Read Chapter 4: The Negotiation

The rain had not relented in three days, and Iona MacTavish was counting on it. It kept the Campbell's men indoors, dulled their watchfulness, and gave her the cover she needed to approach Braemore from the eastern ridge rather than the main road where she would surely be stopped and questioned.

She rode alone.

The MacTavish pony was a sturdy Highland beast, sure-footed on the slick granite, and she pressed it hard through the gorse until the gray stone walls of Braemore rose against the bruised sky. She had not told Ewan where she was going. Her father could not be moved from his bed, and her brother would have locked her in the cellar if he had known her intent.

Let them be angry later. Angry was better than homeless.

She tied the pony at the edge of the wood and walked the last quarter mile on foot, her woolen cloak pulled tight against the wet. The Campbell estate was not the fortress of MacTavish lore, but it was wealth made visible—two stories of dressed stone, glass in the windows, smoke curling from four chimneys. It was everything her family's crumbling hall was not.

A stable boy spotted her before she reached the courtyard. He dropped the armful of hay and ran.

Iona stopped in the center of the yard, pulled back her hood, and waited.

She did not wait long. Lachlan Campbell came out through the great door with three men behind him, pistols visible at their belts. He was taller than she remembered from the raid, or perhaps she had only seen him from the ground, looking up through the chaos of fleeing cattle and gun smoke. He crossed the yard slowly, boots squelching in the mud, and stopped ten feet from her.

"Miss MacTavish," he said. "Either you've lost your way, or you've lost your mind."

"I've lost neither." She met his eyes and held them. "I've come to negotiate."

Lachlan's mouth twitched. "With what army?"

"With words. And a proposal that will interest your father more than my brother's rifle would."

The men behind Lachlan exchanged glances. Lachlan studied her for a long moment, rain beaded on his dark hair, running down the scar that cut through his left brow.

"You shot my father," she said, keeping her voice level. "I haven't forgotten that. But you also said the raid was a warning. I want to know what you're warning us about."

For a beat, something crossed his face—surprise, perhaps, that she had remembered his words, or that she had the nerve to repeat them on his own ground. Then his expression shuttered.

"Inside," he said. "Before you catch your death and make the feud worse by dying on our doorstep."

He turned and walked back toward the door, not looking to see if she followed. She did.

The great hall of Braemore was warm, lit by a fire large enough to roast a stag, and smelt of peat smoke and boiled mutton. Men sat at a long table eating their noon meal—soldiers and farm stewards, she guessed by their dress. They looked up when she entered and went still.

Lachlan gestured to a chair at the far end of the table, away from the men. "Sit."

She sat. He took the chair opposite, leaning back with the easy confidence of a man who had never once worried about losing his home.

"Speak fast, Miss MacTavish. You've perhaps ten minutes before word reaches my father, and he'll want to know why I let a MacTavish inside our walls without hanging her."

"You know my family is losing the estate."

Lachlan's expression did not change. "I know you're in debt. I know a consortium of southern buyers has made an offer for your land that your brother cannot match. I know none of that is my concern."

"It becomes your concern when the consortium takes possession," she said. "They'll run cattle on our land and cut timber from your boundary hills. They'll hire outsiders and flood the valley. The Campbell name will mean nothing here within a decade. Whatever your quarrel with my family, it's small compared to what's coming."

Lachlan was silent for a long moment. One finger tapped against the table's edge—the only tell that her words had landed.

"What are you proposing?"

"A marriage. Between me and your brother."

The tapping stopped. Lachlan's eyes sharpened.

"Gavin?" He almost laughed. "You've met Gavin once, during the parley at the kirk. He said you looked like you wanted to gut him with a look."

"Good. He paid attention." She leaned forward. "Our marriage would combine the holdings. The MacTavish land would fall under Campbell protection—the consortium cannot buy what is no longer for sale. And your family gains our grazing rights and the river access our estate controls. You lose nothing. You gain everything."

"You gain everything," Lachlan corrected. "You keep your land."

"I keep my land, yes. But I lose my freedom. I surrender my name, my household, and my future children to Campbell control. That is not nothing."

Lachlan studied her. In the firelight, she could see the resemblance to his brother—the same sharp jaw, the same gray-green eyes—but where Gavin's face had been open and almost gentle in their brief encounter, Lachlan's was carved from harder stone.

"Why me?" Lachlan asked. "Why not come to me directly? I'm the heir. I would be the better match."

