Page 28

The rain came at the head of the glen, all at once, cold and slanting, and soaked him to the skin. He drove the horse up the track and out onto the open hill, where there was nothing but heather and rock and the rain sweeping across it in grey sheets.

He saw her far above him. She was a dark shape on a grey mare, going hard for the ridge.

She looked back and saw him too. He watched her flatten herself along the mare’s neck and drive her on, straight up the hill, bareback through the heather, with her red hair loose and streaming.

“Iona!” he roared.

The wind took it. She did not slow.

He drove the black horse up after her. It gained on her with every stride, but she rode like a madwoman across the worst of the ground. His heart was in his mouth. If the mare went down on that slope, she would break her neck.

He came up alongside her and caught her rein in his bad hand.

“Let go!” she screamed.

She struck at him with the loose end of the reins. It cracked across his wrist and he held on. The mare plunged between them, and Iona flung herself off the far side, landed on her feet in the heather, and ran.

He was off his horse before it stopped. He caught her by the arm in the heather, and she spun around and slapped him across the face with all her strength.

His head snapped sideways. His cheek burned. He let her go.

She stood in front of him with the blue gown plastered to her body, white and wet and furious. The wet wool hid nothing, not the curve of her breasts nor the hollow of her waist, and with his cheek still on fire his body wanted her anyway.

“Get away from me,” Iona said.

“Ye’ll come home,” Alasdair said.

“Home.” She laughed, and it was a terrible sound. “Ye call that home? A house where they spit at my feet and laugh at my sheets, and the laird stands in the hall and laughs along with them?” She came at him across the heather. “Ye’ve made my life a misery, MacVey, from the first hour ye threw me over yer saddle. Ye put me in a cold tower in a torn gown. Ye kissed me in front of yer whole household to show them ye owned me. Ye slept in a chair and left me to face the morning. And today ye made me a joke in front of a girl who couldnae sweep a floor.”

“Aye,” he said. “I did, today. I’ll own that one.”

“Ye’ll own it.” She stepped right up into his face. He did not move. “Ye’ll own it the way ye own everything. Yer keep, yer horse, yer wife. I’m one more thing ye carried home over yer saddle.”

The rain hammered down between them. His jaw locked so hard that his teeth ached.

“If I owned ye,” he said, “ye’d have slept in my bed last night, no’ in yer tower.”

“Ye’d have had to drag me there,” Iona said. “Ye never even tried.”

“Ye never asked,” Alasdair said.

She grabbed the front of his wet shirt and wrenched at it, as if she could drag him down to her size. He caught both her wrists and held them against him, and she fought him like a wildcat, twisting and kicking at his shins through her sodden skirts.

“Ye stood in my hall giving orders to my housekeeper with yer chin up,” he said through his teeth. “Ye were magnificent. I couldnae let ye win that easy.”

Magnificent. The word went still inside her, and for one moment she forgot to fight him at all.

Then she found her voice. “Easy?” She wrenched one wrist free and drove it against his chest. “Nothing about ye is easy. I’ve hated every day in yer keep.”

“No’ every day.” He looked down at her. “No’ the day at the window.”

Her mouth opened. Colour flamed up under the white of her face. Then a hard spasm of cold went through her.

He saw it then. Her lips had gone blue. Her teeth were chattering so hard she could barely shape the words. She was shaking from head to foot.

He unclasped his cloak and swung it around her before she could stop him. He pulled it close at her throat and held the edges together with his good hand.

“Dinnae,” she said.