She swallowed, throat dry. “Maxwell.”
“The laird is just outside,” she heard the healer whisper softly. “As ye have asked me to ensure.”
“Let him in, Lara.”
She watched as the healer stood and walked to the door to let him in. She watched as her husband ducked into her chambers and walked across the room. She watched as the chair scraped softly against the stone as he sat next to her.
“Ye’re awake,” he said, voice low and rough. “Thank God.”
The words caught her off guard.
She studied his face. He looked stripped. Not the laird carved from stone, not the warrior hardened by blood. Just a man who had been sitting vigil too long.
“How long?” she asked quietly.
“Long enough,” he replied. Then, after a pause, “The healer says ye must rest.”
She nodded faintly. “I will.”
Silence fell between them.
It was not uncomfortable. But it was heavy.
She waited for him to say something else. To ask how she felt. To tell her she had frightened him. To retreat behind courtesy and rules and duty.
Instead, he spoke her name again.
“Ariella.”
The way he said it made her chest tighten.
“I ken ye havenae wished to see me, and frankly I understand yer reasons and I deserve it, but I need to tell ye something,” he said.
She shifted slightly, propping herself up against the pillows. “All right.”
He drew a slow breath, as if steadying himself before stepping off a cliff.
“When I was a boy,” he began, “I prayed for peace.”
Her brows knit slightly. She had not expected that.
“Me parents fought constantly with O’Douglas,” he continued. “Raids. Retaliation. Death by inches. I was young, but I remember standing in the chapel, begging God to make it stop.”
His gaze fixed on a point somewhere beyond the wall.
“When they died, the fighting didnae stop. It only became mine.”
Ariella’s fingers curled into the blanket.
“I learned quickly that wanting peace made men think ye were weak,” he said. “So I learned nae to want.”
Her throat tightened.
“Duty came easily after that. Guilt did too. I told myself that if I carried it all, if I made the hard choices and denied myself anything that might soften me, then perhaps fewer others would suffer.”
She saw it then. Not the rule about heirs. But the shape of it. The way it had grown out of fear rather than cruelty.
“And joy,” he said quietly, “felt like a betrayal.”
