Page 111 of A Highland Bride Disciplined

Scarlett pressed her hand over Astrid’s fingers, brief and warm. “If foolish means faithful, I’ll be it until me dyin’ breath.”

Just then, Elise made a small sound. It was half sigh, half complaint. Scarlett touched the bairn’s brow with the back of her knuckles, then looked to Kian once more, unreadable.

Is she —

“Mount up!” Hamish barked.

The courtyard surged again. Hugs, hasty blessings. Morag pressed packets of dried meat into hands, and Effie foisted lemon drops on anyone who’d let her. Ollie and Connor said good-bye by clinging to Scarlett’s skirts until Campbell peeled them off with promises of honey tarts upon arrival.

Kian moved through it all like a blade through cloth — efficient, steady, unyielding. He clasped Hamish again. “I’ll send word.”

“I’m stayin’, son,” Hamish said, and there was no softness left in him. No room for argument.

Campbell gripped Kian’s shoulder hard enough to bruise. “Ye’ll nae fight this battle alone.”

“A comfort.” Kian meant it.

They watched the line of wagons and riders roll beneath the arch, a slow river of color and creaking leather, until the last wheel dipped under the portcullis shadow and the road took them.

Silence washed back in, the sort that made a man feel his heartbeat.

Kian turned automatically toward the drill yard, the armory, the wall walk with its cold view of the glen. Responsibility was a harness he knew too well to slip. Campbell and Hamish fell into step with Tam, battle-ready and ripe with experience.

Movement tugged at the corner of his eye, making him delay his recession. The men continued without delay, leaving him standing on the opposite side of the courtyard than Scarlett, watching her hand Elise gently to Effie, murmuring something, then kissing the bairn’s temple as if the gesture could stitch blessings into skin.

She straightened and looked across the emptying yard as if to find him. Kian shifted, already feeling Tam’s step at his back and the string of tasks waiting.

She took a step his way.

“Laird!” the south-captain called from the stairs. “Placement o’ the pike line?”

Kian set his jaw. “On me,” he told the captain, then to Tam, “Signals to the east tower, doubled at dusk.”

“Aye.”

He let himself glance back, once. Scarlett had paused, reading the movement of men like she’d learned the keep’s pulse by heart. She lifted a hand a fraction as if uncertain, perhaps about to wave him over. He turned to face her.

Another voice cracked across the stones. “M’laird, the smith wants word on arrowheads. We’ve near four score ready.”

“Five score by nightfall,” Kian said, over his shoulder. When he looked again, Scarlett was gone, a flick of grey skirt vanishing into the keep.

He felt the loss in his chest the way a man feels cold seep under armor. It was slow and inevitable.

The day followed in another blur. And Kian had seen Scarlett nearly a dozen times since dawn. Once at the bread ovens, then at the ledger table with Morag, at the well instructing lads how to haul in rotation. Each time, he’d caught the tilt of her head that said she meant to speak and each time he’d been dragged aside by a new demand. It was grain counts, bolt checks, a message rider at the gate — it was endless.

“Ye’ll wear a trench to the bones if ye keep thinkin’ like that,” Tam said under his breath as they crossed the yard.

“Like what?”

“Like there’s only one way through a fight.”

Kian didn’t answer. He didn’t have room for riddles. He had room for pikes and angles and men who needed telling where to stand.

They reached the drill, and he fell into the work that made sense to him. Steel ringing steel, the bark of orders, the satisfying snap of a line tightening as one. He pushed them hard until sweat slicked backs and breath fogged the air.

When at last the sun dragged itself higher and the morning thinned into noon, Kian dismissed the ranks and stared up at the walls he’d rebuilt stone by stone. Somewhere inside, behind thick oak and warmer rooms, Scarlett was likely counting blankets, reprimanding Effie for carrying water wrong, humming some quiet tune to the bairn while she planned ten moves ahead of him in her own sphere.

He set his shoulders and went to meet the next problem, the next voice, the next decision.