued Lady Alba had become the center of his days without him even realizing it.
Her passive-aggressive campaign, her administrative defiance, her quick, defensive retorts - they had become the very air he breathed in this cold stone fortress.
Without her presence to push against, the Castle felt entirely hollow.
Sebastian hated it.
Worse, Brian hated it too.
The boy spent the late afternoon trailing behind Sebastian. At supper, the tension finally snapped. Brian sat on his high oak stool, his wooden practice sword leaning against the table leg, his bowl of venison stew completely untouched.
“Will Alba come tonight?” Brian asked bluntly, his small voice cutting clean through the ambient roar of the Great Hall.
Sebastian did not answer immediately. He kept his eyes on his trencher, tearing off a piece of thick, dark bread with his teeth, chewing slowly to buy himself a second of peace he had not earned.
Brian did not let it go. He leaned forward, his small brow furrowed into a tight, dark line. “Did ye upset her? Will she leave because ye upset her?”
Sebastian looked up slowly from his drink, his fingers tightening around the rough clay of his mug until his knuckles turned white.
Across the high table, Hamish barked a laugh loud enough to choke on his ale. The heavy-set commander slammed his fist against the timber, spitting a mouthful of foam into his beard as he struggled to catch his breath.
Sebastian glared darkly at him, a silent vow of extra training drills flashing in his eyes, before turning his gaze back down to the boy.
“Eat yer meal,” Sebastian muttered, his voice dropping into a low, flat register.
Brian did not blink. He narrowed his serious, dark eyes suspiciously, his small jaw locking in a perfect imitation of Alba’s finest administrative glare. “Ye definitely upset her.”
And he knew that he did.
Sebastian let out a rough, silent breath through his nose, setting his mug down with a controlled thud that quieted Hamish’s lingering chuckles.
He looked at the boy’s untouched food, then past Brian’s shoulder toward the smaller trestle table near the hearth where Margaret and Alba had been sitting earlier.
The seats were empty now. The two women had slipped out into the damp evening rain nearly an hour ago, leaving the hall feeling twice as loud and half as warm.
“She is hostin’ her cousin, Brian,” Sebastian said, attempting a reasonable tone that felt entirely foreign in his throat. “Lady MacKenzie traveled the Dragon’s Tail while carryin’ a child. They have matters to discuss that daenae concern ye. Or me.”
“She always reads to me before the torches are put out,” Brian countered, his voice losing its warrior edge. “She didnae come to the library today. Nae once.”
The bread turned to ash in Sebastian’s mouth. He looked at the smudge of flour still dusting the boy’s cheek—likely from a trip to the kitchens to find her—and felt a sharp, unfamiliar twist of guilt right beneath his ribs.
He had brought his people south for safety, and he had demanded this marriage to give his brother’s son a mother. He had expected Alba to be a cold, capable ledger-keeper who would perform her duties out of obligation.
He had not expected Brian to look for her as if she were the sun rising over the hills. He had not expected to look for her that way himself.
“She will be there,” Sebastian said, his voice softening by a fraction, though the gravel remained. “Eat the stew, Brian. A future Laird doesnae starve himself over a broken routine.”
Brian stared at him for three long seconds, weighing the promise, before he finally picked up his wooden spoon and began to eat with a slow, begrudging reluctance.
Hamish leaned over the table the moment the boy was distracted, his voice a low whisper. “The boy is nae wrong, Sebastian.”
“Keep yer mouth shut, Hamish, if ye want to keep the teeth inside it,” Sebastian growled, not looking at him.
“I am just sayin’,” Hamish muttered, entirely unbothered by the threat, “the Lady has teeth of her own. If ye upset her, ye’d best find a way to smooth it over before Sunday.
The MacKenzies are here now. If she decides to climb into that baggage cart tomorrow mornin’, Fergus MacKenzie has enough iron to make our stay here very short and very bloody. ”
“She willnae leave,” Sebastian said. The words came out sharper than he intended, carrying a sudden, violent certainty that surprised even him.
He knew the terms of their psychological war.
He understood how fiercely she protected her people.
She would not abandon the MacLarens to a winter under MacGregor rule without being sure they were safe, and she would not leave Brian.
He had seen how her hand rested on the boy’s shoulder in the courtyard, an instinctive, protective gesture that had nothing to do with political deals or forced alliances.
But knowing she would not leave did not fix the cold, empty space beside him.
It did not change the fact that when he closed his eyes, he could still feel the small, furious heat of her body pressed against his chest, the taste of her mouth like rain and honey, and the sharp, agonizing pull of his own restraint when he had forced himself to let her go.
He had done it to protect his pride, to keep the upper hand in a game of power/ a dance of power. But sitting here in the roaring, crowded Hall, watching his nephew eat in silence and listening to the rain hiss against the high windows, Sebastian had never felt more thoroughly defeated.
He pushed his trencher away, his appetite completely gone.
“Watch the boy,” Sebastian commanded briefly, sliding his legs over the bench and standing to his full height.
Hamish looked up, his smirk vanishing into a serious nod. “Where are ye goin’?”
Sebastian did not answer. He adjusted the belt of his sword out of habit, though he was not wearing his armor, and turned away from the high table.
He walked down the center of the Hall, his heavy boots cutting through the noise of his men, his eyes fixed on the heavy timber doors that led out into the courtyard and the dark, wet gardens beyond.
The rain was thinning into a silver mist by the time he stepped out, the cold air hitting his face like a slap.
He stood under the stone archway of the threshold, his eyes scanning the flickering torchlight along the paths until he caught the shape of two wool-cloaked figures standing near the ancient rowan tree.
One of them was laughing, a low, light sound that drifted back toward the Hall on the wind.
Sebastian stayed in the shadows, his breath rising in small white plumes, watching her.
* * *
The dampness of the morning clung to the small stone cottages of the lower village, thick and smelling of low-tide river silt and green woodsmoke.
Alba spent the early hours kneeling on the packed-earth floor of the communal bakery, her sleeves rolled tightly past her elbows, and her woolen skirts pinned back out of the dirt, helping prepare the final winter bakes for the incoming families before she had to go.
Yet, no matter how hard she pressed her palms into the heavy, resistant dough, a sharp, unyielding restlessness followed her through every task.
She caught herself looking toward the castle repeatedly without meaning to, her gaze drifting involuntarily up the steep, muddy incline toward the dark, jagged silhouette of the battlements.
Looking for him.
The realization annoyed her greatly. She brought her fists down into the dough with too much force, sending a small, white puff of flour up into the damp air.
“The new Laird seems just, doesnae he? And good for the eye?”
The teasing murmur came from Elspeth, an older MacLaren woman who was kneading bread beside her with a frightening amount of energy.
Alba nearly dropped the heavy earthenware flour bowl right into the embers.
She kept her face down, her dark hair falling forward like a curtain to hide the sudden, treacherous heat rising along her neck.
“I have nae noticed,” she said, her voice dropping into her finest, most indifferent administrative clip. “Is he?”
The older woman only hummed knowingly, a low, rumbling sound of pure amusement that vibrated through the wooden trestle table.
Traitorous old crone.
She had been the first to complain about the MacGregor grain rations three days ago, and now she was looking at the invading warlord as if he were a prize bull at a spring fair.