Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
She was asleep, and he did not move.
The fire had settled into a low, steady burn, and the room was warm and quiet, and he sat on the edge of the bed and watched her breathe.
Her color was better now than it had been in the corridor, when he had looked at her face in the smoke-gray light and felt something cold move through him that he had not felt in a very long time.
He reached out and gently pushed a strand of hair back from her face, his fingers trailing along her cheekbone.
She did not move. He let his hand rest in her hair for a moment, feeling its warmth, then slowly traced his fingers down her jaw with the lightest touch, checking without letting himself admit it.
Her skin was warm. Her breathing was steady.
She turned her face very slightly toward his hand in her sleep, and he remained still until she settled.
Stubborn girl, he thought. Impossible, infuriating, stubborn girl who had gone to wait for him in the library because he had asked her to and had been lying on the floor of it when he arrived, and he could not even hold that against her because the asking had been his.
He brushed his fingers through her hair again, slowly and carefully. She made a tiny sound and shifted closer to him on the mattress without waking, her shoulder pressing against his thigh, and he sat there, looking at the fire, not moving.
He had nearly lost her.
She had been in his library for twenty minutes.
The smell of smoke had reached him through two corridors and a closed door, and he had run, and he had found her on the floor among the burning shelves with sparks coming down around her and the ceiling beginning to go, and afterward, in the corridor with her coughing against his chest he had held her and had not been able to think past the simple and complete fact of her being alive.
That was all he had been able to hold. Just that. She was breathing. She was here.
She shifted again in her sleep, and he placed his hand back in her hair, feeling her settle. He stayed very still, listened to the fire and her breathing, and for a while, did not think of anything at all.
He was still sitting there when the door opened.
Jane came in carrying a basin and a folded cloth, moving with the quiet efficiency of someone accustomed to not disturbing a room. She had taken three steps inside before she looked up and saw him sitting shirtless on the edge of the bed.
She stopped so abruptly that the water sloshed over the rim of the basin.
Her face went red from her collar to her hairline in the space of a breath.
“I… forgive me… I didnae ken ye were…” She was already stepping backward, her eyes fixed at a point somewhere to his left, the basin clutched hard to her chest. “I beg yer pardon, me Laird; I am so terribly sorry. I had nay idea. I’ll come back, I’ll…”
She was through the door before she finished the sentence, pulling it half-closed behind herself. He heard her in the corridor, a low, as she continue to mutter a stream of mortified apologies addressed to no one in particular.
He looked at Isobel.
Still asleep.
He found his shirt on the chair and pulled it on, and a moment later, he strode across the room and flung open the door.
Sure enough, the diligent maid had not abandoned her post.
“Ye may come in now, Jane.”
She returned with her chin held high and her face still flushed; the basin carried with great dignity.
She avoided looking at him directly. She placed the basin on the table near the fire and carefully arranged the cloth over the rail beside it, as if she had decided to pretend the previous two minutes never happened.
“Is me Lady well?” she asked.
“Her breathin’ is easier.”
Jane glanced at Isobel, then back at the cloth. “I thought I’d sit with her, in case she wakes and needs somethin’.”
Alasdair crossed his arms languidly over his chest. “I’m nae goin’ anywhere.”
“Of course, me Laird,” Jane said, and attended to the cloth again.
From the corridor, a knock at the door sounded. This one was firmer than Jane’s. A man’s voice accompanied it. “Me Laird? Lady Branwen is askin’ for ye. East receivin’ room. She said the matter is urgent and wishes for you to come to her directly.”
Alasdair looked at Isobel once more. Her chest rose and fell steadily.
“Stay with her,” he ordered Jane. “Daenae leave this room for any reason.”
“Aye,” Jane replied, bobbing her head in agreement. She had already moved to the chair beside the bed.
* * *
Lady Branwen was sitting closest to the fire with both hands wrapped around a cup of amber liquid.
Her walking stick leaned against the arm of the chair.
She looked him over when he came in, the way she had been looking him over his entire life, slow and thorough and missing nothing, and then she said, “Join me, me boy.”
He sat.
“Ross and several emissaries have gone to the northern glens,” she said. “They left before the first bell. He, as well as many others, believes the fire was set deliberately.”
“Ross should have come to me first.”
“He should have. He didnae.” She took a sip from her cup. “He’ll be back before dawn, or he willnae, and ye cannae do anythin’ about it tonight either way.” She set the cup down on the small table beside her. “There’s somethin’ else.”
He waited.
“The weddin’.” Granny paused, allowing him a moment to reply before inserting her own thoughts on the matter.
“I promised Isobel we would marry two days hence.”
“Indeed?”
Alasdair nodded brusquely.
His grandmother placed her cup on the edge of the desk, then leaned heavily on her cane as she stood.
“I am pleased to hear that ye and yer bride have discussed the wedding.” Her lips pulled into a pucker, as if she were choosing her next words carefully and did not wish to spoil the moment by blurting something she could not take back later.
“The clansmen and Elders expect to see ye wed soon, me boy. Very soon.”
“We will make haste,” Alasdair vowed.
Lady Branwen nodded her approval, then turned to leave. With one hand on the doorknob and the other wrapped around the top of her cane, she pivoted towards him once more. “When Ross or one of the men return from the north country…”
“If ye daenae hear their tales before they reach my ears, I willnae fail to seek ye out and share them with ye.”
