“Aye,” he said. “We leave in two days.”
“Truly?” she asked, her tone careful.
He leaned back in his chair. “I daenae repeat meself for pleasure, Isobel. Aye, I am leaving.”
Her face tightened. “I thought…” she began, then stopped and shook her head. “It doesnae matter what I thought.”
“What did ye think?” he pressed.
“That ye might wait. At least long enough to ken the shape of yer marriage before ye leave it behind.”
Logan let out a short breath through his nose. “This marriage is a contract. Ye helped arrange it, for the love of Christ. It is standing, and the clan has witnessed it. I daenae ken what else ye want me to do. For now, I am just trying to focus on the lines in this map. I am trying to make sense of it.”
She looked down at the floor, her eyes narrowed. “And Emma?” she asked. “Is she a line on a map, too?”
He did not answer. Instead, he picked up one of the folded letters and straightened the edge against the desk.
Isobel turned away from the fireplace. “Ye are truly leaving the day after tomorrow?” she said again.
“Aye.” This time, he gave her nothing else. He had already spent too many words in this room tonight.
She stepped closer to the desk as the shutter to the right rattled once in the wind. Her full attention was focused on him now. Logan swallowed and stared back at her.
“Ye ken she thinks ye might vanish again,” she said. “That is why she followed ye into the woods. She told me.”
Logan kept his expression blank. “She told ye about the woods.”
“She told me enough. I am nae blind.”
He could not argue that.
Isobel drew in a breath. “The castle is different with her here,” she added. “Have ye noticed?”
“‘Tis hard nae to notice the noise,” he said. “Or the straw in the yard. Or the smell.”
“The smell,” she repeated flatly.
“Good God,” he groaned. “Why has nay one spoken about it anyway? ‘Tis a castle, for the love of God, nae a barn.”
“Well, thisbarnhas maids and guards laughing in it again,” Isobel pointed out. “I am certain that is hard for ye to imagine, but I want ye to picture it. Servants smiling. There hasnae been so much talk in the kitchens in years that wasnae about fear of me faither or of ye. Now, all they talk about is her. They talk about how whimsical she is and how odd a choice she is for ye. Do ye nae see the picture I am trying to paint here?”
His mind flashed to the moment he had stepped into the hall earlier that afternoon. He remembered Emma’s face in the middle of it, cheeks flushed, hair coming half loose, eyes bright.
“It is still chaos,” he insisted.
“And so is life,” Isobel retorted, quick as a slap. “She is lonely, Logan. She has nay faither here. Nay braither. She crossed England to make sure ye held up yer end of the bargain. She is making a place for herself. What did ye expect her to do? Sit quietly in a corner and count the stones on the walls?”
The words landed hard. The way Isobel said them knocked at an old bruise. His fingers curled around the arm of his chair.
“She is me wife,” he said. “That means she follows me rules. That is how this works.”
Isobel eyed him, head tilted a little. “Is that what ye think marriage is? Rules and obedience?”
“It isnae a treaty, I ken that much,” he snapped. “We had anagreement. She needed a husband. I needed a wife. I didnae sign up for a menagerie in the Great Hall.”
Isobel folded her arms. “Ye did sign up for another soul in this castle,” she argued. “Ye brought her here. Ye put a ring on her finger. Ye can call it an arrangement all ye like, but hearts daenae stop beating just because of yer choice of words. Ye married a wife, nae a doll.”
He hated it when she spoke like that. Calm, steady, like she was laying out a set of facts on a table he could not overturn.
