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“My lady,” a voice called from the yard door.

It was the boy who carried the peats, red in the face from running, and he was grinning.

“The laird wants ye,” the boy said. “Now.”

Every head in the kitchen turned. Iona felt the warmth drain out of her chest. She knew exactly what they saw: their Dunmore lady, giving orders in her apron, whistled up to her husband’s room in front of them like a dog called to heel. Morag laughed out loud.

Her face burned. She finished what she had been saying anyway.

“The salt,” she said to the cook. “Where is it kept?”

“The crock by the hearth, my lady,” the cook said.

“Good.” Iona untied her apron and threw it over the back of a stool. “Mind the broth for me. If it’s burned when I come back, I’ll know whose hand burned it.”

• • •

She did not knock. She shoved the door of his own room behind the hall so hard that it hit the wall, and then she stopped dead.

There were men in it, five ordinary-looking men standing in a line along the wall under the shelf of ledgers, as stiff as fence posts. One had a sunburnt neck and a bonnet crushed in both hands. One had his hair combed flat with water. The rest looked at the floor, at the window, at anything but her.

Alasdair sat behind his desk in his shirt, at his ease, with his bound hand resting on the wood.

“Ye whistled me up like a hound,” Iona said. “In front of my cooks.”

“Yer cooks?” He smiled. “I didnae give ye any keys.”

“I didnae need a key to boil a leek.”

“So I hear.” He leaned back in his chair. “Ye told me last night, in my passage, that ye’re no’ mine. That ye belong to no one.”

“I did,” Iona said. “I’ll say it again.”

“No need. I listened.” He nodded at the wall. “I’ll no’ have my wife go without, so I’ve brought ye a choice of lovers, lass. Take yer pick.”

For a moment Iona could not hear anything over the rushing in her ears. The blood left her face and came back so hot that her ears burned with it. He looked at her across the desk with his mouth perfectly straight.

Then she understood, and the understanding went down her back like ice.

Seumas. The cup at supper, her fingers on a young man’s wrist, and Alasdair cutting his meat in silence. This was his answer. He had told her so in the passage: “I’ll make ye regret it.”

“So now ye choose for me as well,” she said. “Ye choose where I sleep, and what I wear, and who may fill my cup, and now ye’d choose the man in my bed? In front of yer own men, like a mare at a fair?”

“I’m being a good husband.” He leaned back in his chair, easy as a cat. “Ye wanted a man to smile at. I’ve brought ye five. A good husband sees his wife has whatever she wants.”

“A good husband,” Iona said, “would have the stomach to want his wife himself.”

She leaned on the desk with both hands, close enough to see his eyes narrow. “Is this the best ye can do, MacVey? Five men who cannae look me in the eye, because ye cannae look me in the eye yerself?”

He was on his feet before she had finished. The chair scraped back across the boards.

“Want me?” he said, low and savage. “I’ve never once asked ye to want me, lass. Ye’re managing that on yer own.”

“I’d sooner want the black horse in yer stable.”

“Then why are ye blushing like a bride?”

They were nose to nose over the desk now, both of them leaning on it. She could see a muscle jump in his cheek as he clenched his teeth. Her breath was coming short and fast, and she hated that some low, treacherous part of her wanted to grab his shirt and drag him the last inch. She wanted to find out whether that hard mouth would be hard on hers, and how far down her throat it would go before she stopped it.