Chapter 26
Laird O’Douglas was a handsome man. Iona saw that at once and quickly distrusted herself for noticing it at all.
Not because there was anything especially improper in the observation.
A woman had eyes. She knew what she saw.
Archer Gallagher carried himself with a polished sort of ease, the kind that suggested he had long since learned the usefulness of appearing untroubled in every room he entered.
His clothes were finely made without seeming ostentatious, his manner smooth, his smile ready.
And yet there was something in him that kept her from ever fully relaxing.
It was the smile, perhaps, or rather, what the smile failed to reach.
His mouth curved readily enough, charming in a manner that would likely disarm most people before they had the chance to think better of it, but his eyes remained untouched by it.
They were sharp. Watchful. Measuring. It seemed to Iona that nothing in the hall escaped them.
Not the placement of chairs, not the servants slipping in and out with refreshed cups, not the way Jamie had left only moments before, and certainly not the look Frederick had given her when he asked her to remain.
That alone made her sit straighter.
Archer inclined his head first to Frederick, then to her. “Me congratulations to ye both. I had hoped to offer them sooner, but I am afraid the days have grown less obliging of late.”
Frederick remained standing, his expression composed in that still way of his that never quite hid the thought moving beneath it. “Your good wishes are received. And returned, if I understand rightly, that your own household is still settling after recent changes.”
Archer’s mouth shifted. “That is a generous way of putting it.”
Iona said nothing at first, content to watch. This, too, was a sort of dance, only one done with words sharpened so finely that one could almost miss the cut until it had already landed.
Archer turned his attention to her then, and the full weight of that observant gaze settled on her without rudeness and yet with no less intensity for being carefully mannered.
“And my congratulations to ye as well, me lady,” he said. “It seems McIntosh Keep has become rather more fortunate all at once.”
Iona managed a polite smile. “Ye are kind to say it.”
There was no stumble in him. No wasted word. Even his compliments felt chosen for effect, though she could not have said precisely what effect he wished to create.
Frederick gestured toward a chair, though he himself did not yet sit. “Ye have come a fair distance for courtesy alone?”
Archer accepted the seat with graceful ease, crossing one leg over the other as though he had every right to take his time once he had arrived. “Courtesy still has its uses. Particularly between neighboring clans.”
“Are ye preparing to ask us something?”
Archer gave a low chuckle at that. The sound should have been warm. It was not.
“I might say instead,” he replied, “that I have come to ensure relations remain as they ought. Your presence at our ceilidh would go some way toward that. Two clans seen under the same roof, in ease and good company, will always quiet half the muttering done by men with too much time and too little work.”
Iona glanced at Frederick. She saw it then, the shift in him. Not dramatic. Not enough that a casual eye would have marked it. But she knew him well enough now to see when his mind stopped indulging talk and began cutting toward what mattered.
Her husband sat at last, though there was nothing of relaxation in the motion.
“There is nay way,” he said evenly, “that ye rode here in person simply to invite us to a ceilidh.”
Archer looked at him for a long moment, smiling all the while. Only this time, the smile reached even less of him than before.
“Aye,” he said. “There is the Frederick I expected. Get to the point.”
The air in the hall changed.
Iona felt it in her stomach before she could have named it. The warmth of the room seemed to pull tighter, the sounds at the far end of the hall growing dimmer, as though everything beyond the three of them had stepped back to make room for whatever this truly was.
Archer folded his hands loosely over one knee. “Two women are missing from me lands. And three bairns.”
The words fell quietly.
They struck with the force of stones.
Iona felt the blood leave her face. Her fingers tightened in her lap beneath the tablecloth before she could stop them. Two women. Three children. The numbers alone were enough to make something cold move through her, though she fought to keep it from showing in her expression.
Frederick did not move at all.
Archer continued, his tone still maddeningly calm.
“Taken within the last month, none to return. One from near the southern edge, another from farther east. The bairns disappeared separately, though I dislike coincidence more with each passing day. Me men have found little beyond confusion, fear, and trails that seem determined to become useless just when they ought nae.”
Iona’s throat tightened.
This is spreading.
