What he had said was that he would notallowit, that whatever was in him, he intended to strangle it in the dark and call the strangling duty. And he had said it with his hands not quite steady and his eyes on her mouth, and then he had walked out and had a cold room made up for her down the passage.
He wanted her. She was as sure of it as she was of her own name.
And he had decided that the wanting was a thing to be survived rather than a thing to be answered, and there was no argument she could make against that, because he had never once claimed she was wrong.
She would not finish the thought. She would not give him that, even in her own mind, even when alone.
She climbed out of the bath, dried herself thoroughly, pulled on her shift, and slid into the big, cold, beautiful bed. She lay there in the dark for a long time, listening to the strange room settle around her.
I cannae sleep without him. There. I’ve thought it plainly. I cannae sleep in a room the man isnae in, and I’ve ken him but a few weeks, and I hate him, and I cannae sleep for the want of the sound of his breathin’. What is wrong with me? What has he done to me?
She slept at last, somewhere in the small black hours, a thin and dreamless sleep.
And woke to a hand clamped over her mouth.
There was a weight on the bed. There was a hand pressed hard over her mouth, and a knee pinning the blankets, and the cold prick of steel laid against her throat, and a voice breathing low and rank into her ear.
“Nae a sound, Blythe. Nae one wee sound. This is for the river. This is for every soul ye’ve cost us.”
Olivia did the only thing that was left to do.
She bit down on the hand over her mouth with every ounce of strength she had, tasted blood, and as the man reared back, cursing, she filled her lungs and screamed the castle down.
CHAPTER 25
Ragnall wasawake when she screamed.
He had spent all three nights awake, pacing the cold length of his chamber, convincing himself that the empty bed was a mercy, though he did not believe it.
So he was on his feet with his hand already on his hilt before the scream had finished tearing down the corridor. He knew the voice as well as he knew his own heartbeat, and he was running before he had even decided to run.
He hit the door of the south tower chamber with his shoulder, and it crashed back on its hinges. The scene inside imprinted itself on him, whole and dreadful, in the dying firelight.
Olivia was at the far side of the bed, standing with one hand pressed against her shoulder where dark blood was seeping between her fingers. Nearby, a man—one of his own, a guard inCairn colors—was halfway out the window, one leg already over the sill, holding a bloodied dirk in his hand.
Ragnall crossed the room in three quick strides, grabbed the man by the back of the neck, and yanked him off the sill, throwing him to the floor. He placed one boot on the man’s chest and his sword’s point against the hollow at the base of his throat.
All of it happened in two quick breaths.
“Olivia.” He did not look away from the man on the floor. His voice came out very calm, which was how she would have known, had she known him better, exactly how close he stood to murder. “How badly are ye hurt?”
“It’s nae deep.” Her voice was shaking, but it held. “He was aiming for me heart, but I moved, and it caught me shoulder. I am fine, Ragnall. I am?—”
“Ye’re nae fine. Sit down and press on it hard.” Then, to the man beneath his boot, he said in the same flat voice, “Ye’ve until I lose me patience to tell me why one of me own guards is climbin’ out of me wife’s window with her blood on his blade. And I am losin’ it quick.”
The man’s face was a rictus of hate and terror. “Ye think ye are the only one with kin in the ground? Did ye nae hear what her people did at the river yesterday? Three of ours. Three Cairn men, cut down at the fishin’, under a flag of peace. And ye’ve got their murderess sleepin’ soft in a tower while their widowswail.” He spat. “Somebody had to answer for it, since their Laird willnae.”
Ragnall went cold to the bones.
“Say that again.”
“Yekenfine?—”
“Say it again.” His hand closed around the man’s collar. “Three men. At the fishin’. When?”
“Yester—yesterday, at the noon—” The man was stammering now, and something new flashed across his face. It was worse than hate. It was doubt. “Ye kent. Yemusthave ken. The whole castle has ken since the mornin’. It was Tavish’s nephew. They carried the bodies up to the kirkyard afore the light went out, and ye—” He stopped. “Ye didnae ken,” he whispered.
Ragnall let him go and stood there in the dark of his wife’s chamber with his heart hammering and the whole shape of it opening up in front of him like a hole in the floor.