“Such a good boy.” Her brows wrinkled and her lips drooped softly. “So dependable. So worthy of love.” She paused. “It is a blessing that Isobel is safe. The Heavens have smiled on our clan once again.”
“Aye,” Alasdair agreed. “Even when we struggle and face challenges, Clan Dunalasdair rises above the chaos.”
Granny’s withered hands lifted. She pressed her index and ring fingers to her lips, then tapped the silver brooch which fastened the collar of her dress. “Clan Dunalasdair.”
“Clan Dunalasdair,” he echoed.***
The bath was warm and smelled of lavender, and Isobel sank into it, feeling the smoke slowly rise from her skin. Her throat still ached when she swallowed. Her lungs felt scorched through. But she would be perfectly well soon, and she supposed that was all that really mattered.
She looked at the ceiling.
“He stayed,” she said mostly to herself. “While I slept.”
Jane was folding a cloth near the fire, her back to the basin. “He did.”
“For how long?”
“Long enough that when I entered the room, I thought…I thought ye had...” Jane set the cloth over the rail and crimped her lips shut.
Isobel was diverted. Since the first moment she had met Jane, her lady’s maid had been a regular chatterbox, but now she seemed reluctant to say more. So, Isobel waited.
“He wouldnae leave,” Jane said after a moment, and her voice was careful, as when she chose her words. “I came in to check on ye, and he was there. The Laird said he wasnae going anywhere. I imagine he would’ve lingered, had Lady Branwen not sent a messenger to fetch him.”
Isobel looked at the water.
“He came through that library door at a dead run, didn’t he?”
It was not quite a question. Jane glanced over at her, briefly and sidelong. “I cannae say for certain, because I wasnae there. But I have heard of his heroics. Hamish said Laird MacRaeh pushed his way through the door so he could get to ye.” She smoothed the cloth once more.
“And when he carried me out…”
“He held onto ye,” Jane said simply. “The Laird of Dunalasdair is a man with many faces, me Lady. I have seen him when he speaks to his counsel. I’ve even watched him when he trains with some of the other men.
But last night, when I watched him carry ye down the hall and head toward these chambers, I saw a man I didnae know existed. ”
Isobel sat with that. The steam rose around her slowly. The fire crackled in the grate, and she looked at the water, thinking about all that had happened since she had met Alasdair MacRaeh.
She had thought, upon arriving at this castle, that she understood what kind of man he was. She had been wrong in ways she was only beginning to comprehend.
Outside the castle, it was dark, and the night pressed against the shutters. Somewhere on the other side, Alasdair was sitting with his grandmother, and he had said he would return. Isobel believed it with the simple certainty of breathing.
She was still sitting with that when the knock came at the door.
Her pulse immediately lifted toward the sound. She was already turning when Jane went to answer it, and the door swung open. Jane made a small, startled sound, barely a sound at all, and Isobel looked.
The man in the doorway was not Alasdair.
Malcolm stood in the corridor, dressed as neatly as he was at any council meeting. His blond hair was undisturbed and his blue eyes moved past Jane until they found Isobel in the bath. His cold stare settled there without pause or apology.
“Forgive the intrusion, me Lady.” His voice was warm and entirely measured, the same voice he used in council chambers when he wanted to sound like the most reasonable man in the room. “There’s been a development. I’m afraid I need a word with ye.”
Isobel did not move. She felt the cold of the water as well as the frigidness of his stare.
She looked at Malcolm’s pleasant face, his blue eyes, and the way his hand rested against the door frame, relaxed and loose.
She remembered sitting in the council chamber on her first day here, watching him speak, and knowing that something was wrong in the way he took up space in a room.
He had struck her as someone who could not be tolerated then and his current behavior did not change that impression one jot.
She knew it now with considerably more precision.
“Alasdair is on his way back,” she said. Her voice came out steadily. She was quietly grateful for it.
“Of course.” His smile did not shift. “This willnae take long.”
Jane had not stepped back from the door.
Her hand was still tightly on the frame, and her shoulder was between Isobel and Malcolm, placed there like an informal shield.
Isobel looked at Jane’s shoulder, at Malcolm’s calm, unmoved face, and at the dark, empty corridor behind him.
She thought about Alasdair, somewhere on the far side of this castle, running back toward a room where Malcolm was currently standing in the doorway.
Malcolm waited. He seemed to be very good at waiting. He had the patience of a man who had decided long ago how things were going to end and saw no reason to rush them.
“It willnae take long,” he said again.
The fire crackled behind Isobel. Jane’s hand was white on the door frame.
Isobel looked at Malcolm and did not move.
“Whatever you wish to say, speak now.” She swirled her fingertips through the cold water, gathering her courage while stalling. She hoped that Alasdair would arrive momentarily and usher this man out of the room. ” “I shall not leave this place.”
A malicious look, one she had not seen in his features before, crossed his face. It was there briefly, then gone.
Malcolm stepped fully into the room, brushing by Jane as though she were no more than a flowering bush, one he could easily sweep aside or tread upon.
“Ye will come with me, me Lady. And ye will listen to what I have to say. Ye owe me that courtesy.”
“I owe you nothing,” Isobel snapped.
A malevolent grin slid onto Malcolm’s face, causing Isobel to shiver involuntarily. “We shall see about that, me Lady.”