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They had started on the table beside Iona’s trencher. Then they had moved to the back of her chair. When she reached for the salt, Leith reached for it in the same moment, and his hand lay over hers on the crock a good while longer than the salt needed.

“Ye’ve a bonny wife, MacVey,” Leith said across her. “I’d heard the Dunmores bred them plain.”

“Ye heard wrong,” Alasdair said.

“I see that.” Leith turned the full warmth of his smile on Iona. “I’ve been to court in Edinburgh, my lady, and there’s no woman in it with hair like yours.”

“Then ye must have looked very hard at the court, my laird,” Iona said, and drew her hand out from under his with the salt in it.

Alasdair bit down on a laugh. She was enjoying herself. He could see it in the way her mouth curled, and he could see that she was enjoying it more because he was watching.

Under the board her knee was a hand’s width from his. Last night that knee had been against his hip, and her heels at the backs of his thighs, and his name breaking out of her into his shoulder. He had woken with her hair across his mouth. He wanted her out of this hall and up the stairs and out of the green wool, and he wanted Leith on the far side of the loch.

Gavin leaned in from his other side. “Ye’ve bent yer spoon, my laird.”

Alasdair looked down. He had. The handle was folded nearly in half in his fist.

“It was a poor spoon,” he said.

“Aye, it was,” Gavin said, grinning. “By the terms, I’m counting it.”

“Count yer teeth while ye still can,” Alasdair said.

Leith had found the bandage. Iona’s sleeve hid the linen on her forearm, but he had seen her favour it, and now he laid his ringed fingers on the wool.

“And what’s this, my lady? Hurt?”

“A cart, my laird,” Iona said.

“A careless husband, to let a cart near a wife like you.” His fingers moved on her sleeve, up toward the soft inside of her elbow, slow, as if he had every right to the road. “If ye were mine, I’d keep ye wrapped in silk and never let ye near a cart at all.”

Alasdair heard every word of it. So did every man within reach of the jug.

Iona did not move. Then Leith leaned toward her ear, and his other shoulder dipped below the table, and Alasdair saw her go rigid from her neck to her heels. Her spoon stopped in the air. The green wool at her hip shifted under a hand that was not hers.

Alasdair was half out of his chair before he knew it. The bench behind him scraped. His fingers closed on the hilt of his dirk, and the talk at the top of the hall died as if somebody had thrown a blanket over it.

A hand came down on his arm.

It was Iona’s. She did not look at him. Her fingers pressed into his forearm hard enough to bruise, holding him where he was, half risen, his dirk a finger’s length out of its sheath. He felt her nails through his sleeve.

With her other hand she reached beneath the table. She lifted Leith’s hand off her by the lace at his cuff, between finger and thumb, and laid it on the cloth beside his cup. Then she patted it.

“Ye’ve dropped this, my laird,” she said, clear enough to carry. “I’d keep it up here where ye can see it. My husband’s dirk is sharper than his temper, and his temper is very sharp.”

For a moment nobody breathed. Then a man of Leith’s own at the lower table let out a crack of laughter, and the whole hall went with it, MacVey and Leith alike, roaring and banging the boards.

Leith’s face went dark red over his collar. He laughed too, a beat behind them, and lifted his cup to her.

“Ye’ve a tongue on ye, my lady.”

“I have, my laird,” Iona said. “My husband says it’s my best feature.”

Her hand stayed on Alasdair’s arm. He let the dirk slide home and sat down slowly, and felt her pulse going hard in her fingertips. She was not as calm as she sounded.

He was smiling. His wife had put a laird in his place in front of the whole hall, and the laird had thanked her for it.

“Ye can let go, lass,” he said under the noise. “I’ll no’ kill him before the cheese.”