"You're the heir to the feud," she said. "Gavin is untouched by it. He wasn't at the raid. He wasn't there when your men shot my father. The clans can accept him in a way they cannot accept you."

Something flickered in Lachlan's eyes—whether anger or hurt, she could not tell—but before he could answer, the door at the far end of the hall opened and a voice boomed across the room.

"What is a MacTavish doing at my table?"

Callum Campbell was a broad man gone to fat, with a white beard and the red, veined cheeks of a man who had spent a lifetime drinking his own whisky to prove he could outlast it. He walked heavily down the length of the hall, and his men rose from their seats in deference.

Lachlan stood. "She's here to propose a marriage, Father. Between herself and Gavin."

Callum's laugh was a bark. "Is that so? The MacTavish girl thinks to buy her way back to safety with her skirts?" He stopped at the table, looming over her. "Your father shot my brother at Culloden Moor. You expect me to welcome his daughter into my house?"

"My father never fought at Culloden," Iona said, keeping her voice steady. "He was sixteen and hiding in the hills with the other boys who were too young to carry a musket. Whatever crime your brother suffered—and I will not pretend to know the full truth of it—it was not at my father's hand."

Callum's face colored. "You dare—"

"Father." Lachlan's voice cut through. "Sit. Hear her out. The MacTavish estate controls the eastern river and the winter pasture. If the consortium takes it, we'll have a southern landlord on our border within a year. You know what that means."

Callum stared at his son, then at her, then back at his son. Slowly, he lowered himself into the chair at the head of the table.

"Speak, girl. But if you waste my time, I'll have you walked to the boundary and left there without your horse."

Iona repeated her proposal—the marriage, the treaty, the combined defense against the consortium—and Callum listened in silence, his small eyes calculating behind their folds of flesh. When she finished, he was quiet for another long moment.

"The debt," Callum said at last. "The full weight of MacTavish debt—you expect us to absorb it?"

"The debt is smaller than the value of the land it secures. You know the numbers. The consortium certainly does."

"And Gavin would have to agree. I'll not force the boy into a marriage he despises."

"He'll agree." Iona hoped she sounded more certain than she felt. "He has as much to gain from peace as I do."

Callum exchanged a look with Lachlan—one of those wordless communications between father and son that she could not read. Then Callum pushed himself to his feet.

"A provisional betrothal," he said. "Pending a treaty that outlines the terms. Lands, cattle, the division of income, and the settlement of any dowry. If your father signs and Gavin agrees, we'll proceed. If not—" He shrugged. "You've wasted three days of rain."

Iona rose, meeting his eyes. "My father cannot sign yet. He is wounded."

"Aye. By my son's hand." Callum's gaze slid to Lachlan, and there was something complicated in it—pride, perhaps, or regret. "Then you'll carry the terms to him, and he'll sign if he has the strength in him. If he doesn't—" Callum shrugged again. "The offer dies."

Lachlan stepped forward. "I'll escort you to the boundary."

"I know the way," she said.

"And I know the hazards. There are men on this land who would shoot a MacTavish first and ask questions after. Your pony is fast. You'll want a clear head if you meet them."

He walked her to the door. The rain had softened to a drizzle, and the yard was a sheet of mud. The stable boy had brought her pony to the mounting block, and it stood with its head down against the damp.

"You're either the bravest woman I've met," Lachlan said, quiet enough that only she could hear, "or the most foolish."

"Both, I suspect."

"The raid," he said, and she paused, her foot on the block. "I said it was a warning. I meant it. There are people—on both sides of this feud—who would rather see your family destroyed than reconciled. Whatever your father is hiding, it did not begin with me."

Iona felt the weight of the silver brooch in the pocket of her dress against her hip—the Campbell crest, her mother's secret. "And what is my father hiding?"

But Lachlan shook his head. "I don't know. I was told to deliver the warning, and I delivered it." He stepped back, his face unreadable. "But I would be careful who you trust, Miss MacTavish. Gavin is my brother, and I love him. But he is also my father's son. And your father is keeping secrets that have already cost your family more than you know."

He turned and walked back through the rain toward the house, leaving her alone in the wet yard with the weight of his words settling cold in her chest.

She mounted the pony and turned its head toward home—toward her wounded father, her furious brother, and a betrothal that was now, tenuously, within reach.

But Lachlan's warning echoed as she rode through the dripping forest.

*Your father is keeping secrets that have already cost your family more than you know.*

And he had not denied that the Campbells had secrets of their own.