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It began near the stairs and rippled outward, conversation dying table by table, until even the pipers let their drones sigh into silence. Evander turned to see what had caused it, and his breath went out of him as surely as if he’d taken a blow to the ribs.

Freya stood at the top of the stairs.

She’d worn the blue gown. It was the deep blue of a loch at dusk, and it fit her as though it had been poured on her. Over it, pinned at her shoulder with a silver brooch, was a length of MacArthur tartan, draped across her like a claim.

Someone had pinned her hair high and threaded it with tiny white flowers. A few dark curls had already escaped to lie against her throat. The torchlight turned her skin to gold, and her eyes, those wild blue eyes, swept across the silent hall with something close to panic.

She did not like being looked at. He could see it in the way her fingers tightened on the rail and the faint, stubborn lift of her chin. But she made the entire hall look at her.

Then she found him.

Her expression shifted. The panic vanished from it, and she smiled at him as if there were no one else in the hall.

That smile hit him somewhere beneath his ribs and stayed there.

She came down the stairs slowly, every eye following her, then stopped in front of him and held out her arms for Amelia. That was when he saw his ring on her finger.

The blue silk clung to her waist, and the tartan at her shoulder rose and fell with each breath.

“I… thought we should deal with this together. As a team,” she said after a moment.

Evander almost couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He nodded, unable to think of anything else to say.

He slid his arm around her waist and faced the hall. “Allow me, as yer new Laird, to welcome ye here. Me wife, Lady Freya, and me men will live beside ye as kin, nae strangers.”

“And war?” someone called.

“Me braither wanted peace for ye,” Evander said. “I mean to give it. No man here will die for me pride.”

Silence ensued. Then a cup rose. “For the Laird!”

The hall erupted in cheers, cups slamming against the table. Freya stood beside him, smiling. It was the smile he had been wanting to see for a while now.

30

Freya wasn’t sure who had decided to invite babies to these feasts. As a child, she had been obliged to go to these feasts, and she remembered nothing but being bored. Kaden used to be tasked with keeping an eye on her and Skye.

Their youngest sister had been so small back then, and hadn’t had many opinions of her own. Whatever Freya did, she copied, so if Freya whined of boredom, Skye whined of it too. It was then that Freya declared that children shouldn’t be allowed to go to these feasts. They should be barred from them because it was very unfair.

It had mortified her mother, but her father had thought it was quite amusing. He had lifted her into his arms and settled her on his shoulders. Everyone had cheered, and the attention had been enough to quiet her.

Amelia started it.

She’d borne the feast with great dignity for most of the evening, perched on Freya’s knee and accepting bits of bannock with the air of a queen. But somewhere between the second round of dancing and the third, she decided she had had enough.

Her lower lip jutted out. Her eyebrows drew together. She gave a low, warning whine, the kind Freya had learned to fear, and then flung her half-eaten bannock across the table and into Callum’s ale.

Archer, never one to be left out, joined in at once.

“That,” Brigid said, rising with him on her hip, “is the sound of two bairns who should have been abed an hour past.”

“Aye.” Freya stood and gathered up Amelia, who promptly buried her furious face in her neck. Evander looked up at once, as though he’d felt her move. “I’ll put them down.”

“I’ll come.”

“Ye’ll stay,” she told him firmly. “They’re yer people, and they want their Laird. I’ll nae be long.”

Something warm flashed across his face. He caught her free hand as she turned and pressed his mouth to her knuckles, just above the ring, and held it there a moment longer than was strictly proper.