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“Last night,” he said, “I had something in my mouth to say to her. To Iona. I had the first words of it out. And I stopped, and made a joke, and kissed her so she’d no’ ask.” He heard his own voice go rough. “I want her, Mother. No’ her name on the King’s paper. Her. At my table and in my bed and in my road every hour of the day. I go into a room she’s no’ in, and the room’s wrong.”

His mother said nothing. Her hands lay still on the shawl.

“And every time I look at her,” Alasdair said, “I ought to see the man who sat at a table with Father and ate his bread. I used to. I saw Dunmore in the line of her jaw the day she bound my hand, and I couldnae get out of the room fast enough.” He stood up, because he could not sit still with it, and went to the window. The stone of the sill was cold under his palms. “Now I look at her and I see only her. Father’s lying under the hill, and I’ve Dunmore’s daughter asleep on my chest, and I’m glad of it. What sort of son does that make me?”

He turned. His mother was looking past him at the shelf above the hearth, at the silver stag his father had won wrestling at a fair. She whispered a name, and it was not his. For a while she was gone from him, and he stood with his back to the light and waited, his heart going slow and heavy.

Then her eyes came back to his face.

“Ye think ye’re betraying him,” she said.

“Aye,” Alasdair said.

“Love is never a betrayal, son.” She said it softly, as if it were a thing she had known a long while and only now found the breath for. “No’ of the dead. The dead have no more use for it. The living do.”

“I never said love,” he said.

“Ye said a room was wrong without her.” Her mouth softened. “Yer father said that very thing about me, to his own mother, before he’d the courage to say it to me. He’d have wanted ye happy, Alasdair. He’d have laughed at ye first, till he had to wipe his eyes. And then he’d have wanted ye happy.”

Alasdair could not speak. Something in his chest had given way, and he did not trust his voice to come out whole.

“Hate her father,” his mother said. “I do. I’ll hate him till they lay me beside Gregor. But dinnae make that lass pay for him with yer whole life.” Her eyes drifted to the window. “Nor make yerself pay. He’d no’ thank ye for it.”

Then she was quiet, and he watched the clarity go out of her face like a tide going out across sand.

“Leave me now, son,” she said, from a long way off. “Let me sit.”

He bent and kissed her cold forehead. At the door he passed the little painting of the loch, and this time he let himself look at it.

He let himself see it with her in it. A summer evening, long and light. Iona in the stern of a boat with her hair loose down her back and her bare feet on the nets, laughing at him for rowing badly, her eyes narrowed against the sun on the water. Her hand trailing in the loch, and then, when he shipped the oars, reaching for him. And in the bottom of the boat, asleep in a tangle of net, a child with hair the colour of hers.

His chest ached so hard he put his hand flat against it. He had not let himself want anything past the next fight with her. Now he wanted all of it, and the wanting felt like standing in daylight after a long time in the dark.

In the yard Gavin was leaning on the well with his arms folded, watching the last of Leith’s men ride out at the gate.

“Ye’ve a look on ye, my laird,” Gavin said.

“I’ve no look,” Alasdair said.

“Ye have. It’s the look of a man who’s about to hand me a wager.” Gavin grinned from ear to ear. “I’ll take it in silver.”

“Ride the river field,” Alasdair said, “and take yer mouth with ye.”

Gavin went, laughing. Alasdair stood in the cold yard with the work of the keep going on around him, and found he was smiling at nothing, and did not stop.

• • •

Iona took a candle up to the tower after supper, and her heart beat as if she were going to meet a lover instead of a letter.

The hall was loud with dice and ale. By the hearth Neil MacKay looked up from among the sleeping village folk and dipped his head to her. She dipped hers.

The firewood boy went past with his basket. “Ye’ll want a fire up there, my lady,” he said.

“No’ tonight,” Iona said, and touched his hair, and he went red to his ears and grinned.

The tower room was cold. Nobody had slept in it since she had gone down to the laird’s bed. She set the candle on the chest, lifted the lid and knelt.

The green gown with the stain lay on top. She lifted it out. Underneath, folded small, was her father’s letter.