Chapter 5

5

As soon as she stepped into the main hall, Mary could feel eyes on her. She glanced this way and that. Sure enough, a couple of the servants were talking to one another, covering their mouths with their hands as they eyed her warily. Had her reputation fallen so far in such little time?

Lifting her head high, she tried to gather herself as best she could. She had been called to meet with Arran after what had happened in the village, her brief dalliance with Kiernan enough to stir the rumors that now rushed around her with seemingly endless force. She made her way towards the stairs that led to his study, trying to stem the thudding in her chest as she did so.

She had done nothing wrong, after all. She’d just shared a brief walk with a man. There was nothing dangerous about that, no matter how Arran tried to convince her of his misdeeds. She could hardly believe that someone like Kieran, someone who seemed to drip with such easy, open charm, could contain such darkness.

She reached the door to his study, and hesitated outside it for a moment before she lifted her knuckles and rapped on it. She could not allow her doubt to get the better of her, no matter how easy it might have been to give in to the mess of emotion rushing through her. She had done little more than take a walk, and she would not be told off by any man, let alone her brother-in-law, for doing something so innocent.

The door opened and on the other side stood Gregory. His face was creased with concern, and she felt a twist of guilt as she realized that she had likely landed him in trouble with Arran. The two of them were close, and she disliked the notion of coming between them in any way.

“Come,” Arran called to her, and she stepped inside, shooting Gregory an apologetic glance as she went. She hoped he knew that she had not done what she had done for the sake of causing trouble between them. She had scarcely thought of where it might take her, what might come of this interaction with Kiernan, but now…

She took herself to Arran’s desk, where he was planted in a heavy chair on the far side. His eyes were impassive as they met hers, his jaw set tight, as though he wished he didn’t have to have this conversation with her.

“You called for me?” she prompted him, and he ran a hand through his hair and sighed. There were dark rings under his eyes, she supposed from the stress of taking care of a newborn, and once again, guilt panged in her as she thought of bringing this ill-called-for trouble to his door.

“Aye, we need to speak,” he replied, nodding to the chair opposite him. “Sit, lass.”

She sank down into the seat as she was told, not wanting to put up any more of a fight than she already had. She wondered if her sister had anything to say on this matter, what she made of everything that she had done. Mary wished she could reach out to her and ask her, but she had been giving Amelia plenty of space, as she recovered from the birth and the first few weeks of her beautiful son’s life.

“Gregory informed me that ye’ve been fraternizing with Kiernan again,” he told her, his voice as even as he could keep it, though she could tell that an anger boiled below the surface. She nodded slowly, not sure if she should admit to it or not.

“Yes, well, we ran into him in town when I went with the men to visit,” she replied, more defensive than she had intended for herself to sound. “And he asked me to come for a walk. I supposed it was better to be polite than to turn him down…”

Arran shook his head, cutting her off.

“Ye’ve no reason to be polite to a man like him,” he muttered, his voice darkening. Curiosity prickled the back of her neck. What was it he had done that was so dark, so monstrous, that nobody seemed able to tell her a single word of it?

He shot a look over at Gregory, and she followed his gaze around, landing on the man behind her. His eyes were lowered, and she could tell he was ashamed for what had happened earlier, the way things had unfolded. She sighed to herself, then turned back to Arran. She supposed she owed him, at least, a chance to speak out on what had truly happened, so she could make sense of the disdain they seemed to carry for this man.

“And why not?” she asked him, raising her eyebrows. “You’ve spoken about how dangerous he is, but you’ve not told me exactly why…”

“Because he wants this land for himself,” Arran snapped back, his voice sharper than she’d ever heard it. She drew back in her seat, surprised by his tone, and he closed his eyes and rubbed his hand over his face.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “There’s a… history between our clan and his. The Frasers and the Aitkens. One that goes back to my father, and to his…”

He fell silent once more. She held her breath. She could hardly stand holding back like this, could hardly contain herself as she tried to make sense of everything that seemed to be rushing through his mind. A history that she’d had no access to before, a history that she wanted nothing more than to unlock.

And a history that, whether she liked it or not, may have only sparked her curiosity towards Kiernan.

