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The words hit her. Sheona stopped on the stone threshold. Her breath hitched, her throat tightening so fast it made her eyes burn. The small ray of warmth that had been building in her chest over the last few days shattered into cold, sharp fragments.

A stray hound.

Brodie didn’t pause. He pushed open the heavy oak door to the great hall, ushering Aaron and Morrison inside, his deep voice already moving on to discuss grain yields and boundary lines as if he hadn’t just reduced her to an inconvenient charity case.

Sheona stepped back two paces, retreating into the shadow of the stone archway before anyone in the hall could turn around. She set the linen basket down on a timber bench, her hands trembling violently. She pressed her back against the freezing stone wall of the corridor, biting the inside of her cheek until she tasted copper, fighting with everything she had to keep the hot tears from spilling over her lower lashes.

She drew a ragged, shaky breath, pressing her palms flat against the cold granite.

What is wrong with me?

She was a MacFaris. She was the daughter of a laird, a woman who had survived fever, siege, and the downfall of her entire house. She didn’t need anything from anyone.

So why?

She asked herself, her jaw clenching tight as a single, furious tear slipped down her cheek.

Why do I need this brute to care for me?

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Ye’ve nae touched yer bread, Lady Sheona,” Mairi said softly, her eyes scanning Sheona’s quiet face.

The wind off the northern crags carried a razor’s edge, whipping gray smoke down the chimneys of the upper solar. Sheona sat by the small hearth, a piece of parchment resting flat against her knee. She held an unlit candle stub between her fingers, rolling it back and forth until the wax warmed beneath her thumb.

Down in the great hall, the voices of Sir Thomas Morrison and Aaron had carried up the stairwell for hours—discussions of land deeds, boundary lines, and the formal hearing set for the morrow.

A heavy tray set down on the small side table made the pewter cups clatter. Mairi wiped her hands on her apron, setting down a bowl of steaming broth before pulling up a low three-legged stool beside Sheona’s chair.

Sheona didn’t look up from the parchment on her knee. “I amnae hungry, Mairi.”

“Ye’ve been quiet as a graveyard since the Council’s men rode through the gate,” Mairi murmured, reaching out to gently nudge the bowl closer. “Is it Sir Thomas? Or Aaron?”

Sheona’s thumb pressed into the soft wax of the candle. “If I sign the land over to the Council… if I give up the MacFaris claim entirely… it ends the dispute. It settles the debt.”

Mairi frowned, her brows knitting together. “Settles what debt?”

“Everythin’,” Sheona whispered, her voice barely carrying over the crackle of the hearth fire. “The food I’ve eaten. The roof over me head. The memorial stone he carved in the high meadow. If I give them the land, the Council has nay reason to press Brodie, and he is free of the burden me name brings to his hall.”

Mairi let out a sharp sigh, reaching out to lay her warm, flour-dusted hand over Sheona’s cold knuckles. “And what are ye left with, lass? A name written in air?”

“I have nothin’ left anyway,” Sheona said flatly. She stood up, smoothing down her green wool skirt, and tucked the unlit candle into her pocket. “I am goin’ out.”

The wind in the upper courtyard was cold enough to burn the throat. Sheona pulled her dark shawl tight across her chest, her leather boots clicking on the frost-bitten cobbles as she walked past the stables toward the eastern perimeter wall.

Near the timber storehouse, a heap of dark granite blocks lay piled beside a wooden mortar trough. Brodie stood beside the low, crumbling section of the stone wall, his shirt sleeves rolled past his elbows despite the freezing air. His forearms were streaked with gray mortar and grime, his muscles straining as he heaved a fifty-pound stone into place, setting it flat.

The great hall doors were still shut behind her, Morrison's and Aaron's voices a low murmur through the stone. Whatever had brought Brodie out here in his shirt sleeves while his guests sat at his table, he had clearly decided the wall could not wait.

He didn’t look up as she approached, but his jaw set tight, the muscles in his neck flexing as he scraped an iron trowel along the seam.

Sheona stopped five paces away, her feet planted firmly in the mud. “Sir Thomas brought a letter from the Council.”

Brodie scraped another line of dark mortar over the stone. “Aye.”

“What did it say?”

“It said what Morrison’s spoken since he rode through the gate,” Brodie rumbled, his voice gravel-rough as he reached for a smaller wedge of granite. “They want the hearin’ brought forward to tomorrow noon.”