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He leaned in, close enough that only she could hear. “Later, lass,” he said. “When there’s nobody here to see what I do about it.”

He turned his back on both of them and went down the stairs.

He heard her come after him. The silk hissed on the stone. Halfway down a hand caught his sleeve and held it, and he stopped.

He could have pulled free. He did not. Her fingers were hot through the linen of his shirt, and he stood there with his bound hand on the cold wall and let her hold on.

“Ye’ll tell me why,” Iona said.

She was a step above him, and it put her eyes level with his. Up close the silk smelled of lavender and cedar, and under it, of her.

“Yesterday ye knelt to me on yer own floor,” she said. “Today ye cannae bear the sight of me in a gown. Which is it, MacVey? Do ye want me, or do ye want me gone?”

“Both,” he said. “Every hour of the day. Are ye satisfied?”

Her mouth opened. Colour flew up into her face.

“Then why?” she said. “She laughed. Ye heard her. When did ye last hear her laugh?”

“When my father was alive to make her.” The words came out of him rough as gravel. “Ye want to ken why? Ye’re standing on my stairs in the gown she married him in, and it was yer father put him in his grave.”

“I ken that,” Iona said. “His men drew on yer father at the peace talks after yer father drew on them. I’ve heard it all my life.”

“Ye’ve heard a lie all yer life.”

Her hand tightened on his sleeve.

“Yer father sent word to mine,” Alasdair said. “He was tired of the killing, he said. He wanted an end to it. He named the place and he named the day, and he asked my father to come with few men and light swords, as a token of good faith. My father went. He believed him. He sat down at the table with Torquil Dunmore and ate his bread.” He leaned in until his breath was on her face. “And when the bread was eaten, yer father had him killed where he sat. That’s the betrayal, lass. The one my mother starts to tell and has never once been able to finish.”

Iona went white to the lips.

For a moment she did not breathe. He watched the words land, he saw her sway on the step, and he felt no pleasure in it at all.

Her free hand went to her own stomach and pressed there, flat, as if she had been kicked. He saw her think of it: the soft voice, the folded hands, the great chair at Dunmore where she had knelt to beg and been told to endure. Then the colour came back in a flood, and with it the fight.

Her fingers twisted tighter in his sleeve, hard enough to hurt.

“Liar,” she said.

“I’ve never lied to ye.”

“Ye’ve done nothing else since ye threw me over yer saddle.” Her voice cracked and came back hard as iron. “I kept my father’s house from the day my mother died. I sat at his table every night of my life. I heard every word that was ever said in that hall, every quarrel and every grudge, and I never once heard that. No’ from him. No’ from a servant. No’ from a drunk man at the bottom of the board.”

“Ye never heard it because he never said it.”

“And I’ll no’ hear it now.” She was shaking. “No’ from you. No’ from the man whose riders cut my brother down. Ye’d hang every death in the Highlands on my father if it let ye sleep at night with Coll on yer hands.”

That landed. He felt it land, under his ribs, where she always found him.

“Ask yerself, then,” he said, very low. “A man who never raises his voice. Why has he never needed to?”

She did not let go of his sleeve. Her fingers had knotted in the linen so hard he could feel her nails through it, and tears stood bright in her eyes, and her mouth was so near that he could feel her breath.

He wanted to kiss her until she stopped hating him.

He wanted to make her believe him. He did neither. He stood on his own stairs with her hand on him and the bile still in his throat, and waited for her to believe him.

“Then prove it,” Iona said. “Prove it to me, MacVey, or never say it to my face again.”