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The silence that fell over the meadow was absolute. The wind seemed to die down, the golden charlocks standing still around them.

The weight of his words hung thick in the air, pressing against Sheona’s chest. A father who saw only a replacement. A mother who measured worth in victories. A sister taken too soon. A wife who never came back from childbed. She had asked him how he saw her — and instead he had shown her how he saw himself: as a man who buried the people he allowed himself to keep.

She understood now why he kept his distance. Why he filled a keep with loyal men and gave his heart to none of them. It was not coldness. It was the only armor left to him.

Sheona drew a slow, shuddering breath, her fingers trembling against the folds of her riding skirt as she took a single step closer to him. The distance between them suddenly felt vast, and she could see the old, familiar fear flickering in his gaze—the terror that loving her would condemn her to the same fate as those he had lost.

“Sheona…”

Brodie turned his head back toward her. The word slipped from his lips, soft and heavy, laden with a sudden, suffocating intensity that made her heart leap violently and erratically against her ribs.

She stared up at him, her lips slightly parted, her breath catching in her chest as she waited. She waited for the rest of the sentence. She waited for him to say what was burning behind his dark, tormented eyes—to tell her that she was not her father, to tell her that he felt the same terrifying, magnetic pull that was slowly consuming them both.

She leaned forward half an inch, her hand hovering in the space between them, ready to reach for him. The moment stretched, fragile. It felt as if a warm ray of golden sunlight had cracked through a narrow, frozen window, illuminating the dark corners of their shared pain for just a tiny, breathtaking second.

Brodie pushed himself up from the damp grass in a single, slow movement. He stood with his back to her for just a moment, his hands loose at his sides, his eyes on the far peaks.

“We should get back,” he rumbled flatly.

He turned toward the horses without waiting for her reply, his heavy boots crushing the yellow blossoms beneath his heels as he strode across the meadow.

Sheona remained on her knees for a moment longer, looking from the carved stone of her brother’s memorial to the broad, retreating back of the Laird. A cold wind swept through the valley, carrying away the lingering fragrance of the charlocks, but as she pushed herself up to follow him, the heavy stone in her chest felt just a little lighter than it had at dawn.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The high mountain wind had turned bitter by midday, whistling through the crenellations of the outer gatehouse with a dry, hollow howl that promised frost before the week was out.

Brodie stood on the elevated timber catwalk of the lower wall, his hands braced on the frost-dusted stone, his heavy fur cloak pulled tight against the chill. Below him, the vast inner courtyard was a chaotic hive of activity. The final harvest—the last precious yield of oats, barley, and tough winter roots before the long Highland dark set in—was pouring through the main gate in a steady stream of wooden wagons.

Dust from dry grain sacks danced in the pale autumn sunlight. Men shouted over the lowing of cattle being herded into the lower pens, their heavy boots churning the mud into frozen ridges. Brodie had spent the early hours shoulder-to-shoulder with his men, hauling heavy oak timber to reinforce the grain stores and inspecting the iron hoops on the salt-pork barrels. His muscles burned with a familiar, welcome ache, but his mind remained stubbornly elsewhere.

His dark eyes drifted down from the grain wagons, cutting through the swirling dust until they found her.

Sheona stood near the entrance of the main larder, her dark hair pinned back with a simple wooden comb, a coarse linen apron tied firmly over her green wool dress. No one had asked her to step into the noise and filth of the yard. No one had dared command the daughter of their former enemy to lift a finger. Yet there she was, standing beside Mairi near a massive wooden trestle table, her sleeves rolled past her forearms as she inspected the bushels of apples being brought in from the south orchards.

Brodie watched in silence. She handled the bruised fruit with practiced efficiency, sorting the firm red apples into heavy storage baskets for the root cellars and directing the soft, overripe ones toward the cider presses.

“Mind the bruised ones for the mash, Robbie,” Sheona called out smoothly to a young boy hauling a crate, her voice firm yet warm as she caught him dumping the whole lot into the cellar basket. “If ye mix the soft ones with the winter store, we’ll be eatin’ rot by Yuletide.”

The boy paused, flushing red under his smudges of dirt, but offered a hasty, respectful nod. “Aye, Lady Sheona. Right away.”

Mairi leaned in beside her, wiping her hands on her apron with a soft chuckle. “Ye’ve a sharp eye for a harvest, lass. Half these lads would store rocks if we didnae watch ‘em.”

“I spent three winters overseein’ me father’s stores at the lower keep,” Sheona replied, a playful glint in her blue eyes as she tossed a firm red apple into Mairi’s hands. “A hungry winter makes a very thorough teacher.”

A quiet, dangerous shift had been taking place within these stone walls, so subtle that Brodie hadn’t fully grasped its depth until now. Sheona moved among the villagers not as a captive noblewoman biding her time, but as someone who understood the pulse of the keep. And the people were looking to her not out of fear, but with genuine respect.

A sharp shout shattered the easy rhythm near the granary doors.

A man slammed his calloused fist onto the grain scale, sending a spray of loose oats flying across the trestle table. “Thirty-two pounds! Are ye blind or just simple, lad? That sack weighs forty if it weighs an ounce!”

The younger pantry boy backed up a step, clutching his wooden tally board against his chest like a shield. “The iron weights daenae lie, Master. It registered thirty-two.”

“The weights are rusted to dust, and yer eyes are shut!” The man shouted, his face turning the color of a boiled turnip. “Where is Captain Douglas? I’ll nae have a snivelin’ boy cheat me out of three weeks’ threshin’!”

Sheona stepped up to the edge of the table, gently sliding her fingers beneath the lip of the linen sack. She scooped up a handful of the golden grain, letting it trickle slowly through her fingers back into the bag.

“The grain is damp at the bottom,” Sheona said softly, looking up at the old farmer.