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Angus shook his head with grave disappointment, crossing his small arms over his chest as if he were an ancient elder presiding over the council. “Folk who are married sit together. They go walkin’. They talk. They dance. Both of ye only stare at each other.”

A low snort echoed from the second table, followed instantly by muffled, wheezing coughs as several of Brodie’s seasoned warriors struggled—and failed—to hide their amusement behind their hands.

A sudden, fierce heat rushed up into Sheona’s cheeks, painting her skin a vivid, burning rose.

Brodie noticed it immediately. He saw the way her blue eyes widened, her long eyelashes fluttering as she hurriedly looked down at her trencher, her fingers tightening around her napkin.

“Finish yer supper,” Brodie grunted, his voice dropping an octave into a low, warning rasp aimed square at his son.

“But Father.”

“Now,” Brodie commanded, flat and absolute.

Angus let out another heavy, theatrical sigh, lowering his chin toward his wooden plate, but the damage was done. A wave of broad, barely suppressed grins rippled across the hall.

Brodie slowly lifted his gaze from his plate, his dark eyes sweeping over the long tables like a winter storm rolling down the glen. His face was unyielding granite.

“If any man has finished laughin’,” Brodie said, his voice carrying effortlessly into every dark corner of the rafters, “tomorrow’s trainin’ begins an hour before sunrise. Full armor. Heavy broadswords.”

The laughter died at once. The hall went deathly quiet, save for the immediate, frantic scraping of spoons against wooden bowls as thirty hardened warriors suddenly found their stews utterly fascinating.

A heartbeat later, however, a tiny, high-pitched giggle escaped into the air. Brodie turned his head sharply toward the sound. Angus was covering his mouth with both hands, his small shoulders shaking violently with delight. Brodie followed the boy’s gleaming gaze across the small gap between their chairs to find Sheona.

She was looking directly at Angus, her brows knitted together into a deep, exaggerated scowl, her jaw thrust forward, her chin tilted high as she silently mimicked Brodie’s stern, authoritative expression. Her lips moved in a soundless, puffed-out imitation of his harsh command, her hand hovering over her chest as if gripping an invisible broadsword belt.

Brodie’s jaw locked. He should be annoyed. In fact, he was annoyed—deeply irritated by her sheer boldness, by the audacity of a captive MacFaris lass mocking the Laird in his own hall before his own men.

Yet the sound of his son’s bright, genuine laughter echoed off the high stone walls, warm and free. It was a sound that had been missing from this keep for three long years. Brodie said nothing. He kept his mouth shut, his chest rising and falling in a slow, heavy breath.

Feeling his heavy gaze upon her, Sheona suddenly caught herself. Her silly expression melted away instantly as she turned back toward him, her blue eyes wide with a sudden, breathless realization of what she’d just done.

As she moved her head, a thick, loose curl of ink-black hair slipped over her shoulder, sliding softly across her skin to expose the smooth, pale curve of her neck just above her collar.

The firelight caught the soft sheen of her skin. It was porcelain pale, delicate-looking, and still flushed with the lingering warmth of her embarrassment. A faint pulse fluttered in the hollow of her throat.

Brodie’s throat went bone-dry.

For a fleeting, dangerous heartbeat, his mind betrayed him. A sudden, heavy heat coiled tight in the pit of his stomach, and he wondered—with brutal, vivid clarity—how that soft, exposed flesh would feel beneath the rough, calloused weight of his hand.

He imagined pressing his thumb against that fluttering pulse, feeling her breath catch against his skin, pulling her close enough to burn away the sharp, defensive space she maintained between them.

The image was so intense, so raw, that his grip on his iron goblet tightened until the metal groaned beneath his knuckles.

He forced the thought away, dragging his eyes back to his plate with violent discipline. He picked up his iron knife, slicing into the roast mutton with far more force than necessary, even more irritated with himself than he was with her.

CHAPTER SIX

The gray light of dawn had barely begun to creep through the narrow arrow slits of the keep when Sheona sat up in the massive feather bed.

She pulled her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them, staring at the dark wooden canopy above.

In the stillness of the early morning, the quiet was dangerous. Every silent moment let the previous days flood back into her mind with suffocating weight—her father’s ruthless, bloody end, her home seized and guarded by foreign steel, the terrible loss of Andrew beneath the cold, dark waters of the loch, and the impossible four-week bargain she had struck with Brodie MacKinley.

Brodie.

Just the thought of his name made her chest tighten. She could still feel the lingering heat of his dark eyes piercing right through her across the high table, the way his broad frame seemed to devour every inch of space around her.

Sheona threw off the heavy wool blankets and swung her feet onto the cold flagstones. Staying still meant thinking. Thinking meant breaking. Keeping busy was the only way she knew how to keep breathing.