Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
He took another step into the room.
Isobel watched as he prowled toward her. Then, suddenly, as if a breeze had blown through the chambers and sent his mood spiraling in a different direction, the look on Malcolm’s face was transformed.
He no longer bared his teeth but instead returned to playing the part of the unrushed, refined courtier. He continued to advance toward the tub, but now held his hands high, in a gesture of surrender, where she could see that he carried no weapons and meant her no harm.
“Alasdair sent me,” Malcolm said. “There’s been a… development with the fire. He needs ye moved to a safer part of the castle while he deals with it.”
Isobel looked at the corridor behind him.
Dark and empty. No men. No lanterns. No sound of boots on stone or voices calling back and forth, the way a real emergency would carry through the halls.
She looked at his coat. The silver brooch at his shoulder caught the firelight.
She stared at his empty palms, then looked at the corridor again.
“What development?” she said.
“I’d rather explain on the way. Time—”
“What development?” she said again.
He held her gaze for a beat too long before he answered. “The fire spread further than we realized. There are concerns about the structural integrity of this part of the east wing.”
“This room is in the west wing,” Isobel said.
He said, “Of course. I misspoke. The west wing,” and smiled, only the smile arrived a half-second after it should have.
She held the edge of the bath with both hands and remained still. She thought about Alasdair somewhere in this castle running back toward her. She considered the empty corridor behind Malcolm.
“Where is Hamish?” she asked, thinking of Alasdair’s friend with the bright eyes and good-natured grin.
“Attendin’ to other matters.”
“What matters?”
“There is a great deal happenin’ tonight, me Lady. I daenae have every detail.” He spread his hands slightly, a small open gesture. “I only ken what I was told.”
“Who told you?”
“Alasdair.” His voice was patient. “As I said.”
“Then Alasdair can come and tell me himself,” she said. “He knows where I am. Go and fetch him.”
“He’s occupied.”
“With what?”
“With the matter I mentioned.”
“Which matter? The east wing or the west wing?”
A pause. “The fire.”
“The fire that’s been out for several hours,” she said.
“There are concerns about…”
“Structural integrity,” she hissed. “Yes. You mentioned that.” She looked at the corridor behind him again, at the dark and the silence of it. “I don’t hear anyone else. If there were real concerns about this part of the castle, there would be more than one of you.”
“I came ahead of the others.”
“Then they’ll be here shortly,” she said. “I’ll wait.”
He said nothing.
“Or Alasdair will come,” she said. “Since you say he sent you to find me.” She looked at Malcolm steadily. “I’ll wait for whichever arrives first.”
Malcolm looked at her for a long moment. His jaw moved once, a small, tight shift, and then he said, “Get out of the bath.” The patience was entirely gone from his voice.
Jane stepped fully between Isobel and Malcolm, her back to the bath, her arms slightly out at her sides. “She’s nae dressed. Ye’ll wait in the corridor…”
Malcolm hit her.
The back of his hand struck Jane across the cheekbone, causing her to stumble sideways into the table. The basin tipped over and hit the floor, splashing water everywhere. Jane fell with it, hitting the stone hard.
“Jane!” Isobel was out of the bath before she had finished saying her lady’s maid’s name. She dropped to her knees beside Jane and got her hand on Jane’s shoulder. “Jane, look at me—”
“Get up.” Malcolm’s hand closed around Isobel’s arm and hauled her to her feet.
“Get your hands off me.” She wrenched sideways and turned to face him. “What is wrong with you? She was doing nothing. She was defending me, and you hit her… you hit her like…”
Malcolm grasped Isobel’s robe off the back of a nearby chair and slung it at her. The material landed softly against her chest. “I said get up and walk.”
Isobel looked at Jane, then back at Malcolm, and felt the fury move through her, like something with heat in it.
She hastily slung the robe around her body and tied the sash.
Now that she felt less exposed, Isobel was prepared to confront Malcolm.
“She was frightened. She stepped between us because she was frightened and you…” She stopped.
“What kind of man does that? What kind of man hits a girl who is frightened?”
Malcolm’s face did not change. “Walk,” he said, “or I leave ye both down there.”
Jane’s eyes were open, her hand pressed to her cheek, and she said, “Go.”
Isobel stood and drove her elbow into Malcolm’s ribs as hard as she could. She ran for the door.
He caught her before she reached it. She fought him all the way across the room—elbow, nails, knee, heel—and he was stronger.
She had no footing on the wet stone. When he slammed her face-first into the wall and pinned her there with his forearm across her shoulders, she was breathing hard and furious and said, “Alasdair will kill you for this.”
“Alasdair is nae here,” Malcolm said against her ear.
“He will be. And when he gets here…”
“Enough.” He pulled her back from the wall, turned her, and reached past the tapestry on the back wall.
