"Practical," he said, his voice a low rumble.
"Entirely," she agreed, her own voice barely a whisper.
His eyes came up to her face and stayed there. She let him look, feeling the weight of his attention like a physical touch, more thorough and demanding than a hand on her skin.
"Ye look," he started, his voice catching.
"Practical," she repeated, a small spark of the old Catriona flickering in her eyes.
“Beautiful.” He paused. “The most beautiful in all the lands.”
“And ye look perfect.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, the shadow of a smirk.
He offered his arm, his elbow bent, and she slid her hand into the crook of it. Together, they turned toward the center of the courtyard and the circle that opened to receive them.
Eidith was waiting for them at the center.
She held the hand-fasting cord. Woven plaid in the MacArthur colors, prepared with a meticulous care she would surely claim was purely functional. Her spine was a straight line of granite, her face solemn, but her eyes were too bright in the torchlight, glistening with a softness she was clearly never going to acknowledge.
They stood before her, and the clan closed the circle, the warmth of the bodies sealing out the evening chill.
Fox trotted over and sat down at Catriona's feet.
He hadn't been called, he simply arrived. Tail wrapped neatly around his paws and amber eyes forward, as though he had been appointed to an official post and took his duties seriously.
James materialized beside Marcus, chest heaving from the run. He leaned into Marcus's leg, and Catriona felt her heart swell, filing that small moment of safety away in a chest that was already dangerously full.
Eidith looked at Anthony, then at Catriona, her expression unreadable. She held up the cord.
"Hands," she said. The word was a command that carried across the stones.
Anthony turned to face Catriona and held out his right hand, palm up. Catriona placed her left hand into it. His fingers closed over her, firm, warm, and certain. It was the same grip that hadcaught her on a cliff ledge, and she realized then that he had never truly let go.
Eidith began to wind the cord.
She worked with slow, deliberate precision, the plaid wrapping over their joined hands in even, rhythmic turns. The MacArthur colors lay bright against their skin.
Catriona watched the fabric tighten and felt the heat of Anthony's palm, his steadiness anchoring her. She thought about every door that had been locked against her, the ones she'd tried to break, and the ones she'd walked away from before they could be closed.
She thought about the archway in the rain.
Because I daenae ken if I was saved. Or kept.
She looked up at him. He was already looking at her, his dark eyes wide and fixed. It did something to her breathing that she had stopped trying to control weeks ago.
Nae here, Catriona.
Eidith tied the first knot.
"Anthony MacArthur," she said, her voice resonant and clear, the voice of the keep itself. "Before yer clan and yer kin and all who stand witness. What do ye pledge?"
Anthony didn't look at the cord. He didn't look at the crowd or the guests. He looked only at Catriona, his face stripped of the Laird's distance, showing her the man beneath the armor.
"Protection," he said. His voice was steady and low, each word chosen with the gravity of a blood oath. "And partnership. I pledge to stand between ye and any harm that comes from outside these walls, and to listen to ye regardin' any harm that comes from within them." The corner of his mouth moved, a private, fleeting ghost of a smile. "Which I'm told is the harder part."
A soft ripple of laughter and warmth moved through the circle.
