Alex did not look at Erica when he spoke again. He kept his gaze level and his voice even. “We will host a cèilidh.”
Bettie clapped first, quick and bright. Katie joined in, feet drumming against the bench. Servants smiled with the relief of something decided.
Alex lifted a hand, and the noise died down. “If Erica agrees,” he added, clear enough for the back of the hall.
Her name skipped across the boards like a pebble on still water.
Lady Bryden looked down at her cup, while the nurse hushed the girls without much force.Erica was too speechless to speak.
Alex continued before anyone could fill the pause. “Invitations will go out by noon. To the families nearby, the councilmen who mind their tongues, and the folks who trade with us most. The musicians in the valley can be hired by week’s end. We will use the courtyard if the weather holds or the Great Hall if it doesnae.”
Erica swallowed, still staring into the distance, unable to move.
“The purpose is simple,” Alex said. “Food. Music. Courtesy. Nay vows. Nay speeches.”
Bettie raised a hand like a scholar. “Flowers?”
“Aye,” he said. “As many as the gardens can spare.” He let a beat pass, then placed the stone he had been turning over in his mind. “We will also write to Laird MacGee.”
Erica froze.
What?
The cheer died clean. The silence that followed was not confusion. It was thought sharpening itself.
“Why him?” Erica heard Grandmamma ask
Alex kept his tone mild. “Rumor spreads faster when a man is left outside the gate. If he stands in the light, he will need his manners.”
Across the table, Grandmamma folded her hands and studied his face as if reading a map. She did not correct him, but she did not agree either.
He pushed back his chair. “That is all.”
He stood, nodded once to the hall, and turned away. The scrape of his chair sounded louder than it should. Calum stepped back to let him pass.
At the threshold, Alex paused long enough to give the steward three orders in a row, each short and exact. Erica couldn’t hear him from where she was, but she understood just from the way they responded to him. She then watched as he disappeared down the passage.
As if her soul had suddenly snapped back into consciousness, she felt the world around her crash into the ground.
Nay.Nay, I daenae have to sit here and take this.
Without thinking too hard about it, she slipped through the door before it could swing shut, shawl tight in one fist.
“I havenae accepted yer proposal,” she said, keeping her voice low.
The words were steady. The cost to keep them steady was not.
Alex did not stop. “The cèilidh buys time.”
“Time for whom exactly?” she asked.
He halted then, half-turned in the narrow light where the passageway opened onto the stairs. She could see the line of his jaw, the tired set of his mouth, the eye that watched everything and gave little.
He looked as he always did in a crisis, calm as stone. It made her want to shake him.
“For everyone,” he replied.
She scoffed.“That isnae an answer, and ye ken it.”
