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“I willnae endure it,” she said. “Ye can give me to the King and the MacVeys and the devil himself. I will fight every step of the road.”

Torquil only looked at her, sorrowful and patient, and said nothing at all. Alasdair saw that silence strike her harder than a blow.

Torquil looked past her, at Alasdair, and said, “Ye’ll be good to her, MacVey.”

It was not quite a question. Alasdair looked at the soft, sorrowful face above the grey beard, and his hand went to the hilt of his sword before he could stop it.

“She’ll want for nothing,” he said. “Which is more than I can promise ye, Dunmore. I put my name to the King’s peace. I didnae put my name to forgetting. I’ve not forgotten one thing ye owe me, and some day I’ll come back for it.”

Torquil sighed and spread his hands, an old man too tired to quarrel. Alasdair turned his back on him.

“We ride,” he said to the hall. “Now.”

Iona did not look at her father again. She looked at Alasdair, and he saw what it had cost her, and saw that she meant him never to see it again. Then she lifted her chin and walked out past him into the yard, to where his men waited with the horses, as if leaving had been her own idea.

He had meant to put her on her own mare. He looked at the trees beyond the back gate and thought better of it.

“In front of me,” he said.

“I’ll ride my own horse,” she said.

“Ye’ll ride mine, and I’ll know where ye are.”

He put her up on his black horse, astride, and swung up behind her, and gathered the reins in one hand. The other arm he put round her waist. She sat as far forward as the saddle would let her, her spine as straight as a spear shaft, so that a hand’s width of cold air lay between her back and his chest.

It lasted until a bend in the road. Then the horse stumbled on a stone and she was thrown back against him, and the whole warm length of her came up against him at once, her shoulders to his chest, her hair against his throat, her hip hard against his thigh. She went rigid. He felt her breath stop.

She straightened. A mile on, the road dipped, and it happened again.

Alasdair tightened his arm, not much. Under his hand, her stomach rose and fell fast beneath the brown wool, and he could feel the edge of the apron strings at her back, and the heat of her through it. Her hair smelled of hay and cold air. He fixed his eyes on the road and wished, with feeling, that he had let her ride the mare.

“Ye can stop holding me,” she said, without turning her head. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Ye were going somewhere fast enough an hour ago,” he said.

Her back stiffened against his chest. She did not lean away this time. She would rather sit pressed to him, hating it, than give him the satisfaction of feeling her lurch.

Dunmore Keep fell behind them. The hills closed in, brown and wet, and the road narrowed to a track. Somewhere behind, one of his men began to sing, badly, and another told him to stop.

“Yer men are glad,” Iona said.

“They’re going home.”

“Coll had a home too.” She turned her head at last, far enough that he could see the line of her cheek. “Yer people saw to it he never came back to it.”

Alasdair said nothing. She wanted a fight, and he was not going to start one on a hill track with his men listening.

“Ye’ve no answer,” she said.

“None that would please ye,” he said.

“I’ll never want one from ye.”

“Then we’ll get on well enough,” he said, “for I’ve none to give.”

She faced front again. Her hands closed hard on the front of the saddle.

They rode on through the long grey afternoon, into his own country, and for a long while she said nothing.