“Olivia?” Elspeth was frowning. “Lass, ye’ve gone pale. What is it?”
Olivia looked at the baby, then at her mother.
“Nothin’,” she said. “The cold. It’s only the cold.”
She kissed her mother, and she helped her into the cart, and she stood in the courtyard and waved until the road took them round the shoulder of the hill.
And it was, without any question, the worst thing she had ever done.
They were gone, and Olivia was alone in a castle full of folk who hated her.
She felt it within the hour, the shift in the air. It had been there before, the wary measuring coldness of the Cairn folk, but it had thawed a little in the days since the wedding, since their Laird had carried her up the stairs in his arms. Now it had come back twofold and frozen hard.
She understood the why of it when she passed two maids in the lower corridor, and they fell silent as a slammed door, and the elder of them looked Olivia full in the face with open dislike before bobbing a curtsey so shallow it was almost an insult.
“Is somethin’ the matter?” Olivia asked, because she had never once in her life been able to leave well enough alone.
“Nay, me Lady.” The word came out sour. “Only, the Laird has sent away Brigid MacKee this mornin’. For five years she has healed this clan, birthed our weans, closed our dead’s eyes. And she is put out on the road like a beggar, on account of—” The maid’s eyes flicked over her. “Well, on account of nothin’ that’s any of me business, I am sure.”
“Brigid MacKee insulted me,” Olivia said evenly. “The Laird made his own choice.”
“Aye, he did.” The maid’s chin lifted. “He’s made a deal of strange choices of late. Ever since a Blythe came under this roof.” She curtseyed again, that same shallow, insolent dip. “Ye will forgive me, me Lady. I’ve work to do. Some of us are still left to do ours.”
And then she was gone, her companion at her heels, leaving Olivia alone in the cold corridor, with the words hanging unspoken and unmistakable in the air behind them.
So that’s how it is, then. I told him. I stood in that room and told him plainly what it would cost, and he didnae hear a word of it because he was too busy bein’ good to me.
That’s the joke of it. He’ll ruin me with kindness and never ken he’s done it. There was never goin’ to be any winnin’ here.
She did not go down for the noon meal. She could not stomach the hall, the measuring eyes, the silence that would fall and rise around her like a tide.
She took herself up to the nursery instead, where she could find the only two souls in all of Cairn who loved her unconditionally, and sat down on the floor with Rosie crawling determined circles around her and Tattie sprawled in a vast warm heap across her feet.
She let the bairn and the beast comfort her, for they did not care a whit whose daughter she was.
That was where Kate found her an hour later. She entered quietly, took everything in at a glance, sisterly to the bone, and gently lowered herself beside Olivia without saying a word. For a while, the two of them just sat there, watching the baby in silence.
“They’re cruel to ye,” Kate said at last. It was not a question.
“They have cause.” Olivia’s voice was flat. “I am the enemy. I’ve always been the enemy. I let meself forget it for a day or two, that’s all. The maids have only reminded me.”
“Aye, well, they’re cruel to me as well, in their own way.” Kate turned her face to the thin sun that came through the curtains.“They’re kind to meface, which is a deal worse. They speak slowly. They ask me how I’m feelin’ in that voice folk use with the dyin’ and the daft. I’d rather a slammed door and a plain insult if I’m being honest with ye. At least a plain insult means somebody thinks ye’re still there to hear it.”
Olivia looked at her properly then. And she was ashamed.
“I’ve done that,” she said. “Have I nae? The voice.”
“Nay,” Kate said at once. “Nay, ye never have. That’s the whole reason I’m sittin’ here with ye and nae starin’ at a wall, Olivia. Ye came into me room, and ye asked me if yer gown sat well.” Her mouth twitched. “Ye’re the only soul in this castle that’s ever wanted somethin’ from me. Everyone else only wants to give me things.”
The dog put his enormous head in Kate’s lap and sighed, and she laid a thin hand on it.
“Howareye?” Olivia asked. “Truly. Nae the slow voice. Ye’re out of the chair, and ye’re eatin’, and ye held her. But that’s what ye’re doin’. It isnae how ye are.”
Kate was quiet for a long moment.
“Tired,” she said. “Tired in me bones, and it doesnae shift, nay matter how I sleep. Me arm aches when the weather turns, and I’m told it always will.”
She watched the baby on the rug. “I look at her, and some days I’m so full of love for her that I can scarcely breathe around it, and other days I look at her and I seehim, and I have to go out of the room. And I hate meself for it every single time.” She said it evenly, which was somehow worse than if she had wept. “That’s how I am. Ye’re the first person who’s asked me and meant it, so ye may as well have the true answer.”
