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“The wager.” Gavin grinned around at them all. “Did ye think I’d forget?”

Iona set down her cup. “What wager?” she asked.

“Gavin,” Alasdair said, low and dangerous.

Gavin was past caring. “When ye’d barely come to us, my lady, he stood dripping at the well and swore to me he’d have ye eating out of his hand. And I said, if he fell for ye first, he lost.”

The hall roared. Iona’s face flamed to the roots of her hair. So that was what the pair of them had been grinning about at her wedding feast.

“So those were the terms,” she said.

“Those were the terms, my lady,” Gavin said.

She turned in her chair and looked at her husband. Her heart was going hard and fast, and she could not tell whether she wanted to bite him or kiss him.

“Ye wagered on me,” Iona said. “In yer own yard. Like a mare at a fair.”

“I did,” Alasdair said.

“Before I’d so much as let ye near my fire.” She leaned in until her mouth was a breath from his. “So tell them, MacVey. Tell the whole hall who ate from whose hand.”

He laughed.

He threw back his head and let it go, a great roar of a laugh that rang off the rafters and set the dogs barking under the tables. Beyond him Lady Mairead pressed her fingers to her lips. Her eyes had filled again.

“There,” the lady said, to nobody. “That’s his father.”

Alasdair stood up. He looked down the length of his hall, still smiling.

“I lost,” he said. “Gavin had the terms right, and I had nothing right at all. I fell for my wife at a stream below Dunmore, before she ever ate my bread, and I’ve no’ got up since.”

Iona could not breathe. The noise of the hall went far away. She stared up at him with her eyes swimming.

“At the stream?” Gavin looked outraged. “Then ye’d lost before we ever struck the bargain!”

“I had,” Alasdair said.

“I’ll enter it in the ledger, my laird,” Murdoch said dryly from down the table. “Under losses.”

Alasdair reached down, took Iona by the waist and lifted her out of her chair, silk and all. He hauled her hard against him, his hand at the back of her neck, and kissed her in front of every soul on the benches.

She meant to make him pay for the wager first. She kissed him back instead, and fought him for it, and lost, and did not care. The hall stamped and hammered on the tables. In the basket the baby woke and bellowed, and Lady Mairead laughed.

“Ye’ll pay Gavin,” Iona said against his lips, when he let her breathe. “And then ye’ll pay me.”

“And what’s yer stake, lass?” Alasdair asked.

“I’ll name it upstairs,” Iona said.

• • •

Iona came along the passage to her own chambers with laughter already rising in her chest, because her husband was up to something.

He had been up to it since the kiss. Alasdair had set her back in her chair, eaten fast and talked little, and left the dais before the cheese. On his way past her chair he had bent and said into her hair, “Dinnae be long, wife.” Gavin had watched him go and laughed into his cup until Lady Mairead told him to hush.

Iona had not been long. Lady Mairead had carried the boy off to her own rooms for the night, with the nurse and Agnes, and would hear no argument. Iona had gone there first. Her son lay asleep in his cradle with his fists up by his ears, as if he meant to fight somebody in his dreams. She had kissed the soft red fuzz on his head and come away with her heart full.

Now she stood outside the laird’s door. The passage was empty, and below her the keep was still loud at its ale. Her pulse began to knock in her throat.