“Aye, and ye’re wringing it,” Lachlan hissed, louder now so the hall could hear. “Folks are eating, and ye want to make a show of her.”
A footman near the wall coughed and looked away. An old councilman slowly shook his head, as if measuring the change in a man he had known since boyhood.
Neil’s jaw worked while irritation and confusion warred within him. The hall felt too cramped. He kept his gaze on Kristen anyway, so he did not have to see the rest.
“Everybody out,” he ordered. The words came out quiet, dangerous.
The hall went still. No one moved.
Davina looked from Neil to Kristen, worry tightening her mouth. “Me Laird,” she said softly, “leave it for the morning. Ye daenae have to do this now.”
Lachlan stayed seated, the air around him dense as the morning fog. “Braither.”
Neil did not blink. “Did ye nae hear me?” he bit out. “Leave us.”
Chairs scraped across the floor as murmurs rose and died. People shot to their feet, with the mothers gathering the children. A guard near the door dropped his hand from his swordbelt and backed out as if from a sickroom.
Davina paused, her eyes asking what could not be solved at a table. She touched Kristen’s shoulder in passing, a brief press of warmth, then stepped away.
Lachlan stood up last. He held Neil’s gaze, and for a heartbeat, the air bristled with the thought that he might refuse to leave. Neil fixed him with a glare that dared him to do just that.
He did not.
He touched Davina’s elbow instead and led her toward the door.
In a matter of minutes, the heavy door swung shut. They were all gone. The hall was now nothing more than an echo of his breath and a wave of anger he could not push down.
He heard Kristen pant like a woman who had run too fast, but did not take his eyes off her. The space between them felt small and full of the same heat that coiled low in his stomach.
Kristen pushed to her feet so quickly that the bench toppled over.
“What is wrong with ye?” she snapped. “He was just being nice. Lachlan has always been kind to me. And to the bairns.”
“Tookind,” Neil grunted.
“To ask me what I think?” she shot back. “In me own hall, where I have kept our people fed and quiet while ye were gone? Have ye gone mad?”
His mouth flattened. “It ismehall.”
“Fine, it is,” she hissed, her breathing ragged. “But I kept it for ye.”
He gripped the edge of the table until his knuckles turned white. “I am finding it rather obvious,” he gritted out, “that I daenae like it when other men are being nice to me wife.”
She glared at him, flushed to the throat. “Then ye should have been here to be nicer yerself.”
He flinched. Her words shivered in the space between them. “I wasnae free to be anything.”
“Aye,” she said, her voice lowering. “And yet ye come back and bite the only hands that helped me hold together what was yers. Ye ask for me voice, then snarl when another asks for it first.”
Neil raked a hand through his hair, mussing it. His eyes kept falling to her mouth and darting away as if caught.
“Ye stood there in that dress,” he said, each word measured as a blow, “and men looked at ye.”
She lifted her chin. “I noticed.”
“I noticed more.”
Her breath hitched. “And what will ye do with that, Neil? Lock me in the tower ye banned me from? Put me away and look at me from the stairs?”
