“It can bear it,” Neil muttered, lifting his cup again.
Davina cleared her throat with a brightness that reached the far wall. “Me Laird,” she called, and the hall settled. “We should host a cèilidh for yer return.”
Cheers went up in honest relief. A palm slapped a table. A boy tried to whistle and failed. Even the maid at the corner cracked a smile.
“Aye,” a man agreed. “Music will shake old bones loose.”
“And fill new plates,” another added, eliciting laughter.
Davina raised her hand, hushing them. “It would also be the perfect opportunity to speak about the two bairns who grace our castle,” she continued, her voice clear. “Publicly and with care. The people love them. They should hear the Laird claim them openly as part of the clan.”
Heads nodded along the benches. A woman near the end laid a hand on Finn’s hair, and Anna clapped at the rather enjoyable chaos.
Neil set down his spoon.
Acelebration. He had nothing in five years that could carry that word without breaking under it.
He looked at Davina and nodded for her to pause.
Lachlan leaned back to scan the faces. “Ye hear the sense in it,” he reasoned. “Folks need music to bind their talk.”
Neil folded his forearms on the table and lowered his voice, yet it still carried across the hall. “I hate having to plan such gatherings when there is still so much to deal with.”
The table fell so quiet that the sound of a cup clinking yards away could be heard.
“Alex is still missing; I was unable to find him. I am afraid the celebration willnae be complete.”
The words hung in the air like iron fresh from the fire.
Tension spread across the tables. It moved from older men who had held a shield to younger lads who had not yet learned how to mask their fear with a grin.
Kristen’s head turned toward the high table, quick and sharp, but Neil did not meet her eyes. He kept his attention on the map in his mind, the paths that ran like veins from this hall to the places where his brother could be held. He lifted the cup to his lips and drank to buy himself some time.
“However, a public cèilidh might just be what we need. It might flush someone out,” he continued. “The leader of the bandits. The woman who left the bairns here. Any soul that might be linked to that night.” As murmurs rose and rippled through the crowd, he placed his cup on the table. “Ye ken what they say: noise brings rats to the light.”
Davina’s chin dipped once, a subtle sign of approval.
Lachlan hummed. “A good idea,” he acknowledged. “But I doubt he will risk revealing himself among so many people. A crowd shields both the timid and the bold.”
Neil’s fingers drummed once on the table. “Then let him stay hidden.”
He looked over the rim of his cup at the far wall and the door that led to the courtyard. He could feel how a man might stand there and count guards, how a woman might stand there and measure the hall for a lie that would fit. Somewhere, someone had grown used to their lie.
“I will drag him out, eventually.”
The words carried just far enough to be heard by those who needed them. Men clenched their jaws. Women breathed out slowly. The hall relaxed a touch, then found that fine balance a castle must keep when truth had cut and no one knew if they would bleed more or less for hearing it.
He reached for the bowl of stew again, because a laird must eat. The hall found its rhythm again, cautious and then a little braver, as if folks remembered they could move.
Ewan hovered two paces behind Kristen with the pitcher; apparently, he had not found a good reason to leave. Davina took the pitcher with a pointed look and refilled her own cup. The lad flushed and bowed and retreated with more clatter than he had brought.
Neil’s shoulders relaxed. He let himself look at Kristen directly now. She had resumed her talk with Davina as if she had not felt the hall hold its breath and release it. Her hands moved as she spoke, quiet and sure, the same hands that had made a cold chamber feel like a place a man could breathe. Her dress did not need the light; it carried its own.
“Ye could make the speech yerself,” Lachlan muttered under his breath. “Or ye could have Davina do it for ye. Folks love her voice.”
“They will hear it from me,” Neil said. “With Kristen beside me to show the thing that stands inside these walls.”
Lachlan nodded his head. “Aye. Makes sense.”