The thought came hard and fast. Not merely a fear now. Not a handful of incidents that might still be forced into some shape less terrible if one looked at them from the right angle. It was widening. Reaching.
Archer’s gaze remained on Frederick when he asked, “Are ye involved?”
Iona’s heart lurched so sharply it hurt.
For a single, horrified instant, she thought she had misheard him. That surely no man, no matter how calm, would walk into another laird’s hall and place such a question between them as though it were merely the next point in a civil discussion.
Her legs trembled beneath her skirts. She pressed her heels more firmly to the floor, willing stillness back into them. She looked at Frederick and found his face unreadable in a way she had seen only rarely. There was no visible anger there. That frightened her more than anger might have.
Then Frederick spoke. “Is that why Lady Noor was in me lands?”
Iona’s breath caught.
Archer blinked.
It was the first unguarded thing she had seen from him since he entered the hall. Not much. Only the smallest widening of his eyes, the briefest break in that polished ease. Yet it was enough to tell her Frederick’s question had struck true or near enough to it that surprise had no time to hide.
Frederick did not let the moment pass.
“Is she mining me whereabouts for ye?” he asked, his voice still maddeningly level, “or do ye make a habit of letting your kin wander across clan lines without explanation.”
Iona’s pulse was so loud in her ears she could scarcely hear the silence that followed, though she knew it was there. Archer did not answer at once. His fingers shifted once against his knee. Then stilled.
When he did speak, his tone had changed just slightly. The charm remained, but it had narrowed.
“My mother-in-law goes where she pleases more often than I would like,” he said. “Had I known she intended to visit your lands, I would have sent word myself.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No,” Archer agreed. “It is the truth.”
Iona could not seem to draw a full breath. She looked from one man to the other and found no comfort in either expression, only calculation set against calculation, suspicion meeting suspicion without either of them raising a voice.
Archer leaned back by a fraction. “I did not send her to watch ye.”
Frederick said, “Then why ask whether I am involved?”
Archer’s gaze sharpened. “Because women are vanishing from my lands, from yours, and from others near enough that only a fool would fail to note the pattern. Because I would rather ask an insulting question in person than believe a dangerous lie in silence. And because if there is rot between our borders, I mean to know whether I am standing beside it or across from it.”
The answer was too immediate to be invented on the spot. Too harsh to be merely performative.
Still, it did nothing to ease the pounding in Iona’s chest.
She forced herself to speak before the silence thickened further.
“If ye both suspect this reaches across clan lines,” she said, and hated how thin her voice sounded to her own ears, “then surely accusing each other does little to stop it.”
Both men looked at her at once.
Archer’s expression softened first, though not enough to lose its edge. “A fair point, my lady.”
Frederick’s gaze stayed on her a moment longer. Not to silence her. Never that. But she could see the awareness there, the immediate recognition of how hard her heart was likely beating beneath the calm she was trying and failing to maintain.
Archer looked back to Frederick. “I came because I would rather have the truth from your own mouth than from rumor. I have it now, or near enough. If ye are not involved, then we have a common problem.”
Frederick’s jaw shifted once. “Aye.”
It was not agreement given lightly.
Archer rose then, slowly, the movement graceful and controlled even now. “Then perhaps the ceilidh may serve some purpose after all.”
Iona did not know whether to feel relief or dread. Only that neither man had lowered his guard, and her own heart had not yet remembered how to beat properly.
Archer’s words settled heavily between them, and for a moment, no one moved.
Iona felt the weight of it press against her chest, tightening her breath as the implications took shape.
Frederick remained still, though she saw the shift in his focus, the way his thoughts turned inward before sharpening again.
“There is more,” Frederick said at last, his voice steady but firmer now. “Two women from me own lands had gone missing as well, but one has returned to us.”
The air seemed to thin.
Iona’s hand moved without thought, finding his. Fear surged, swift and certain.
“Lady Noor is behind it,” she said.
Frederick’s hand tightened around hers as the words left her mouth, though his gaze did not immediately shift away from Archer.
Archer did not move at once. Then, slowly, his attention turned fully to her, the faint ease in his expression gone entirely now, replaced with something colder, more exacting.
