Page 10 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander
“If ye’re tryin’ to drive me out,” she said, stopping abruptly beside the table, “ye’ll need to try harder than rearrangin’ me kitchens.”
Sebastian glanced up from his charcoal-marked maps. His expression was entirely calm, which she was rapidly learning to deeply distrust. “I am organizin’ the winter stores.”
“Inmehome.”
“Ourhome, currently.” He looked right back down at the parchment. “Permanently, if ye make the sensible choice.”
Alba stared at the side of his face.
He did not look up. His gaze stayed on the parchment, and his charcoal stick moved in a slow, deliberate line as if she were just another element of the weather. Present, noted, and completely beneath interruption.
Her fingernails bit into her palms through the leather of her gloves.
“Ye’re nae even goin’ to answer me,” she said.
“I answered ye.” He turned the map slightly, studying its southern edge. “Ye didnae like the answer.”
She stepped closer to the table, close enough that he would have to acknowledge her or make a deliberate choice not to. “The legality of this occupation is…”
“Highland law.” He looked up then, finally, and the absolute unhurried steadiness in his dark blue eyes was worse than any argument he could have made. “Same as yers. Ye ken that already.”
She did. That was the particular poison of it.
I have nowhere else to go.
The thought hit her hard and was completely unwelcome. Her cousin, Margaret MacKenzie would take her under her wing, but Margaret’s protection meant Fergus MacKenzie’s name, and his name carried obligations she wanted to avoid. Three years of independence, hard-earned, did not end just to trade one man’s control for another’s.
“Then I will find somewhere else to go,” she said, and heard the words come out sharper than she intended, because they were hollow and she suspected he could hear it just as clearly as she could.
Sebastian straightened up to his full, towering height. He looked at her properly for the first time since she had approached the table, and there was something in his gaze. Some brief, careful, intensely focused attention in his dark blue eyes that made her want to step back and look away.
She did not flinch.
“Ye’ve nowhere to go,” he said. He did not say it unkindly, which somehow made the truth of it almost worse. “And we both ken it.”
“Ye daenae ken anythin’ about me.”
“I ken ye rode out alone to meet merchants in a treacherous Highland storm rather than wait safely for them to come to ye,” he countered, rolling one edge of the map down and setting a heavy stone on it to keep the wind from catching it. “I ken yer man-at-arms follows ye without question, and yer guards would have taken a sword through the chest for ye on that road. I ken yer people stop what they’re doin’ the moment ye speak, and they daenae do it out of fear.”
He looked at her steadily, his voice dropping. “And I ken that a woman who built all of that from nothin’ isnae goin’ to walk away from it because she’s too proud to be practical.”
The bustling courtyard continued to move around them. Hammers struck rhythmically on stone. Men called out to each other over the wooden scaffolding. The ordinary sounds of a world that had not noticed anything unusual were happening right in the middle of it.
Alba felt his words settle somewhere deep inside her, someplace she had not permitted them to go.
“Flattery isnae the same as a good argument,” she said, her voice tight.
“It wasnae flattery.” He looked back down at the maps. “It was an assessment.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Flattery is when ye tell someone what they want to hear.” He made a sharp mark on the map with the flat of his thumb. “I didnae do that.”
She believed him, which was thoroughly aggravating.
“I want access to the east wing accounts,” she demanded, shifting the subject to solid ground. “If yer men are reorganizin’ stores, I need to ken what’s been moved where, or the winter inventory willnae balance, and we’ll run short of food before March.”
Sebastian was quiet for a moment, calculating. “Hamish has the accountin’ ledgers.”