“What did he do?” she murmured to him, speaking softly, as though barely daring to say it out loud. A darkness flashed across his face, and he lowered his gaze to the desk for a moment.

“His father was a barbarian,” he replied, quietly, slowly, the words leaking from his lips as though he had hoped he would never have to say them out loud again. “He was determined, he’d set his heart on owning the whole of the Highlands. Fae Fort William to Drumnadrochit to Stonehaven, he’d decided that he’d have it all. Every piece. No matter the cost.”

A shiver ran down her spine.

“But aren’t some of those… aren’t those Aitken lands?”

“Aye, they are,” he replied with a nod. “But he paid that little mind. He cut through Lairdships around me, killed men to take their place, claimed more land to his name than he ever should have, and ruled it as a tyrant.”

He paused for a moment, as though remembering all of it. It was clear, from the expression on his face, that it was still just as present as it had ever been, the memory of it.

“And Kiernan, he was little more than his attack dog,” he continued. “He was barely more than a boy when he led his father’s men into the lands around us, when he clashed with the other leaders. Even back then, he was a fearsome warrior, there was naebody who could have contained him in battle.”

“But now…?”

“His father has long-since passed,” he explained. “And the lands that he claimed have reverted back to those who rightly laid claim to them in the first place. But he never found a way to take our land from us, and I’d wager that he’s trying to do what his father couldnae.”

She stared at him for a moment. It was starting to make sense to her now, why he had been so reticent about letting her get anywhere close to him, why he had done his best to keep her away from this man.

“He thinks if he can get closer to you, he can find a way into this Keep,” he continued, his anger written all over his face. “And I’ve got no intention of allowing that tae happen. Ye need to keep yer distance frae him, or you’ll find yourself in more trouble than a lass like you knows how to deal with.”

Mary rose to her feet sharply. There was something about his words that irritated her. As though she was little more than an annoyance to him, some child that he had to find a way to control and protect. When she was a grown woman. She might not have been married and had a child like Amelia, but that didn’t mean she was some innocent waif wandering through the world with no idea of what she wanted or how to get it.

“Well, thank you for telling me,” she replied, lowering her head slightly. She didn’t want him to think she was angered by his words. She knew, after all, that he was just trying to help.

“Ye’ll keep yer distance from him?” he asked, concerned. “I’d hate to think what he might do to you if?—“

“Yes, I will,” she replied before he could finish what he was saying. “Thank you, Arran.”

Before he could say another word, she made her way to the door once more, her mind reeling with the enormity of everything that he had just told her.

Was it all true? She supposed he would have had no reason to lie to her, not outright, but perhaps he had taken in some of what his own father had told him about the Fraser family and believed it without question. It was hard to believe that a man like Kiernan could have been so brutal, could have torn through people the way that he claimed he had. It made little sense to her, though she should have known better than to question it. People contained hidden multitudes that the outside world could only dream of at a glance.

Like the multitudes she felt she contained, too. The multitudes that Arran seemed intent on pushing down. She was a woman, after all, and a woman with needs and desires and wants that she was sure anyone her age had, too. And those wants… those wants rose to the surface in a way she couldn’t control when she was around Kiernan. No matter what Arran had told her about that man, the desire was impossible to ignore, and she could not just switch it off as easily as snuffing out a candle.

And perhaps… perhaps there was some rebellious part of her that was drawn to this man because of the darkness that Arran claimed he had to him. It was long in his past now, she was sure of it, but she could almost imagine it, how easy it would have been to let that beast that had once existed in him escape once more, what that beast might do to her, given the chance…

But Arran’s words throbbed through her mind as she made her way back to her quarters, her heart thrumming in her chest as she considered them once more. Was it all some kind of game to Kiernan, a game he intended to win by getting into the Aitken Keep once more? Could he have faked the tension that burned between them when they touched, as a tool to fulfill what his father had not been able to?

She flopped down in her bed when she reached her room once more, her face buried in the pillow as she let out a long groan. Her mind was being torn into different directions; her want for him, her need, clashing up against the loyalty she knew she should hold for her family.