“That is a serious accusation,” he said. “On what grounds do ye make it?”
Iona heard the question, understood it, and yet she could not seem to pull her gaze away from Frederick. Everything in her narrowed to him. The weight of what she had just said, the risk of it, the years she had carried it alone all pressed forward at once.
Please believe me.
“Iona,” Archer said again, more firmly. “If ye speak such words, ye must give reason.”
Her breath faltered.
“I do not know her motives, but I do know that I was there,” she said, her voice unsteady. “At MacFarlane.”
Frederick’s hand did not release hers.
She clung to that.
“I served in the castle,” she continued, forcing the words forward despite the tightening in her chest. “As a maid. I saw things that did not belong. Things that were hidden.”
Archer leaned slightly forward. “What things?”
“There were women,” she said, her voice thinning as the memory took hold. “Locked away. I did not know why at first. I only knew they were not meant to be seen.”
Her breathing quickened, each inhale shallow, each exhale uneven.
“I should have left it,” she said. “I should have stayed silent. But I could not. I helped them. I helped them all to escape.”
The room seemed to close in around her.
“And she knew,” Iona said, her words rushing now, breaking over themselves. “Lady Noor knew. She always knows. Nothing moves in her walls without her seeing it. If women are taken, if they are hidden, if they are being—”
“Iona.”
Frederick’s voice cut through her rising panic, firm and steady.
She stopped at once, though her breath would not.
“I cannae…” she tried, but the air would not come properly.
Frederick rose.
The movement was immediate and decisive, leaving no space for interruption.
“We will speak of this tomorrow,” he said, his gaze fixed on Archer.
Archer stood as well, tension sharpening his features. “If this concerns me household, I will hear it now.”
“Nay,” Frederick replied, his tone unwavering. “Ye will hear it when I decide it is time.”
“This is nae a matter to be delayed.”
“It is nae a matter to be forced from a woman who can scarcely breathe.”
Archer’s jaw tightened, but he did not step forward.
Frederick had already turned away. His focus returned entirely to Iona as he guided her to her feet, his hand steady at her back.
“Come,” he said quietly. “Ye are done here.”
She could not have argued if she had tried.
The hall blurred as he led her from it, her breath uneven, her grip on him unrelenting as though the world might tilt if she let go.
By the time they reached his chambers, the tightness in her chest had only just begun to loosen.
Frederick closed the door behind them and turned to her at once.
“Breathe,” he said, his hands firm but gentle on her arms. “Slowly. With me.”
She tried.
It took time. Longer than she wished. But he did not rush her. He remained there, steady, patient, until her breathing began to settle into something she could manage.
Only then did he guide her to sit.
“Ye should nae have forced it,” he said quietly.
“I could nae keep it from ye,” she replied, her voice still trembling. “Naeafter hearing what he said.”
He watched her for a moment, then sat beside her, close enough that she could feel the heat of him, the solidity of him.
“Then tell me now,” he said.
There was no pressure in the words. Only certainty.
She told him everything.
Of MacFarlane. Of her place within its walls. Of the unease that had grown into fear. Of the hidden passage below. Of the women kept where no one was meant to look. Of the night she chose to act. Of the risk. Of the escape. Of the certainty that Lady Noor had known.
The words came steadily now, no longer broken by panic, though they carried the full weight of what she had held in silence for so long.
When she finished, the room fell quiet.
Iona hesitated, her hands clasped tightly together now, unsure how to face what came next.
“Iona.”
She looked at him.
There was no doubt in his expression. Only anger that was not meant for her. “Ye should have told me sooner,” he said, his voice controlled but edged.
“I was afraid,” she admitted.
“Aye,” he said. “And with reason.”
His hand lifted, brushing lightly along her cheek, grounding her in the gentleness of it despite the storm she could see building beneath his calm.
“This will be dealt with,” he said. “Ye willnae carry this alone again.”
A small, unsteady smile found her lips, relief breaking through at last.
Frederick’s expression softened at the sight of it, though the fire in his gaze did not fade.
He leaned forward, pressing a deliberate kiss to her forehead, then to her temple.
“I will keep ye safe,” he said quietly.
This time, she did not doubt it.