Malcolm pressed on the stone behind it. A section of the stone shifted inward with a low grinding sound, and the darkness behind the wall smelled of cold earth and old air.
A small lantern hung just inside the passageway on a hook. It was already lit.
She stared at it. He had lit the lantern before he knocked at her door. He had come to her room with this already done, already waiting.
“Walk,” he said.
“No.”
He moved her toward the passage anyway, and she dragged her feet on the stone floor and said, “Tell me where we are going. Tell me what this is. You owe me that much, Malcolm.”
Nothing.
“Alasdair will come after me. You know that. Whatever you are planning, you know he will come.”
“Walk,” he ordered again.
She obeyed because her feet had no grip. Plus, with her arms twisted behind her back, she had nothing left to fight him with in that room, except for her words. So, she kept talking.
The passage was low, black, and narrow, and the cold came up through the floor into her bare feet. The lantern threw long shadows on the walls.
“You’ve done this before,” she said. “Used this passage. You’ve prepared it. That lantern was lit before you came to my room.” She counted her steps as she spoke. Left, then left again. Long right curve. “How long have you been planning this?”
He said nothing.
She stumbled on purpose, going down on one knee, and got her free hand flat on the floor.
Her fingers closed fast around a piece of loose stone.
Malcolm hauled her upright without breaking stride.
She kept her fist closed. “How long have you been plotting against Alasdair? When did you decide to set your sights on…”
“Move,” Malcolm said, and his voice had nothing in it, no warmth, no patience, nothing she could catch hold of.
She moved and stopped talking, not because she had nothing left to say but because she was listening now, listening for footsteps above them, for voices, for any sound at all of the castle waking up and realizing she was gone.
She heard precious little.
The passage ended in a low wooden door, and he shoved it open with his shoulder and pulled her through.
The cold took her breath entirely. She had nothing on but the thin robe, and her feet hit frozen ground.
The air was sharp and tasted of rain. Meanwhile, the sky above her was enormous and dark and full of more stars than she had ever seen.
The castle behind them was black and silent with every window unlit.
He moved her forward, toward the glen’s opening ahead. The heather rolled away into darkness and no lights, save for the moon stars, and the single lantern Malcolm carried illuminated their path.
“That’s enough,” she said. “You’ve made your point. Let me go back inside, and we will say nothing of tonight. I will say nothing, and you can…”
“Walk.”
“I am not walking any further.” She planted her feet on the frozen path. “I am barefoot. I am in my nightclothes. The ground is frozen, and I cannot feel my feet. I want to know where you are taking me.”
He tightened his grip and moved her forward. Isobel’s feet slid on the frost, and she had to go with him.
“You want me gone,” she said. “That’s what this is.
You want the arrangement between my family and Alasdair undone, and you thought if I disappeared—if there was no bride—the whole affair would fall apart.
” She kept talking with a renewed sense of courage.
She had to find out what he meant to do with her…
what he planned to do to Alasdair. “But it won’t.
It won’t fall apart. Alasdair will come after me, and he will find me.
Whatever you have planned for tonight, it will not work. ”
He said nothing, which meant he did not deny her accusations.
Alasdair would be in the room by now. He would see the door open and Jane on the floor, and he would know immediately. She was certain of that. He was not a man who needed things explained to him.
“Move,” Malcolm said, and tightened his grip.
She obliged. She kept her fist closed around the stone and watched the lantern in his left hand. She wriggled, testing the way he gripped her arm with his free hand and waited for the moment when he would lower his guard.
The heather rose to her knees as he pushed her off the path and into the inky blackness. The castle was behind her, entirely lost. The glens stretched wide and empty, and the stars were the only light.
“Stop,” Malcolm said.
He moved in front of her and held the lantern up to her face.
His blue eyes were steady and unhurried, and she thought about every council meeting she had watched him speak at—always measured, always reasonable—and she wondered how long this dreadfulness had been sitting inside him beneath all of that polish and shine.
“Ye’re goin’ to be sensible,” he said.
“I am being sensible,” she said. “I have been nothing but sensible. I have not screamed. I have not fought you since the passage. I have walked through the dark in my bare feet .” She held his gaze. “I am the most sensible person in this glen, Malcolm.”
He looked at her for a moment, and something moved across his face.
“I need ye to understand that this ends better for ye if ye cooperate.”
“And if I don’t?”
She held his gaze. He reached to adjust the lantern, and she felt the shift in his grip a half-second before he finished the movement.
Without waiting a second longer, Isobel drove the stone toward his face with everything she had.
He released her completely as he dropped the lantern.
Both of his hands flew to clutch at the side of his face where she’d struck him.
Isobel ran.
The heather tore at her legs, and the ground was black and uneven under her bare feet. But she ran anyway into the dark.
Behind her, Malcolm swore.
She did not look back.