Page 31

He thought of the day they had carried Gregor MacVey in at that gate, and of his mother walking down the west passage to bar her shutters against the light. Torquil Dunmore had done that. The soft-voiced man in the great chair had done that, and the woman behind this door was his blood. She had his jaw. She had come from his house with his name. And Alasdair stood on her stairs in the dusk with his hand up, wanting her so much that it made him shake.

His stomach turned over. He tasted bile at the back of his throat.

He let his hand fall. He went back down, faster than he had come up, and out into the cold yard, and stood there with his bound fist pressed hard against his mouth, his whole arm rigid, until he could trust himself again.

• • •

Iona had spent the whole afternoon waiting for him to laugh at her, and it was worse, far worse, that he never came to do it.

She had kissed him back. He had hauled her into him on that hillside in front of the sky and the mare and anyone who cared to look, and she had kissed him back as if her life hung on it, and she had braced herself all the way home for the smile. The slow one. She had known exactly what he would say. Ye kissed me back, lass. Ye couldnae help yerself. And she had her answer to it ready. It had been the cold, and the rain, and she would have kissed the mare if the mare had come up the hill instead. It was a good answer. He had never given her the chance to use it.

He had let her bind his hand, and then he had looked at her as if she had grown a second face. He had kicked over the basin and walked out of the room as if she were a servant who had finished with the hearth. She had knelt in his spilled water with her cheeks on fire, and she had worked out why. He had looked at her and seen a Dunmore. He had kissed a Dunmore on a hill and could not stomach it now he was dry.

Good, she thought. Let him choke on it.

Nobody came up to her after that. Once, near dusk, she heard boots on the stairs, and stood stock still in the middle of the floor with her heart in her throat. The boots stopped. Then they went away down again, fast. The boy who carried up the wood, she told herself, and did not believe it.

So when the bell rang for supper, she put on her old brown working gown, dry now and brushed clean, and plaited her hair tight, and went down to the hall with her chin up and her mind made up.

Alasdair was already at the high table. The linen she had tied around his knuckles showed white against his cup. He did not look up when she came in. Half the lower tables did.

A young man at the end of the lower table got to his feet. He was the only man in the hall who stood for her, and he bowed. He was young and handsome, with an easy smile that came and went as if it cost him nothing.

“My lady,” he said.

Iona stopped. “What’s yer name?” she asked.

“Seumas, my lady,” he said.

“Well, Seumas.” She gave him the warmest smile she had, and made sure it carried to the high table. “Ye’re the first man in this hall to stand up when I walk past. I’ll no’ forget it.”

His smile widened. Down the table, somebody whistled low. Iona felt the whole of the high table go still behind her, and she did not turn around to look at it. She let Seumas hand her up the step instead, with her fingers resting on his for longer than they needed to rest there.

Then she took her place at Alasdair’s right hand and folded her hands in her lap.

He was cutting his meat. The knife moved slowly through it, and the knuckles of his bound hand had gone white around the handle.

“Ye’re very quiet tonight, MacVey,” Iona said.

“I’m saving my breath,” Alasdair said, without looking at her. “Ye’ll want me to have plenty later.”

Her face went hot. She turned her shoulder to him and looked down the hall instead, and she knew exactly what she would do. Her mouth still burned from that hillside. If she was to have no peace tonight, neither would he.

“Seumas,” she called. “Will ye fill my cup? The laird has hurt his hand.”

Seumas came up the step with the jug before anyone could stop him. He filled her cup to the brim and did not spill a drop. Iona laid her fingers on his wrist to thank him, and asked him where he had learned to pour like that, and laughed out loud when he told her he had a houseful of sisters and a grandmother who threw spoons.

“If the laird’s hand is too sore for the jug, my lady,” Seumas said, “I’ve two good ones.”

“I’ll remember that too,” Iona said.

Beside her, she heard Alasdair breathe in through his nose.

Nothing else. He did not stand up. He did not say a word to Seumas or to her. He set down his knife, and lifted his cup, and drank, and set it down again so carefully that it made no sound at all on the board. His men were watching him. Every one of them was watching him. And his scar had gone as white as her linen.

Under the board, his knee was pressed against hers, hard as a bar of iron. It did not move all through the rest of the meal.

Iona bit the inside of her cheek to keep the laugh in. Then she thought of that knee pressing higher, and of his bound hand sliding up her bare thigh under the board, and the laugh very nearly turned into something else.