Page 20 of Promised to the Wicked Laird

"Through a war."

"Through a war." He folded it back into a small square and returned it to his belt pouch, and if his hand wasn't quite steady doing it, Duncan didn’t mention it. "It seemed a foolish thing tae carry into battle, a lass's hair ribbon, and I told meself that every single time I nearly threw it away. Never managed it."

Duncan let that sit a moment before he spoke again, gentler than Fearchar had heard him all morning. "She's under this roof now, ye ken. The lass from the garden."

"I ken exactly where she is, Duncan."

"Then ye also ken the letter's nae the only thing that needs settling before Robert makes his next move."

Fearchar looked up at that.

"The wedding," he said, "needs tae happen before the letter's sent. Nae after. Or the King reads a promise instead of a fact, and Robert's got a full season tae whisper otherwise intae whatever ear will listen."

Fearchar rolled the map closed, tucked it under one arm, and was already moving for the door. "Then I'll need an audience with Laird Alasdair. Today."

He did not wait for an invitation. Fearchar turned on his heel and strode out of the hall, his boots striking hard against the flagstones.

The castle corridors were thick with hushed whispers, guards and servants alike flattening themselves against the stone as he passed. The air grew colder as he climbed the narrow spiral stairs leading to the laird's private quarters, away from the noise of the courtyard.

He pushed open the heavy oak door without knocking.

He found the old laird alone in his solar, wrapped in the same furs he seemed never to shed, staring into a fire that had burned down to embers without anyone troubling to build it back up.

"Chisholm." Alasdair didn't look up. "I assume ye're here about the letter."

"I'm here about the wedding." Fearchar took the chair across from him without waiting to be offered it, the way he'd taken his seat at the council table the day before. "It needs tae happen before any word reaches the King. If we send confirmation of a marriage that hasnae taken place, and Robert's people reach Edinburgh first with a different story, we hand him exactly the opening he's hunting fer."

Alasdair's cough rattled through his chest, and he waved off the concern before Fearchar could voice it. "Ye want tae wed me daughter tomorrow."

"I want tae wed her before Robert has the chance to make it harder than it needs tae be. Every day we wait is a day he spends gathering men who'll believe whatever version of this he tells them."

The old man was quiet a long moment, his gaze fixed on the dying fire, his hands folded loose in his lap. "She's nae had time tae make peace with any of this. Ye ken that."

"I ken it. I told her as much meself, in the corridor last night." Fearchar leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees. "I'm nae asking because I've fergotten that. I'm asking because Robert isnae going tae wait fer either of us tae finish being fair about it, and I'd rather she stand married and protected than exposed and still deciding."

Alasdair's cough came again, worse this time, and he pressed a hand to his chest until it passed.

"There's little left in me tae argue with that logic, much as I'd like tae find fault in it fer her sake." He let his breath out slow. "Tomorrow, then. Quietly. I'll nae have the whole castle whispering about it before the vows are even spoken, nae after what happened at the last wedding held in this hall."

"Agreed."

"The priest will need summoning. And it'll need daeing without half the kitchen staff carrying word tae the stables before sundown."

"I'll see tae the priest meself."

Alasdair reached for the small bell at his elbow and rang it once, and when the servant appeared in the doorway, his voice had steadied into something closer to the laird Fearchar had first faced across a council table, brisk and certain despite the fire gone cold behind him.

"Fetch Father Lennox. Quietly. Tell him his laird requires him within the hour and tell no one else."

The servant bowed and vanished, and Alasdair turned back to Fearchar with something that might have been the ghost of a smile, worn thin around the edges of a man who'd buried too much in too short a span to manage anything fuller than that.

"Discreet," the old laird said. "Every step of it, Chisholm, until the moment it's done and there's nothing left fer Robert Farquharson tae unmake."

CHAPTER EIGHT

Nandag had barely reached the shade of the garden wall, one hand trailing along a row of clipped hedges, when voices drifted through an open kitchen window just ahead of her.

"...Father Lennox came and went nae an hour past," one servant was saying, low, gossip-quick. "Summoned quiet as ye like. Ye ken what that means."