Page 43 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander

Alba looked up from the document, her gaze instantly focusing. “Use the Northern Stores first.” She turned the page back to check a previous entry, then flicked it forward again. “And stop storin’ the root vegetables directly beside the apples, or they’ll rot twice as fast. Keep them separated. Turnips and parsnips to the far left of the lower shelf, away from the fruit entirely.”

“Aye, me Lady.” The girl left.

Sebastian observed the exchange, his jaw tight, and said nothing.

He closely watched the next one, too. A question arose about the linen order for the upper corridor, answered before the frantic girl had even finished asking it. Alba spoke with a rapid specificity about thread count and which untrustworthy supplier on the Southern Road gave honest weight, suggesting she had been managing this particular detail long before the girl had even been employed here.

Then came the candles. Then, the goats. Apparently, two of the MacGregor goats had been integrated into the MacLaren herd without adequate consideration of temperament, and the resulting situation had fiery opinions that desperately needed managing before morning.

Every single answer came the same way. It was not performed, not carefully considered; it was simply present. It was a bone-deep familiarity resulting from three years of meticulous attention to every small, unremarkable detail; a quiet attention focused on building the Keep into something that safe, functional and sustainable.

She belongs here.

He had known it since the road, when she looked at his heavily armed men, calculated the lethal odds, and calmly offered him safe passage into her home to protect her people. He had known it since the village square and the chaotic kitchens. He had known it. But watching it happen across a quiet supper table, apparently, was entirely different from just knowing it.

He set the ledger aside with a heavy thud.

“Leave us,” he said.

The command landed heavily across the Hall. His men looked up instantly, read the tension in the room, and began moving. The kitchen girl, who had returned with a follow-up question about the candles, reversed course. Hamish, who had appearedin the doorway at some point without Sebastian ever noticing, vanished back into the shadows.

Alba’s people were slower to react. John O’Connor hesitated, his eyes locking onto her.

She gave him a slight, reassuring nod.

Only then did he leave. The others followed in his wake.

Sebastian watched them wait for her signal. He watched her give it as though it were entirely natural, entirely unremarkable.

He hated it, yet he needed it.

Both of those crushing facts were true, and he had unsuccessfully tried to omit either.

The vast Hall settled into a heavy silence. The fire at the far hearth had burned down to a deep, steady amber glow. It was throwing long, flickering shadows across the stone floor, the oak tables, and the woman sitting three seats away from him, who had not, he noticed, put down her document.

“Ye undermine me constantly,” he said, his voice cutting through the quiet.

Alba looked up. She did not look guilty. She looked genuinely, cleanly confused, her dark brow drawing together.

“Excuse me?”

“The servants.” He kept his voice level, factual, stripped of everything that was not the plain, brutal shape of the problem. “They come to ye first. Every question, every decision, every small thing that keeps this Holdin’ runnin’. They walk right past me to find ye.”

She set the document down, her movements unhurried and deliberate. “It’s been ten days, Sebastian.”

“I am aware of how many days it’s been.”

“Then ye’ll understand that ten days isnae sufficient time to transfer the trust of people who watched me arrive as a frightened lass of eighteen with two trunks and a dead husband within a fortnight, and who've looked to me as their Lady every day since.” She folded her hands over the parchment. “Ye may have taken the stone walls, the iron gate, the Great Hall. Ye may have yer name carved on the outer door and yer men stationed on every landin’.” A heavy pause landed between them. “The people are nae architecture, Sebastian. They daenae transfer with the deed.”

“They will.”

“Perhaps.” Something shifted behind her eyes, quick and razor-sharp. “Eventually. When ye’ve earned it.”

“I daenae have eventually. I have now. I have a Holdin’ that needs to function, a Clan that needs feedin’ before the mountain passes freeze, and a Council that will question the legitimacy of this entire arrangement if the household isnae runnin’ under a single, unified authority.”

Her expression did not soften, but her chin lifted one defiant degree. “That sounds like a ye problem.”

Sebastian stood up slowly and deliberately, giving her plenty of time to read the deadly intent in his movement. He circled the end of the long table toward her, not in a hurry or overtly threatening, just closing the physical gap.