Page 73

Iona went to her father because nobody else would, and when she knelt in the heather beside him her heart was beating so hard it hurt, as if some part of her still thought he might say the one thing that would make it bearable.

She put her foot on the long knife first and pushed it away across the turf, out of his reach. Then she knelt.

He lay on his side with one hand over the place under his arm, and the dark was coming between his fingers. His nose was broken, and blood had run down into the grey beard. Behind her she heard Gavin swearing, and Alasdair telling him to stop fussing like a hen.

Her father’s eyes found her face. They were as calm as they had ever been across his own hall.

“Ye shouted for him,” Torquil said.

“I did,” Iona said.

“Another breath, and I’d have had him.” Even now his voice was soft. Even now he did not raise it. “Ye always did choose yer moment badly, lass.”

Her hands lay open in her lap, cold to the fingertips.

“Father.” Her voice cracked on it. She took his face in her hands, the broken nose, the blood in the grey beard, and her tears fell on him. “Father, look at me. Please. Did ye ever love me? Even the once? Tell me ye did. Lie to me if ye must, I’ll no’ mind it. Only say it.”

He looked at her for a long moment, patient, as if she had asked him the price of wool.

“Everything I did, I did for Dunmore,” Torquil said. “All of it. And so were you.”

“Ye sold me to Leith,” Iona said.

“I gave ye to a laird who’d have kept ye in silk.” His breath caught and rattled, and came back. “It could all have been quiet. Ye’d only to do yer duty and endure, as I bade ye in my own hall. Ye never would listen.”

The words went into her like cold water. She had heard them in his hall, kneeling by his chair with his hand on her hair, and she had hated him for them then.

She waited. She waited for one word for her, only one. My lass. Nothing came. His eyes left her face and went past her to the sky, which was going pale over the rocks, and he lay there and waited for it, as he had always waited for someone else to do the deciding.

Then it broke in her.

She wept with her fists pressed to her mouth, great tearing sobs that bent her double over her knees in the heather. She wept for Coll’s freckles and his borrowed sword. She wept for her mother, and for the girl who had knelt by that chair and believed every soft word. She wept for the father she had wanted all her life and had never once been given, and he lay a yard from her and watched her do it, and said nothing at all.

When it had run out of her, she dragged the back of her wrist across her eyes and looked at him one last time.

“I’m done enduring,” Iona said. She bent and pressed her lips to his forehead. “Goodbye, Father.”

She stood up. His breath was still going when she turned her back on him and walked across the hollow to her husband.

Alasdair was sitting on the wall of the pen with Gavin crouched in front of him, pressing a wad of plaid hard against his side. His face had gone the colour of ash under the black stubble. When he saw her coming he got to his feet, which he had no business doing, and Gavin swore at him again.

“He’s no’ to stand, my lady,” Gavin said. “Tell him. He’ll no’ hear it from me.”

“He’ll no’ hear it from me either,” Iona said.

Alasdair put out his hand to her face. Then he looked at it, red to the wrist, and let it fall.

She caught it before it reached his side and held it in both of hers. His blood was warm and slick between her fingers, and she did not care.

“Yer father,” he said hoarsely. “Iona. Iona, I… God forgive me, he was at my back, I had no…” His fingers crushed hers. “Look at me. Tell me ye dinnae hate me for it. I cannae bear it if ye…”

“Dinnae!” It broke out of her too loud, and she pressed his bloody hand hard to her mouth. “No’ yet, Alasdair. Please. If I start, I’ll never stop.”

“Then hear the other thing.” His eyes held hers, and there was no smile anywhere in his face, nothing to hide behind. “In the yard ye begged me, and I chose my vengeance over you. I took every man I had to an empty door and left ye behind my wall with nobody to stand between you and a lie.” His voice cracked. “It near cost me you. I came over that rock and saw Leith reaching for ye, and I was too far away.”

She held on to his hand and could not speak.

“Ye came, though,” she said at last. “Ye took yer time about it.”