The hall blurred at the edges, and for a minute, Kristen felt like she was back to being the lady of the clan.Almost.
She stood with her hands light on the back of a chair and watched the door because she simply could not stop. Then, almost like it had responded to sheer will, it opened.
Neil stepped inside, filling the frame without trying, tall and sure, the Drummond tartan worn like a promise and the weight of his presence settling the room by inches. His hair had been brushed and tied back, and his jaw was set.
People rose to their feet because their bodies remembered how to greet a laird before their minds did.
He looked at her.
The first glance hit her like a hand to the rail of a ship. She caught herself and held steady. Her breathing quickened. She could not think of the last word anyone had said to her. She could think only of the space between them and the way it began to shrink.
He crossed the hall as if there were no other path, and when he reached her, he lifted his hand, steady and sure. His voice was low enough that no one else could hear.
“Come sit next to me.”
Her fingers curled around his without thought. The heat of his palm surprised her, and the steadiness of it surprised her even more.
He led her to the high table, and she walked beside him as if she had always done so, as if the two days of cold silence had never existed.
They sat, the wood feeling warm through the linen where her hand rested. Her new blue dress lay quietly around her, but her pulse did not. His knee brushed her skirt under the table, an ordinary touch that did not feel ordinary at all.
Although she kept her expression calm, her heart gave a single, painful flutter that she had the sense not to show.
26
Neil rose from the high table.
The scrape of his chair was not loud, yet the music faded as if a bow had been stilled by a steady hand. The torches hissed along the stone, and the faces turned toward him in a slow sweep that gathered the whole hall.
He felt Kristen’s gaze, but he did not look down at her yet. He let the weight of the hall settle on his shoulders and stood inside it, his spine straight, his hands steady at his sides, his breath measured enough to carry what must be said.
“I have something to say to ye all,” he began, his voice carrying to the far fireplace. He took a deep breath, then another.“For years I told meself that me braither lived. I held on to that hope even when sense told me otherwise. I thought if I searched hard enough, if I fought hard enough, I would find him.”
The old bite of failure pressed under his ribs. He made himself stand still.
“But I have heard the truth. Alex is gone. And I mean to bring his body home, wherever it is, because an Adair deserves to be buried in his land.”
Silence settled like dust across the benches, and the fiddles lay quiet in the players’ hands. Somewhere, a child gave a small hiccup and was shushed.
Neil let the silence breathe once. He cleared his throat and set the next truth where all could hear it.
“And I am making another truth plain. Me wife and I will raise Finn and Anna as our own. They are to be treated as part of our family. Childrenofthe Laird, from this night on.” He set his cup down, the thud sharp against the wood.
The murmurs broke fast and uneven, like rain striking a roof from many directions.
“Children of the Laird.”
“His braither’s children.”
“Is this wise?”
A spoon clinked and rolled toward a boot. Two men bent to pick it up, bumping shoulders in their hurry. People leaned toward one another with questions that had lived too long in their mouths, and Neil felt his jaw tighten.
His temper rose, hot and hard. He shifted his weight a fraction, the movement that came before a command. He was ready to cut through the noise and let no one mistake him again.
Kristen rose to her feet, the scraping of her chair cutting through the noise. The sound touched the room more softly than any order could. Her hand found his forearm, light and sure, a touch meant to steady rather than restrain, and she turned to the hall.
“As ye all ken very well, I love those bairns,” she began, every word clear. “I have done so from the moment they arrived. I always wanted a big family, and me husband has given me that.”
