“Aye?” Aiden didn’t take his seat. His palms thumped against the table again. “Then please, allow me to wonder with full intention of an explanation: why is a lassie from one ofmevillages coming tomecastle begging for help? If ye’re doin’ as I’ve ordered, I should say such a thing shouldnae happen. Would ye nae agree?”
“Me Laird,” Theodore spoke up again, his tone more cautious now. “Ye said ye’d keep them fed.” He shrugged his shoulders. “They’re fed.”
“They’re fed,” Aiden repeated, then drew another deep breath as he considered the ramifications of planting his fist in the man’s smug mouth. “Yet dying of illness. Howveryspecific ye were about me orders, Theodore.”
His man-at-arms seemed to notice the danger he was in and rearranged his expression to suit, looking chagrined. “There’s been nay outcry. Surely if that many crofters were abed, the villagers would be hungry, aye?”
“Yet, I repeat, villagers are coming tomeregarding their concerns.”
Aiden had desperately not wanted anything of the sort. He had intended to keep them alive and fed, not concerned with much more than that, hoping his council would manage the rest. The two landlords who sat before him after having spoken seemed unperturbed by the possibility of the dozens of families on the lands they managed falling ill, which had not been something he’d foreseen when he’d tried to keep himself separate from all but the most critical goings-on in the clan.
The chamberlain spoke up, his tone reluctant, “I have noticed a decrease in grain stores.”
The admission drew pursed lips and sharp glances from the two men beside him.
The elderly man met their gazes with bold impertinence, before looking back at Aiden. “Some trouble with rent, a few carts of barley waylaid on the roads by bandits of late. Nothing toshake the ground yet, but it could become more serious if left unchecked.”
“All the sort of things ye might have mentioned to mepriorto me finding out on me own!” The tenuous self-control Aiden had been maintaining broke, and the final word came out as more of a roar.
He strode away from the table. It was that or see if he could flip the oak monstrosity on his own out of sheer frustration.
“Important information that a lairdye asked forwould likely have been able to act on before this moment! Informationye two”—he pointed sternly at both tacksmen—“should have been the ones to tell me. When it initially began. When it could have been managed swiftly with skilled healers. When we could have implemented patrols in the areas being targeted by bandits and dissuaded them from continuing their activities. Now we’ve sat here for so long, half our clan believes themselves abandoned, and I, for one, can hardly blame them!”
The two highest-ranking landlords in the area had the decency to look chagrined, and the one with dark hair buried his face in his mug.
The next to speak was the oldest man at the table, not coincidentally the clan elder. “What do ye plan to do now that ye ken?”
Aiden paused for a moment, letting the old man’s words settle over the surface between them like a hastily thrown tablecloth.And then he strode back to the head of the table and planted one hand as he pointed to the gathered men in a sweeping gesture.
“Our next meeting will be in a month,” he growled, watching the men around the table snap to attention in their seats. “If this remains unmanaged, if I hear these people—me people—are still dying, ye’ll see yerselves in the ground beside them and replaced, God as me witness.”
There was a moment of silence that screamed.
The tacksman, the one Aiden believed to be Theodore’s cousin, frowned and cleared his throat and leaned forward, visibly trying to think of a way to redirect his command. “Laird MacBain?—”
“Dismissed.”
Aiden could still see the desperation on the face of the lass who’d come to him with her finest whiskey five days before.Hannah Leon. He would see to it that she didn’t need to beg anyone else for help.
He turned on his heel and strode out of the room without another word.
Two days had passed since Aiden had learned about the state of his clan. He was not surprised to discover that his ire hadn’tcooled. That a pair of green eyes bravely staring up at him had begun to haunt his dreams.
He couldn’t help the frustration that burned in his chest at the growing realization that his council had been deliberately excluding him from critical goings-on in his lands.
He still didn’t understand why they’d asked him to step up as their Laird if they didn’t plan to even try to playact that he truly held such a title. They’d come to him, they’d pressed the signet ring upon him, they’d told him they wanted him to step into his brother’s boots.
Here I was, the fool, thinking that I was being welcomed back into the fold. I should have ken better. Have I learned nothing?
For just a heartbeat, he’d felt exhilarated.Wanted.He’d believed so stupidly that he was being welcomed back to a home that had abandoned him over a decade ago and left him nursing wounds both literal and metaphorical. Instead, it seemed they’d been looking for a figurehead, with no intention of including him in the important goings-on.
Aiden also supposed that he couldn’t entirely place the blame on them, much as he wanted to. He had been the one to hesitate. The one to try to avoid the offer. The one who had told them to leave him out of it as long as the clansfolk who occupied his lands were kept fed. As if that was all people might need from the man responsible for commanding the men who oversaw their homes and very lives.
That had been somewhat short-sighted on his part, and he regretted it now. His making a point to the council had incurred consequences he hadn’t considered. He had been so focused on his wounded pride and lingering anger that asserting himself had been more important than remembering that he was now responsible for making decisions for hundreds of lives. Not only his own castle, but also his own self.
I should have ken it wouldnae be easy. Why would it be easy? Here I am, a man who’s never had to think of a soul beside himself, suddenly having to manage everybody. It just goes to show that I was never the right man for this job. I didnae think. I daenae have the foresight to understand. And what’s a laird without foresight?
Chagrined, as he had begun to take responsibility for the reported illness running rampant and harried men and women finding their months of hard work stripped by brigands on the road, he found himself astride his favorite gray mare, fully intending to have a fresh look about his lands with his own eyes. To ensure something was being done, to get a handle on the situation, to do something other than sit on his arse and wait for someone else to handle things that shouldn’t have gotten as bad as they did in the first place.