Her family. Her family, which had recently expanded beyond just her and her sisters. Now, she had her nephew Robert to think of, too. Her heart skipped a beat as she imagined the harm that might come to him if she followed the desire that seemed to consume her. If he really was trying to find a way to get close to her, to infiltrate the Aitken clan and find a way to claim their lands, then she would have been leaving open the door for him to hurt her family by pursuing the need inside of her. And she would never have been able to forgive herself if something had happened to them because of what she wanted, because of what she desired. She had never been a selfish woman, but…

But she had been so good for so long now, she had allowed herself to be pulled this way and that by the people around her. She had lived her life in such a way that she had never really followed what she wanted. She had either been doing what her father had commanded of her, or, now, what her sister and Arran seemed to want from her. Was it not natural that she wanted some freedom, a chance to indulge in a desire that would only have benefitted her?

She dozed off as those thoughts spun around her head. By the time she awoke, it was dark outside, and her stomach was grumbling. She glanced around, a little bleary from sleep, and rose from the bed, making her way to the door, to find the Keep quiet—almost eerily quiet. As though the whole place was holding its breath, waiting for her to make a move.

Slipping on her shoes, she stepped out in to the corridor, and made her way to the stairs, intending to head to the kitchen to scavenge what food she could find left over from dinner that evening. She wondered if Amelia had noticed she was missing, and, if she had, if she thought it was to do with the conversation she’d had with Arran earlier that day. Perhaps she thought Mary was angry with her for not standing up for her, or annoyed that she was being told what to do.

Perhaps that was exactly how Mary was feeling.

She moved through the Keep as silently as she could, not wanting to wake anyone, but also not wanting to have to explain why she had hidden up in her room for all that time. If she admitted that she had been thinking about Kiernan, she knew that it would have caused more trouble than it ever had before, and she was loathe to invite such problems into her head when Arran had already warned her away from them.

She reached the kitchen, which was cold where the back door led out to the pantry outside. It was a dark, still night, a heavy weight seeming to rest over the place, as though someone had draped a blanket across the entire Keep.

There was a scattering of food left on the table in the center of the kitchen, and she picked her way towards it, moving slowly for reasons she wasn’t entirely sure of. It was as though she was waiting for something, distinctly aware of every movement she made, and the weight it might have carried if she was not careful.

Then, all at once, she heard it.

“Lass, over here!”

She gasped and spun around, her hand clasped to her chest in a panic. As though she had managed to conjure him with the sheer intensity of the thought she had poured into him the last few hours or so, there he was, standing before her. Kiernan. The man she was supposed to keep her distance from.

The man she seemed unable to stop thinking about.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, her voice hoarse as she glanced around. She was sure that if she stood here to talk to him, someone would emerge from the shadows to catch her in the act, and she detested the idea of being exposed in such a way, especially after what Arran had said to her.

A smile flitted across his face. Oh, that smile. She knew that smile would land her in more trouble than she knew what to do with.

“Come wi’ me,” he told her, holding out his hand to her. She hesitated, pulling back, a part of her screaming to run, to dash back into the Keep and tell everyone that Kiernan Fraser was there, and that she knew not what he wanted from her, but he was trying to get her to run away with him.

Yet, another part of her stood her ground. She locked eyes with him, lifting her chin slightly, mustering up every piece of strength she could.

“Why should I go with you? What are you doing here?” she demanded. The smile spread a little wider over his face, reaching his dark eyes.

“You already ken why, Mary.”

Oh, there it was again, the sound of her name on his tongue, that spell that seemed to cast a powerful charm across her entire body. She took a step closer to him, her body arching towards him before she could stop herself.

“Come wi’ me,” he repeated himself as he leaned in the doorway, outlined by the cold, glassy light of the moon behind him.

“Where to?”

“Does it matter?”

She chewed her lip. She should have told him to leave, right then and there, that she knew what kind of man he was and that she would never have allowed him anywhere close to her, but she couldn’t. Her hands rested on his open palm for a long moment, feeling the calluses on his fingers, and she could almost feel how they would have felt against her body, how they would have traced out the shape of her and held her close, how rough they would have been, how commanding…

Before she could stop herself, she reached out, and slipped her hand into his.