He felt the attention of the hall like a hand on his back. It was not an open challenge. Concern lived in it, the kind older men wore when they assumed a leader had taken a step that would cost him. He wondered if they saw weakness in him simply because he could not dance.
The thought irritated him more than the men themselves.
He looked back at David. The man had steadied him in worse weather than this. He hadbledfor him. He had set a line in a dance so his bride would sleep safely on her first night.
The truth of that pressed against his temper and would not move.
He drank again to dull the feeling. The ale went down fast and hard. It did not dull the fact that Emma had laughed when David spun her. She had looked alive in a way that had nothing to do with Logan standing at a wall and watching them.
He hated that. He hated that another man’s hands had made the hall feel welcome.
He turned slightly to see who was watching him. Two elders near the fireplace lowered their heads immediately and pretended to share a story, but he knew better. Further down, a kitchen maid wiped a bench and kept her head bent with discipline.
Everyone heard, even when they chose to hear nothing.
Logan’s authority tightened in reply. He could feel it in the set of his shoulders and his jaw. He had built a life on certainty. The night had taken that and shaken it until small truths fell out. He did not like the mess of them.
He did not like being vulnerable.
It did not even matter that he had made Emma come undone twice before returning to the hall. A part of him still felt inadequate. She was English. They loved to dance. And he could not ask her not to simply because he could not.
David lifted his head a little. “Do ye need me for the last watch, me Laird?”
“Nay.” The word came too quickly. Logan pulled it back into steadiness. “Take yer rest.”
“Aye.” David did not move. “For what it is worth, the people like her.”
Logan shot him a look. “I daenae care what people think.”
David gave a short nod. “As ye say.” He stepped back to clear the space and joined the men he had left.
Logan stood where he was and listened to the crackle of the fire. He looked once more at the dance floor. Pride tried to rise with the picture, but something else outmatched it.
He ground his teeth. Was that jealousy?
He did not know where to put the feeling, so he placed it on the nearest shelf.Authority.It was the only part of him he felt free to trust at the moment.
He reached for the cup and found it empty.
A maid passed with a flagon and froze under his stare. Logan lifted the cup, and the maid refilled it and fled. He drank and set the cup down more gently this time. The rim left a wet ring on the table. He watched it narrow as the ale soaked into old wood.
He turned his head and found the same elders looking again. One lifted his chin an inch, a gesture that could have been respect or a warning. Logan did not care to choose. He looked past them to the door that led to the yard. The air beyond it would be cold and clean. It would perhaps alleviate the heaviness that had lodged behind his ribs and provide some cold relief.
His heart was still pounding from his earlier arousal, and the low heat and hum of voices from all corners did not help at all.
He watched as David spoke low to his men and then left. He circled wide to avoid crossing Logan’s path and checked a window latch without needing to. The habit of competence, steady even when no one asked for it.
Logan resented the ease of it for a moment and knew he was being unfair. He set his palm flat on the table and pressed until the wood roughened his skin. The anger he felt over this whole thing was unjustified. It did not belong to Emma or David.
It belonged to him.
He had left a room on his wedding night because his wife had asked him to prove that he could listen. He had listened and come back to the hall to be the man his clan expected.
The man Emma wanted and the man he was did not match cleanly inside him.They were so mismatched that he almost felt the seam.
The last tune faltered and eventually ended, giving way to talk and the scrape of benches. Logan drained his drink and let it hit hard. The cup knocked over the table when he set it down, and the sound made people nearby jump. He did not apologize.
He gave the hall another long look and found nothing there that soothed. He turned away from all of it and told himself it was strength. But the voice in his head said otherwise.
