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“I barred those myself,” Lady Mairead said behind her. “The day they carried my husband home. Gregor. Nobody else has ever laid a hand on them, until you.”

Iona turned around with the cold iron of the bar still in her fist.

“No’ even yer son?” she asked.

“Alasdair has only ever let me be.” The lady’s mouth moved. “He stands at the door sometimes. He asks if I’ve eaten. Then he goes away again.”

Iona set the bar against the wall harder than she needed to. She had called him a jailer to his face, in this room. And all the while he had been a son standing outside a shut door, letting it stay shut. She did not want to feel sorry for him, today of all days.

She dragged the stool over and sat with her knees against the chair, and told the lady about Morag. She had not meant to. It came out of her hot and fast, the sheet and the snicker, the laughter on the stairs. Her voice went tight in the telling. Then she told her about the boy, and the brown gown carried back up to the tower.

Lady Mairead heard it all in silence. When it was done, she did not tell Iona to bear it.

“She laughed in yer face,” she said.

“And I stood there and let her,” Iona said. “I couldnae find one word.”

The lady’s mouth twitched. “My husband would have laughed. At the girl, I mean. He’d have laughed till she went red to her ears, and she’d have run, and never come near his door again. He’d a great big laugh. When he let it go at the table, the dogs under the board would get up and bark at him.”

Iona felt the corner of her own mouth lift against her will.

“And Alasdair?” she asked. “Did he laugh like that?” The words were out before she could stop them, and she could have kicked herself for asking. What did she care how he laughed? But she wanted to know.

“As a boy? He tried.” The lady’s voice had warmed. “He followed his father everywhere. He’d stand in the yard with a stick for a sword and copy every stroke the men made, and when his father laughed at him he’d go scarlet and do it all again, harder.” She shook her head slightly. “Hamish Gunn used to stand behind him and kick his feet into place.”

“Who is Hamish Gunn?” Iona asked.

“My husband’s captain. The best man he had.” Lady Mairead’s hands moved in her lap. “He keeps a croft by the loch now, a wee farm with a few sheep. He comes up to the keep for nobody. No’ even for me. It was Hamish who carried my Gregor home to me, across his own saddle. I dinnae think he has ever forgiven himself that he came home and Gregor didnae.” She looked down at her hands. “They were all at the one table, the last good night. My husband and Hamish, and Alasdair hardly grown. Before the betrayal. If he had only listened. If he hadnae ridden out trusting the word of a man who…”

She stopped.

She stopped in the middle of it, with her mouth still open on the next word. Iona waited for it. It did not come. The lady’s eyes had gone to the open window, but they were not seeing the loch. They had gone somewhere a long way off, and dark, and her face had gone with them.

Iona’s breath caught. Her heart had begun to pound, hard and slow. Somewhere at the back of her mind she heard Alasdair in his warm room, saying the word murderers, and she shoved the word away before it could say anything more.

“My lady,” she said softly.

Lady Mairead did not answer. Her lips moved without a sound. Her hands had begun to tremble in her lap.

Iona slid off the stool onto her knees on the boards and took both of those hands in her own. They had gone cold again. All the warmth she had put into them that other day was gone, and they lay in her palms as cold as stones out of a stream. She did not rub them this time. She held them, firmly, and kept holding them.

“I’m here,” Iona said. “It’s Iona. I’m here with ye.”

For a long while nothing changed. The lady sat rigid in the chair with her eyes on nothing. Iona knelt on the hard boards and held on, and felt her own throat close up tight. She thought of her mother, and of how she had held her mother’s hands at the end. She did not let go.

Little by little, the trembling eased. The thin fingers stirred. Then they turned in Iona’s grip and closed around hers, and held on in their turn.

Lady Mairead blinked. She looked down at Iona kneeling by her chair, as if she had only now noticed her there.

“Where was I?” she asked.

“Ye were telling me about the boy with the stick,” Iona said.

“Aye.” The lady let out a long breath. “Aye, so I was.”

She did not go back to the rest of it. Iona did not ask her to. She stayed on her knees until the lady’s hands had some warmth in them again, and then she got up stiffly and sat back on the stool, and kept one of those thin hands in her lap.

“My lady,” she said. “Tell me how to make them respect me.”