enough space for adults, let alone children used to running where they pleased. In fact, the children were almost frantic now, as they worked their way along the tables and towards the gates.
‘There is nae council,’ she said absently, contemplating Eoin’s feet shuffling in barely restrained elation.
‘Since when?’ he asked.
Bram’s sharp question pulled Lioslath’s thoughts from her siblings. At Bram’s assessing gaze, she cursed herself for admitting any weakness to him.
Clan Fergusson didn’t have a council. A council meant order, trades and barters. It meant a keep that was well-run and fair. They’d had a council in her youth, but her stepmother, Irman, wouldn’t allow any opposing opinions. The elders had been ignored or shamed until none came forward any more to offer advice.
It didn’t matter. No council would have been able to steer her father away from his follies. And she didn’t need a council to steer her away from getting rid of the Colquhouns.
‘In matters regarding this clan, you’ll deal with me.’
For a moment, Bram stilled and she felt as if he laid a trap she couldn’t see. Foolishly, she might have opened the gates to him, but it didn’t mean she agreed to anything more.
‘Shall we eat?’
She didn’t want to sit. She wasn’t the clan’s mistress. He probably expected traditions and courtly manners. But she never sat with her clan and she didn’t know what to do. ‘Nae.’
‘A walk, perhaps?’ Bram said.
A walk would get them outside, where she could breathe. Once he said what he was here for, perhaps he’d leave her alone and she could have peace in the forest.
‘Aye, a walk.’
He’d done it. Satisfaction brimmed through Bram. The wait was over and the plan could be implemented. In the meantime, the obvious reparations to the keep and land could begin. Either something had happened here that Lioslath wasn’t telling him or the Fergussons lacked decent farming and carpentry skills. The houses were riddled with overlapping patches, the roofs covered in thinning thatch. The keep was in worse shape.
There were many improvements to make before winter. They would need cooperation between the clans to get them done and getting the clans to cooperate would take time.
He knew this visit would not be a welcome one, but this clan’s anger had an edge to it. Since they arrived, they’d kept extra guard to prevent bloodshed. Lioslath barring the gates for weeks had imbedded the animosity between the clans. Even now with the feast beginning, it was there. Beneath the sounds of scraping and tearing of food, and the adjusting of elbows and shuffling of legs, there was the air of anticipated battle.
He needed to come to some agreement with the clan’s mistress. But would she be agreeable if she was hungry and fainting? Even more so, could he remain reasonable when she was so breathtakingly beautiful to him?
In the sunlight, her hair was raven black and just as incandescent. If it had been long, he knew its darkness would have consumed even the brightest of summer skies.
But its chopped length surprisingly pleased him. It didn’t hide any of the womanly figure underneath. So he saw the graceful arch of her neck, the creamy texture along her nape. He could so clearly see the intimate spot where he might hover with his lips, where he might graze with his teeth, where he might kiss.
He’d teased her about a kiss. But what had started as calculated flirting, now, in sunlight, became something more like a truth.
It was a complicated attraction and one he didn’t want, and which she didn’t reciprocate. She wasn’t accepting his food and she didn’t raise her eyes to his. In fact, she kept looking outside the gates.
‘We can take food with us,’ he offered.
‘With us?’
‘I want to know the extent of the necessary repairs to be done before winter.’
‘Are you expecting me to show you around the...my clan?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Doona you have responsibilities here?’
He shrugged. ‘Doona you need to eat before we go?’
‘Aindreas brought me food while I dressed.’
‘The venison. Do you not want to take some of what is offered today?’ Bram asked. They may be talking of only food, but at least she talked. Sometimes, the most heated discussions started with banalities.
‘Ah, aye, the food today was conveniently made.’
‘There was more yesterday,’ he said, letting her know he’d expected her to open the gates yesterday.
He caught the slight curve to her lips before she looked away. He’d let her enjoy her victory, since he didn’t intend to give her others. ‘You must be eager to leave the confines of the keep?’
‘Very,’ she answered with the expected anger in her eyes. But there was also vulnerability. A complicated emotion he didn’t want to see.
It wouldn’t do to feel more for this clan or this woman. Curbing his tongue, keeping his patience, he stepped back so she could walk in front of him.
He had managed tough negotiations before; this was no different. When tempers were high, coming to any agreement was often protracted. But in the end, he always prevailed and he’d do so again. But how?
There were secrets here and he knew precious little about this woman. A woman who held daggers and arrows. Whose hair was black as night and whose eyes were bright as a summer sky. ‘Are you averse to our making improvements and of using our supplies?’
‘It would be foolish of me otherwise, wouldn’t it?’
‘But you do not like it.’
‘Nae,’ she said bluntly.
He’d get no further in that argument. ‘The fences surrounding the keep and the gates need minor changes,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘What of the keep?’
‘The stones hold, but much of the timber needs replacing.’ She hurried her pace towards the gates. ‘I doona want to talk of the keep today and I doona want to talk of improvements. What repairs are needed we’ll make in the spring.’
They couldn’t make repairs on their own. The platform by the gates was crooked. The entire village was riddled with haphazard structures as if the maintenances were hurriedly or half-heartedly done.
‘Why are the keep and village like this?’
‘You knew of our clan’s poverty when you made the agreement with my father.’
He knew something of their poverty, aye, but now that he had a closer look, it appeared as if the damage was purposefully done. He couldn’t
