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The man in it was old and still broad through the chest, with a white beard to his collarbone and a face like weathered leather. His left arm hung stiff at his side, the hand half closed, as if it had forgotten how to open. He looked at her hair. Then he looked past her at the road, empty to the bend.

“Ye came alone,” he said.

“I did,” Iona said.

“Then ye’re brave or ye’re a fool, and I’ve no’ decided which.” He did not move out of the doorway. “Ye’ll be the Dunmore lass.”

Her stomach clenched. She made herself stand straight.

“I’m Lady MacVey,” she said. “And ye’re Hamish Gunn, who carried the old laird home across his saddle. His widow told me so. I havenae come to ask about that. I’ve come to ask what happened before it.”

He did not close the door on her. He did not spit. He looked at her so long that the heat climbed into her face, and the dog’s tail thumped once on the step.

“I’ve waited a long while for somebody from that house to stand where ye’re standing,” Hamish Gunn said. “I never thought it would be the daughter.” He stepped back. “Come in, my lady. Mind the dog. He’s the only one of us with any manners.”

The house was one dark room under the turf, with the fire on a flat stone in the middle of the floor and its smoke finding its own way out through the roof. A pot hung over it. On the wall above the bed hung a sword, its scabbard grey with dust.

He set her on the stool nearest the fire and lowered himself onto a bench across from her, one-handed, careful of the arm.

“What did yer father tell ye?” he asked.

“That yer laird drew steel first,” Iona said. “At the peace talks. That our men only answered it.”

“Aye. He would.” Hamish nodded slowly, as if she had told him it would rain. “Then I’ll tell ye what I saw, and ye can set the two side by side.”

“Yer father sent the word. He was tired of burying men, he said. Gregor read that letter at his own table and laughed aloud, and his lady kissed him for it in front of us all. I told him it was a disgrace to the trade. He told me I was an old dog who’d forgotten how to lie down.” His mouth moved in the beard. “So we went as Dunmore asked. A handful of men and light swords, to a steading on the border. Yer father met us at the door himself, and took Gregor by both hands.”

Iona’s fingers closed in her skirt.

“We sat at his table, and he broke the bread and gave Gregor the first of it.” Hamish leaned toward the fire, and the light found every line in his face. “Tell me, my lady. Why do ye think a man would break bread with his enemy?”

“To make a peace,” Iona said.

“That’s what Gregor thought.” He nodded at the flames. “There’s two reasons a man breaks bread with his enemy. To end the feud, or to end the man. And the bread tastes the same either way. Mind that.”

She said nothing. Her mouth had gone dry.

“Yer father talked about how his lass kept his house better than her mother ever had.” Hamish glanced at her. “That would be you.”

Her throat shut.

“Gregor had unbuckled his sword and hung it on the back of his chair, to show he trusted him.” Hamish raised a finger. “So ask yerself. Why would a man who’d fought Dunmore twenty years take off his sword at Dunmore’s table?”

Iona could not answer him.

“Because he wanted the peace more than he feared the man,” Hamish said. “That’s the whole of it. When the bread was done, yer father wiped his fingers on the cloth and said, very soft, ‘Now.’ That was all. Men came in from the barn at our backs. Gregor never got his hand to his hilt. They put a blade in him where he sat, with the bread still in front of him.”

Iona pressed her fist to her lips. She had heard her father’s soft voice every day of her life, and she could hear it say that one word as plainly as if he sat across this fire from her. Her nails dug into her palm until they stung.

“And my father?” she said.

“He never rose from his seat.” Hamish looked at her then, full in the face. “Why do ye think that was, my lady?”

She did not know. She did not want to know.

“So that after, he could say his own hands were clean,” Hamish said. “He sat with them quiet in front of him and watched it done. That’s the lesson of it, if an old man may teach Dunmore’s daughter anything. It’s never the man who roars ye need to fear. It’s the one who never has to.” He let the fire settle. “I got Gregor over my saddle and out of that door. The rest ye ken.”

“And after?” Her voice came out thin. “Lady Mairead never finishes it.”