Chapter 29
The reunion began with too much candlelight and not nearly enough air.
Iona felt that before she had even crossed the last few steps into the hall.
The room was warm, bright in all the places that mattered for appearance, with polished wood, silver laid properly, and servants moving about with the smooth quiet of those who knew how to make a noble table seem effortless.
It should have looked welcoming. It did, in a way. That was the worst of it.
Everything in O’Douglas Castle looked as though nothing truly wicked could survive in such orderly grace.
And yet Iona knew better.
Frederick stood already near Archer, one hand resting at his back in that deceptively relaxed way he had when he wanted no one to notice how ready he was to act.
Lennox leaned against the far sideboard with a cup he had not truly touched.
Archer himself wore calm like another tailored layer of clothing.
If Iona had not known the truth of what sat beneath this evening, she might have thought the men gathered for nothing more serious than supper and the careful strengthening of clan relations.
They were all playing their parts.
She should have been proud of how convincingly they did it.
Instead, she was too afraid.
Her pulse had not steadied since the corridor.
Since the smell of damp stone and the torchlit shadows had reminded her that places changed less than people liked to pretend.
Her hands remained cool despite the warmth of the hall, and when Frederick’s gaze found her from across the room, she knew at once that he saw more than he would ever say aloud.
He crossed to her quickly enough to seem merely courteous.
“Ye came,” he said softly.
Iona almost laughed at that. “Aye. I did say I would.”
His hand brushed once, lightly, against the back of hers before falling away. It was not a caress. Not here. Only a brief point of contact meant to steady. It helped more than she wanted it to.
Then Archer turned toward the doorway, and the room shifted.
Her daughter, River Burnett, entered first.
Iona knew her at once, though seven years had changed them both.
River had been younger then, softer in the face, dressed more brightly, and with the heedless confidence of a daughter who had never yet thought to doubt the shape of the world she had been given.
Now there was more composure in her, more woman than girl, and though her beauty remained, it had settled into something quieter. More watchful.
Lady Noor followed a step behind her.
Iona’s breath caught so sharply it almost hurt.
Noor had not changed. Not in any way that mattered.
She was older, yes, though age had polished her rather than diminished her.
She carried herself with the same measured grace Iona remembered, every line of her deliberate, every movement elegant enough to disarm and calculated enough to conceal.
Her smile appeared before her eyes fully reached the room, and when they did, Iona saw at once what she had feared.
Noor looked at her as a woman looks at an inconvenience she expects to overcome.
She thinks I have told no one. The realization steadied and sickened her all at once.
As planned, Frederick did not go to her side.
Not fully. He acknowledged River and Noor with the appropriate courtesy due Archer’s family.
Iona did the same. The distance between her and her husband, the one they had allowed to show through the journey and had sharpened slightly upon arrival, now served them too well.
Noor noticed it immediately. Iona saw the satisfaction flash, quick and mean, at the back of her eyes before sympathy smoothed itself over her features.
“Me dear,” Noor said, as though the word were naturally hers to use. “It has been a long while.”
Iona inclined her head. “Me lady.”
River’s gaze had fixed upon her now with growing recognition. She took one small step nearer, studying Iona’s face as though trying to pull memory through years that had settled over it.
“I know ye,” River said slowly. “I do.”
Noor’s smile remained perfect. “Aye. She worked in MacFarlane Castle once.”
River’s brows lifted. “That is right. Iona.”
Hearing her own name in that room, in River’s voice, nearly unsettled Iona more than Noor’s presence had. There had been a time when she had thought River harmless. Kept apart from the truth. Perhaps still was. That uncertainty made the whole thing feel more dangerous.
River looked genuinely surprised. “Why did ye stop working for us?”
Noor answered before Iona could.
“It was all rather unfortunate,” she said, her tone steeped in just the right amount of regret. “She left in distress. We worried for her, of course.”
Iona had to lower her nails into her own palm to keep her face still.
Worried for her.
The lie was so smooth it would have convinced anyone who had not lived beneath it. River turned toward her with a softness that seemed painfully sincere. “Were ye unhappy there?”
Iona looked at Noor then, not River. “I was nae well suited to remain.”
