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She threw the reins at his chest. He caught them one-handed, and his laugh rang off the rocks.

• • •

MacVey Keep was a square dark tower and a wall round a cobbled yard, with grey water beyond. It was nearly dark when they rode in. Men from the wall and women from the kitchen had come out to meet their laird, and a boy held up a lantern.

Every one of them looked at her, and not one of them smiled.

Alasdair lifted her down and set her on the cobbles, and kept hold of her elbow. Iona stood in her wet wool with her hair down her back like a girl’s, and held her head high over a knocking heart.

“This is Iona Dunmore,” Alasdair said, loud enough to reach the wall. “By the King’s order she is to be my wife. She’ll be yer lady. Ye’ll treat her as such.”

Nobody said anything.

Alasdair’s fingers tightened on her elbow until it hurt. He looked along the line of them, face by face.

“I’ll say it once more,” he said, “for any man here gone deaf on the road. She is yer lady. The next one who stands mute when I bring her home answers to me.”

One or two of the women bobbed. The men by the wall only stared.

“Agnes,” Alasdair said.

A stout woman came down the hall steps, a ring of keys at her belt, and stopped in front of her laird and looked only at him.

“My laird,” she said.

“Take the lady up to the tower. See she has what she needs.”

“Aye, my laird,” Agnes said.

Agnes turned her head then and glared at Iona. Her eyes narrowed, and they went slowly down the wet brown wool to the muddy hem and back up again, and her lips thinned to a line. Then she turned her back and walked away toward the tower door without waiting to see if she was followed.

Alasdair had already let go of her elbow. He was speaking low to two of his men about horses and the road, and did not look round. So that was the whole of his defending. Iona picked up her wet skirts and went after the housekeeper.

A man by the well, big and red-faced, watched her come and spat on the cobbles a foot in front of her shoe. She stepped over it. By the tower door a younger man with his thumbs in his belt did the same, and did not trouble to look away.

“Ye’ll want to mind yer feet, my lady,” he said.

Behind her, someone laughed.

Her face flamed. She wanted to strike him, and their laird most of all. She kept walking.

• • •

At the top of the tower stairs Agnes unlocked a door and stood aside.

The chamber was round and stone and colder than the yard. There was a bed heaped with blankets, a chest, and a wooden tub of water. The hearth was swept bare, with nothing beside it to make a fire.

“The water’s been brought,” Agnes said, to the window.

Iona put her hand in it. It was cold enough to make her fingers ache.

“It’s cold,” she said.

“It was hot when it came up, my lady.” Agnes made the last two words an insult.

“Then it came up yesterday.” Iona straightened and faced her. “I’ll want a fire. And something dry to burn in it, if this house runs to that.”

Agnes looked at a spot above Iona’s shoulder. “I’ll see, my lady,” she said, in a voice that meant never.