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“Ye’re very bold for a woman with cold feet,” he said.

“And ye’re a coward for a man with a sword,” Iona said. “Say it.”

“Make me,” Alasdair said, with his mouth a breath from hers.

She could have. She thought of how: her hands sliding down his chest to his belly and lower, his breath breaking, his name in her mouth until he forgot what he was holding back. The thought alone made her ache. She did not do it. She lay with her palm on his heart and let him keep his secret, because she had one of her own to keep.

He drew her down against him and pulled the blanket up over her shoulder. His arm settled around her, heavy and warm.

She lay with her cheek on his chest and listened to his heart, and thought of Lady Mairead’s thin hands moving on her shawl.

Hamish Gunn. The old laird’s captain. He had ridden out with Gregor to the peace talks and brought him home dead, so whatever had happened at that table, he had seen it with his own eyes.

And a captain heard what his men did, on every raid, long after it was done. He would know what was said around the fires about a freckled boy on a hill.

He kept a croft by the loch now, the lady had said. He came up to the keep for nobody.

Then she would go down to him.

She would not ask Alasdair. He would forbid it, or worse, answer her himself, and she would never know whose truth she had been given. Nor would she write to her father. Every line of his letter was a question now.

Her heart steadied as she decided it.

“What keeps ye awake, lass?” Alasdair said into her hair.

She went still. “Yer heart,” she said. “It’s loud.”

“Liar,” he said.

“Then what keeps you awake, MacVey?” She came up on her elbow. “Ye were gone from the hall all morning. Where did ye go?”

He was quiet a moment. His hand went still on her hip.

“Here and there about my keep,” Alasdair said.

It was not the whole of it. She heard that plainly. She laid her head back down against his chest. “Keep it, then,” she said. “I’ll have it out of ye yet.” His laugh was low and short under her cheek, and he gave her nothing more.

His arm stayed around her, and his breathing never slowed into sleep. She could feel him awake in the dark, his hand on her hip, his chin against her hair, holding on as if somebody might come through the door in the night to take her.

She lay with her eyes open and watched the embers, and held her decision close against her ribs.

At first light she would ride down to the loch. And what would an old MacVey captain have to say to a Dunmore woman standing at his door?

15

Iona slipped out of her husband’s bed at first light feeling like a thief, and the worst of it was how much she wanted to climb back in.

He had not stirred when she slid from under his arm. She dressed in the grey dark with her back to the bed, and at the door she let herself look. He lay on his belly with the blanket down at his hips and his face pushed into her pillow, one arm flung across the place where she had been. The hearth light ran along the long hollow of his back. She wanted to go back and put her mouth there, low, and wake him slowly, and find out what he would do about it.

She lifted the latch instead.

A yawning groom saddled the mare. The loch road ran along the shore under the hills, with mist lying flat on the water. Every time a gull cried she pressed her palm to the knife strapped under her skirt.

She had rehearsed it half the night. An old MacVey who would not climb the hill for his own laird’s widow would spit at a Dunmore’s feet, or bar the door in her face. Then she would put her shoulder to it and make him hear her.

The croft stood alone where a burn ran down into the loch: a low stone house roofed with turf, a dyke of piled stones, sheep scattered on the slope behind. Smoke went straight up from the chimney. A grey dog lay across the threshold. It lifted its head as she rode up, looked at her, and put it down again.

The door opened before her feet touched the ground.