Noor’s mouth curved faintly. “Some girls are nae.”
The words slid between them with more meaning than anyone else in the room could have taken from them. As planned, Iona let a pause stretch just long enough to become noticeable. “Though I often wondered what became of some of the others,” she said.
Noor’s gaze sharpened.
River glanced between them. “Others?”
“Women in service,” Iona answered, forcing her tone into something almost careless. “There was always such change in the lower halls.”
It was just enough. Not a direct strike. Only an irritation. A reminder.
Archer, to his credit, spoke then of something entirely different, drawing River’s attention toward the table, toward matters of preparation for the coming ceilidh.
Lennox offered some dry remark that gave Frederick reason to answer him.
The room shifted around them in carefully arranged currents, everyone doing precisely what they ought.
And Noor never once stopped watching Iona.
By the time supper gave way to mingling and movement, Iona could feel the tension in her shoulders settling into ache.
She did as they had agreed. She remained visible enough to invite opportunity.
Distant enough from Frederick to support the illusion Noor had already accepted.
Alone when possible, though never so long that Archer’s men could not track the line of her movement through the house.
It still felt like madness.
She had just stepped into a narrower side passage off the hall, one meant perhaps for servants carrying refreshed trays or noblewomen seeking a quieter path back toward the withdrawing room, when she felt rather than heard Noor behind her.
“I had wondered,” the older woman said softly, “whether ye had learned sense in all these years.”
Iona turned.
Noor stood a few paces away, hands lightly folded, the picture of composed grace. There was no witness near enough to overhear, only distant voices from the hall and the low flicker of torchlight along the stone.
Iona lifted her chin. “Perhaps I have.”
Noor smiled. “Nay. If ye had, ye would nae be here.”
The cold certainty in her voice pressed at every old fear Iona had thought she had mastered.
Noor took another step. “Look at ye. Fine gown. Good marriage. A child to soften the edges. And still ye cannae leave well enough alone.”
Iona fought to keep her breath even. “What happened to the missing women?”
Noor’s smile deepened by the slightest degree. “Straight to it. There is the girl I remember.”
“What happened to them?”
“Why?” Noor asked. “So ye may go trembling to yer husband and ask him to save them?”
Iona said nothing.
Noor’s eyes glittered. “Ah. Nay. Of course. Ye have told him nothing.”
That, too, was exactly as they had hoped. Iona forced herself to look not relieved, not encouraged, only tired and cornered.
“Would he believe me?” she asked quietly. “A servant against a lady’s word?”
Noor laughed then, low and genuine in its cruelty. “There now. At last, ye sound sensible.”
Iona hated how hard her heart was beating. “Then tell me.”
“Why should I?”
“Because if ye mean to threaten me, ye wish me to understand it.”
Noor tilted her head, considering her, and for one hideous moment, Iona saw the pleasure in it. Not merely in the advantage. In the game itself.
“They are where women are best kept when they forget their place,” Noor said. “Hidden and useful.”
Iona’s throat tightened. “Where?”
Noor stepped close enough that Iona could smell her perfume, the same faint floral scent she remembered from MacFarlane, the same scent that had once drifted down stairwells and across corridors while misery lived beneath it.
“In the old lower holding near the east tower,” Noor murmured. “Where else?”
The words struck through her like a bell. Noor’s smile did not waver. “Go there willingly,” she said, almost laughing now, “and I willnae go after yer bairn.”
Noor’s smile remained in place as though she had offered Iona a courtesy rather than a threat.
Iona kept her face still with an effort that made her jaw ache.
Inside, everything had sharpened. Fear, yes.
But beneath it, something harder now, something cold and purposeful that had not been there the last time she had stood before this woman.
Then, she had been running. Then, she had only been trying to survive.
Now she knew exactly what she wanted.
“When?” Iona asked.
Noor’s eyes narrowed with faint pleasure, as though the question confirmed precisely what she had hoped to hear.
“Tonight,” she said. “After the household settles. Alone.”
Iona let the word hang between them.
“Alone,” she repeated.
“Aye,” Noor said softly. “If ye have any wit left at all, ye will come without fuss and without heroics. Nay husband. Nay rescue. If ye mean to spare the bairn, ye will be wise for once.”