Page 12 of Promised to the Wicked Laird

"And who, precisely, dae ye propose tae marry now, Chisholm? We have one daughter left, and she's a lass barely out of her faither's house, nae a match fer a laird with a war behind him."

"I'm aware exactly who's left." Fearchar's voice didn't rise, though something under it went colder, flatter. "Nandag Farquharson. Unmarried. Farquharson-born.”

Silence dropped over the table so fast it was almost a physical thing, the fire popping loud in the hearth in the gap that followed. Fearchar didn't look away from Malcolm while it settled.

"She's a child," Malcolm said, though it came out weaker than his last three sentences combined.

"She's four and twenty, and she put a wall sconce through one of Robert's men an hour ago while yer nephew was busy dragging her sister out a side door. I'd nae call that a child."

Laird Alasdair shifted in his chair, and every eye at the table went to him. He was quiet a long moment, his gaze moving from the parchment to Fearchar's face, and Fearchar held still under it, let the old man take whatever measure he needed to take.

"He speaks true," Laird Alasdair said finally. "The accord names the clan. Nae the daughter."

"Alasdair." Malcolm's voice cracked, just slightly, on the name. "Think what ye're agreeing tae."

"I'm thinking of what I signed ontae seven years past, before ye were the one whispering in me ear at every council meeting." The old man's cough rattled through his chest, and he waved off the hand that reached to steady him, waited it out, kept talking. "The King's decree stands. If Chisholm's claim on Nandag satisfies it, then it satisfies it, and I'll nae be the laird who invites royal displeasure ontae this clan fer the sake of his nephew's pride."

Malcolm opened his mouth, closed it again, and looked instead toward the grey-haired councilman, who only shrugged and folded his hands, offering nothing.

Fearchar felt the room tip, slow and certain, and did not let his face show a flicker of what that cost him to sit still through.

CHAPTER FIVE

Nandag smoothed her skirt twice before she reached the solar door and told herself the second time was only because the first hadn't done it right.

A servant let her in without a word, and the room she stepped into was nothing like the wreck of the Great Hall below. A fire burned low and steady in the grate, the table laid with more care than the day's chaos should have allowed, three places set instead of the two she'd expected, and candlelight throwing long shadows across the tapestries her mother had chosen years ago, back when the room had still belonged to a laird with a wife in it.

Her father sat at the head of the table, wrapped in the same furs he'd worn all day, though someone had at least combed his hair and set a cup of watered wine at his hand that he wasn't drinking.

Fearchar stood near the window, arms crossed, still in the same blood-marked tunic from the courtyard, though he'd at least washed his hands.

"Ye sent fer me," Nandag said, from the doorway. "I assumed we'd be discussing Robert. What's been done tae find Mòrag?"

"Sit, lass." Her father gestured at the empty chair across from Fearchar.

Nandag sat, mostly because refusing would have meant standing in a doorway like a scolded child, and folded her hands in her lap where no one could see them tighten.

The servant poured wine she didn't touch, set down a plate of bread and cold meat neither man reached for and left, pulling the door shut with a soft click that felt unreasonably final to Nandag.

"Faither." She looked between the two of them, the careful formality of the table, the way Fearchar hadn't taken his seat yet, only stood there watching her with an expression she couldn't read past the firelight. "What is this?"

Her father set his cup down without drinking from it. "The Council met this afternoon."

"I ken."

"Then ye ken what was decided." He said it slowly, each word given its own weight, the way he'd spoken to her only a handful of times in her life. "The Accord names Chisholm tae marry intae Farquharson. Robert's marriage tae yer sister daesnae satisfy it. Mòrag is gone, taken by a man who was never entitled tae her in the first place, and the King's decree still stands over this clan whether we like the shape of it or nae."

"Aye. I heard that part." Her fingers found the edge of the table and pressed flat against the wood. "I want tae hear the part where someone asks me what I think of it before deciding it fer me."

"Nandag."

"I'm asking a plain question, Faither. Is there a marriage being arranged in this room, or is there nae?"

The silence that answered her told her everything before either man opened his mouth.

Fearchar finally took the seat across from her, unhurried, his eyes never leaving hers. "There is."

"With me."