Page 39 of A Highland Bride Disciplined (Scottish Daddies #2)

Together they headed down, the chill air biting harder with each step, the keep alive again with the clatter of departure even before the sun broke through the morning clouds.

The courtyard churned with hooves and voices, steam curling from horses like ghosts. Morag’s keys clattered as she strode through the fray, shoving oatcakes into hands, thrusting cloaks tighter about shoulders. Effie fluttered like a hen, tripping over a coil of rope and apologizing to it twice.

Kian stood on the step with Tam at his shoulder and watched it all move. The keep exhaled its guests in a long, reluctant sigh.

Campbell of Muir arrived first, a wall of a man wrapped in a wolfskin cloak, one massive hand planted at the small of his wife’s back like a barricade. Mabel, round with child and glowing despite the cold, wagged a finger at him without even looking up.

“I can walk, Campbell,” she said. “I’m expectin’, nae dyin’.”

“Aye, and I’m the fool that lets ye trip on a loose cobble,” Campbell grunted, though his mouth twitched.

Ollie and Connor hovered on either side of their aunt, underfoot and everywhere at once. Ollie craned up at Kian with a conspiratorial squint. “Will there be a battle, Uncle?”

“There’ll be a reckoning,” Kian said, voice flat.

“Cool,” Ollie breathed, just as Connor slipped a small hand into Mabel’s and leaned against her hip like a shadow.

Hamish MacLennan came next, all iron beard and unreadable eyes, the kind of silence that made men straighten their backs.

Astrid swept at his side with her usual sheen of disapproval, though even she had dressed for travel with a practical hood.

Skylar trailed behind them with a bow over her shoulder and a dare in her gaze.

“Ye’ll nae bring that,” Astrid hissed, flicking a look at the bow.

“Try and stop me,” Skylar muttered, then pasted on an innocent smile when Hamish cleared his throat.

Kian’s eyes kept searching the tide until they found her.

Scarlett stood near the outer arch, bonnet tied loosely, cheeks pale in the bleached morning light.

Scarlett’s hand rested on Elise’s blanket the way a woman sets her palm to an altar.

When her gaze met Kian’s, something pulled tight behind his ribs.

She looked away first, and the little sting of it irritated him more than it should.

Hamish drew up, nodding once. “Laird Crawford.”

“Hamish.”

They shook forearms, hard. Old habit, old respect.

The laird’s attention flicked to his eldest. “Scarlett, lass… ye’ll ride wi’ us.”

“Nay,” Scarlett said, calm as still water.

Astrid’s head snapped around. “Daenae be absurd. There’ll be swords in the glen. Ye’ll frighten yer sisters half to death.”

Mabel lifted a brow. “We fright already, Maither.”

“I’ll nae leave,” Scarlett repeated, not to her maither, not even to her faither. She said it to the whole courtyard. “This is me home.”

Hamish’s jaw worked. “Ye’ll take yer sisters’ coach to Muirhold. The bairn can —”

“The bairn will stay where she’s safe,” Scarlett said, gentle but iron. “Which is here with me.”

Kian felt Tam’s attention slide toward him. He ground his molars once, then stepped down from the stone, closing the distance.

“Lady Crawford,” he said, using the title like a lever. “Ye’ll go to Muirhold or MacLennan lands with the women. That’s the last o’ it.”

Her chin lifted a fraction. “With respect, m’laird, nay. I’m needed here. If there’s to be a siege, food must be portioned, fires managed, routes kept clear, children stowed proper. Ye’ll have soldiers for the wall. I’ll see to what keeps them standin’.”

M’laird. The way she said it, so formal and distant, scraped him rawer than a shouted defiance.

He stepped closer. “This isnae a conversation.”

“It rarely is wi’ ye,” she answered softly, not biting, not baiting, only tired. “I’ll nae tuck tail and flee from me own halls. Our people require our presence.”

Hamish drew breath to argue again, then caught Kian’s look and swallowed it. The old laird’s eyes softened an inch as he studied his daughter. “Stubborn as yer maither,” he muttered.

Astrid huffed. “Flatterin’.”

Skylar shoved her bow toward Kian’s guards with theatrical despair. “Fine, keep yer war. I’ll go keep the ladies entertained by threatenin’ to elope with a stableboy.”

“Ye’ll do no such thing, Skylar Dunlop!” Astrid snapped.

“Mayhap a blacksmith then — Oh! Or a Sassenach!”

Mabel snorted as Campbell glowered at the sky as if it too tried his patience. “Christ above, take me now,” he rumbled as he shut the carriage door behind his wife, he remained standing in the courtyard.

Despite himself, Kian felt a grim smile tug. “Campbell, yer’re stayin’?”

“Aye.” The big man’s gaze swept the walls. “I like a fair fight.”

Tam coughed. “Or an unfair one, if it’s quicker.”

“Both,” Campbell said cheerfully.

Astrid stepped to Scarlett, smoothing a stray curl with surprising gentleness. “Daenae be foolish, darling.”

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.

I’ll speak to her when there was air to breathe.