Page 45 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander

Her chin came up, her posture rigid.

“May I leave now?” she said, her voice perfectly level and entirely devoid of warmth. “Me Laird.”

The formality of it landed like a heavy iron door slamming shut. It was deliberate, precise, the title placed between them like a jagged boundary marker driven deep into frozen ground.

Sebastian stepped back.

He took one slow, deliberate pace, giving her the room she demanded. Because if he did not put physical space between them first, stepping back would not be the next thing he did.

Alba swept past him. The fine silk of her sleeve came within a hair’s breadth of his arm but did not touch it. Her spine was perfectly straight, her pace measured and calm, every single line of her body radiating controlled, furious dignity.

She reached the door. She did not look back.

It closed behind her without a sound. Not slammed; she would never give him the petty satisfaction of a slammed door. It simply closed, quietly and completely.

Her scent trailed behind her like a whisper/. Wild thyme, warm wool, and something underneath that was distinctly her. It hung in the candlelit air of the empty Hall with a distinctiveness he was growingly finding difficult to manage.

Sebastian stood frozen in it for ten seconds.

Then he crossed the Hall, ripped his heavy cloak from the iron hook beside the door, pushed through the heavy timber entrance, and walked out into the biting night air without stopping.

The courtyard was dead quiet. The watch fires burned low at the corners, throwing shifting orange circles across the frost-stiffened cobblestones. His heavy boots found the East Path without him having to think about it, the exact same path his feet had taken a few days ago, through the same tree line, the same dark water appearing between the bare trunks as the ground sloped sharply down.

The loch at night was a sheet of black, absolute stillness. There was no wind. The mountains above it were solid blocks of darkness against a sky that had cleared significantly since supper. The stars were out, shining in full force. However, they were cold, distant, and unable to offer redemption; same as her.

He stopped at the bank.

He stood there in the freezing darkness with his breath coming out in slow, thick white clouds and his hands loose at his sides. He looked at the black water; he did not go in.

Not because the numbing cold did not tempt him. It had not worked last time, and he was a practical man after all.

Surrenderin’ to me that night.

He acknowledged the sharp satisfaction of this truth the exact moment the words left his mouth. It was instant, sharp and vile; this ugly pleasure of landing a blow exactly where he intended.

He savored the moment the breath left her body, her dark eyes widened, and the wounded fury rushed in behind them. He had felt satisfied, aye; but he had also felt a deep, blunt pain.

She was leaving.

The letter had been sent. Margaret MacKenzie would respond, or she had already responded, or she would send a carriage, and Alba MacLaren would put her few things in it, ride North, andtake every piece of knowledge she possessed about this Holding with her.

The servants would turn to him with their endless questions about salt, root vegetables, and fighting goats, and he would answer them—adequately, correctly, and it would not be the same thing. He had always known it would not be the same thing.

I need her to stay.

He had told her that. He had said it plainly, without ornament, and she had looked at him with those frozen eyes, used the wordsurrendering, and he had responded in the worst possible way.

He picked up a flat, smooth stone from the frozen bank. He turned it over in his palm, feeling the icy weight. He set it back down.

Brian had slipped his hand into hers in the courtyard this afternoon without a single thought. Sebastian had watched it from across the cobblestones. The small, pale fingers disappearing into her grip, the easy, unquestioning way his nephew had decided she was safe. It had made something move through him that he had not been prepared for. It was not in his chest, exactly. It was deeper than that. It was the exact place where the dying vow to his brother lived.

Find him a mother.

He looked back out at the black, endless water.

Tomorrow is Sunday.

He turned from the loch and began the long walk back toward the looming Castle, his heavy boots loud on the frost-hardened ground in the absolute silence of the Highland night.