Chapter 28
Their departure began before the sun had fully cleared the hills.
The courtyard was still touched with early chill, the flagstones damp where the night had lingered longest, and the air carried that thin, sharp quiet that came just before a household properly woke.
Horses stood saddled and waiting. Men moved in low, efficient patterns, tightening straps, checking packs, speaking only when necessary.
It should have felt like any other journey Frederick had made from his own gate.
Jamie stood between Caitlin and Erin with a small furrow between her brows, wrapped in a cloak too large for her shoulders because Caitlin had insisted the morning was colder than it looked.
Her hair had been tied back, though several strands had already escaped and were shifting lightly across her cheeks in the breeze.
She looked from Iona to Frederick and back again with the particular alertness of a child who did not understand what was wrong, only that something was.
“Do ye have to go?” she asked.
Frederick crouched before her, though the motion felt heavier than it should have. “Aye, lass. Only for a little while.”
Jamie’s gaze dropped to the ground and then returned to his face. “Where?”
“To O’Douglas.”
That seemed to mean little to her beyond distance.
“Why?”
Frederick had expected the question. He still found himself reaching for the answer more carefully than he liked.
“Because the laird has asked it of us,” he said. “And because there is work to be done.”
Jamie accepted this with visible reluctance. Her eyes shifted then toward Iona, and the look she gave her mother was so full of quiet concern that Frederick felt it like a stone under the ribs.
“Ye and Ma are strange,” she said.
Caitlin made a soft sound that might have been warning, but Jamie continued before anyone could stop her.
“Ye are both talking proper,” the child said. “And when people talk proper, it is because they are cross.”
Frederick glanced at Iona.
She stood only a few steps away, her hands folded too neatly before her, her face composed in that infuriating, distant calm she had worn since the night before.
She had not refused to come. She had not argued again.
She had simply become careful. Polite. Unreachable.
It had unsettled him far more than another round of anger would have.
Iona knelt then, bringing herself level with Jamie. “We are nae cross with ye, lamb.”
“That is nae what I said.”
“Nay,” Iona answered softly.
Jamie studied them both once more, then sighed with the grave resignation only children and very old men seemed able to summon over matters they did not approve of.
“Well,” she said, “someone should stop it.”
Lennox, standing near the horses, turned his head sharply away in what was very clearly an attempt not to laugh.
Archer, who had arrived earlier than courtesy strictly required and now waited near the gate with all the composed patience of a man accustomed to other people’s households, looked faintly amused himself.
Erin stepped forward before either parent could answer.
“Here,” she said to Iona, drawing something from within the folds of her shawl.
It was a small amulet, wrapped in faded thread and leather, no grand piece of ornament but something older-looking, worn smooth by time and handling.
Iona took it carefully. “What is this?”
“A thing ye will wear and nae question,” Erin replied.
Frederick watched as the old healer tied it around Iona’s wrist with fingers that were steadier than they had been the day before. Her mouth moved under her breath, Gaelic low and quiet, some blessing or warning or both. When she finished, she looked at Iona with unusual seriousness.
“Keep it on,” she said.
Iona glanced down at it, then back up. “Aye.”
Caitlin came next, gathering Jamie briefly to her side before looking to Frederick and Iona both. “I will keep everything in order here.”
That was directed toward Frederick, though there was warmth enough in it for them both.
“And by everything,” Lennox muttered, not quite softly enough, “she means the keep, the child, the servants, and likely me as well.”
Caitlin did not even turn toward him. “Aye.”
That earned a quiet snort from Erin.
Frederick rose at last, the moment for leaving narrowing around them, whether he liked it or not. Jamie came forward without prompting and hugged him tightly around the middle. He held her in return, one hand brushing gently over the back of her head.
“Mind Hamish,” he said quietly.
“I will!” Jamie said into his coat.
“Aye,” he replied. “Me daughter is nae to be made a fool by a horse.”
She pulled back and nodded solemnly. “I willnae.”
When Iona bent to embrace her next, Jamie held on a little longer, and when she finally stepped away, her eyes moved once more between them both with that same troubled little crease between her brows.
