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He pushed into her in one long, deep stroke, and they both stopped breathing. She could feel all of him. He held there with his hand hard on her hip and his breath coming ragged, and then he began to move.

He moved deep and steady, and then harder, his arm locked around her, pulling her onto him, and she rose to meet him. Every time she said his name, he answered with hers, low, as if he had been saving it. The heat gathered deep in her and climbed, and she did not fight it or hate it or hide it from him. She dug her fingers into his back and held on.

When it broke she held his face in her hands and let him watch, and wept again, and this time the tears were joy. He followed her a moment later with a hoarse sound torn out of him, and her name in the middle of it.

Afterward he did not let her go. He turned her and drew her back against his chest, and wrapped his arm over her and laced his fingers through hers. She felt his breath settle against her hair.

She lay with her eyes open and watched the light go out of the window.

Across the keep, deep in a chest in the tower, lay her father’s letter with its promise to set her free. She had kept it like a treasure. It was a lie, like every word he had ever told her: about the peace, about the table, about Coll. He had sat in his chair and let her grieve the wrong man for years.

Her father was a liar. She could hold the thought now without flinching from it, and it was the coldest thing she had ever held.

And the one man who had never lied to her lay behind her with his arm around her, the man her father hated most in the world. She could trust him. She could trust only him.

Her father knew where she slept, and in whose bed. He had a grudge that had outlived a peace.

If Alasdair came to harm because of her father, because of her, she could not bear it. She would not live through it.

Iona tightened her fingers in his, and stared into the dark, and wondered what that soft voice would say next.

16

Alasdair woke happy, and he lay very still in the grey light in case moving frightened it off.

Iona was asleep on his arm. Her hair had come loose in the night and lay across his chest, dark red on the white of the pillow, and her bound arm rested on his ribs where she had left it. Her lips were parted. Asleep she looked younger, and a good deal less likely to bite him.

His arm had gone dead under her a while ago. He left it there.

He watched her until her lashes moved and she caught him at it.

“Ye’re staring, MacVey,” she said.

“I’m looking for yer freckles,” Alasdair said. “Ye’ve hidden most of them.”

“I’ve none to hide,” she said.

“There’s one here.” He touched the side of her nose. “And one here.” He touched the dip above her lip. “And I’ve heard tell of another, but it’s under the blanket, and I’d have to go looking.”

Her eyes narrowed at him, still heavy with sleep. “Ye’d have to get past my feet first.”

Her feet found his shins under the blanket, cold as the loch, and he yelped like a pup.

“Ye did that on purpose,” he said.

“Every morning of yer life, MacVey.” She stretched against him, pleased with herself. “Ye married a Dunmore. Ye’ll pay for it in feet.”

The name sat between them a moment. He saw it reach her eyes, and he saw her think of her father. Her mouth went tight.

He would not have it. Not this morning.

He rolled her onto her back and came over her and took her mouth hard, before the thought could take hold. His hand was already under her shift, spread on her bare hip, hauling her up against him. She made a sound of protest against his lips that turned, halfway through, into something else. Her good hand came up into his hair and fisted there.

“Ye’ll no’ win that easy,” she said, when he let her breathe.

“I’m no’ trying to win,” he said. “I’m trying to warm yer feet.”

He went down the bed to do it. He took one cold foot in both his hands and chafed it until she squirmed, and then he kissed the arch of it, and the ankle bone, and she laughed and tried to pull it back.