Frederick mounted first. Archer and Lennox followed. Iona accepted Frederick’s hand to settle into the saddle beside him when the path narrowed after the first stretch of road, though she thanked him with such measured politeness that he nearly wished she had refused instead.
They rode out under a sky still pale at the edges, the keep falling slowly behind them.
The first stretch of the journey passed in relative silence, broken only by the ordinary sounds of travel.
Hooves striking packed earth. Leather shifting.
A bird startled from the hedgerow. Archer kept a steady pace a little ahead and to the side, while Lennox seemed to have decided that if the air could not be eased, it could at least be filled.
“I still say,” Lennox remarked after some miles, “that if O’Douglas serves anything less than decent whisky after dragging us all there, I shall take it as a personal insult.”
Archer looked back over his shoulder. “Then I advise ye to prepare for nay insult at all. We do at least that much properly.”
“That is reassuring,” Lennox said. “I was beginning to fear your famed charm was merely a cover for poor hospitality.”
“It is a cover for many things,” Archer replied. “Poor hospitality is nae among them.”
That almost drew a smile from Iona. Almost. Frederick saw the corner of her mouth shift and hated himself a little for noticing how rare such things had become in the last day.
They rode on.
By noon, the roads grew less familiar, the land changing in subtle ways as they moved farther from McIntosh ground.
Stone walls gave way to rougher fencing in places.
The hills opened and narrowed again. Once, they passed a shepherd boy who stared openly until Lennox waved and nearly caused him to drop his crook in surprise.
It was Archer who finally steered the talk back toward what mattered.
“When we arrive,” he said, his tone losing its earlier ease, “we ken nothing.”
Frederick’s gaze shifted to him. “Explain.”
“We ken enough between ourselves,” Archer said. “That is nae the issue. The issue is what Noor believes. If she thinks Iona has told us everything and that we have come armed with it, she will shut every door she can reach and hide behind whatever remains of her son’s name.”
“That assumes she is cautious,” Lennox said.
“Nay,” Archer replied. “It mostly assumes that she is proud. Which is worse.”
He glanced toward Iona then, his expression grave but not unkind. “If she believes ye still stand mostly alone, if she thinks ye are still uncertain of your footing here and still carrying your past like a burden nay one else can quite bear with ye, she will be more comfortable.”
Frederick’s mouth hardened. He did not like the shape of that at all.
Archer noticed. “I didnae say I liked it either.”
Iona’s voice came quiet but steady. “He is right.”
Frederick looked at her. She did not return the look, keeping her attention instead on the road ahead.
“She always preferred me frightened,” Iona said. “It made her bolder.”
Archer nodded once, as though that fit too neatly with what he had already suspected.
After a moment, he asked, “Does me wife ken?”
That drew everyone’s attention. Iona looked at him properly then. “What I ken is seven years old.”
“It is still more than I have.”
She was quiet for a moment before answering.
“Back then, they tried hard to keep it from River. Her and her brother both, though I think the brother knew more in the end. There was too much movement in the castle for him not to. But River… they kept her apart from it as much as they could. At least that is what it seemed to me.”
Archer absorbed this in silence.
“She loved her mother,” Iona continued carefully. “Or thought she did. I never saw reason to think she knew the truth.”
Archer’s jaw shifted once, the only outward sign that the answer had landed poorly. “Aye,” he said at last. “That is near enough what I expected.”
Lennox glanced between them. “And if she still does nae ken?”
“Then we tread carefully,” Archer replied. “I have nay intention of humiliating me wife in her own hall if I can prevent it.”
Frederick said nothing, but he marked that answer all the same.
By the time O’Douglas Castle came into view, the light had begun its slow descent toward late afternoon.
It rose from the land with a harsher profile than McIntosh Keep, its lines narrower and more severe, but no less imposing for it.
Men were already waiting at the gate, and the arrival was received with every proper courtesy due an allied laird and his household.
That, at least, was the outward story. They had come, as agreed, under the pretense of strengthening ties before the ceilidh. A visit of goodwill. A display of favor. Something neighboring clans might note and gossip over without questioning too deeply.