Chapter Five #2
She looked, for an instant, like a child again—muddy, untidy, and stubbornly herself. But she was clearly not a child now, not at sixteen, not with those clever watchful eyes, with her nearly defiant silence.
He did not dismount. He stayed where he was, looking down at her, the warmth of the sun on the back of his neck, unnoticed until now.
He was struck by how different she seemed here, free from walls and formal eyes, her beauty plain in honest daylight instead of arranged for ceremony.
He cleared his throat, uneasy with the intensity of his own attention.
“Are ye... all right?” he asked.
“Perfectly.”
That single word explained nothing.
He glanced toward the seawater, then back at her, as though the answer might ripen in the tide. “Ye’ve been lying there a while.”
“Aye.”
“Doing what?”
Her lips curved in a slow, knowing smile. She shifted, folding one knee over the other as sand cascaded down her skirt’s pleats. “Nothing.”
He frowned, genuinely puzzled. “I dinna understand.”
She laughed softly, a sound like distant bells, and rolled over, propping herself on her elbows. She lifted her startling green eyes to him, squinting slightly against the light. “Ye ride alone often, do you nae?”
“Aye,” Jacob said, after a beat. “Most days.”
He watched as her gaze drifted beyond him, a veil of contemplation settling over her features. “?Tis just the same. I thought ye, more than most, would understand,” she replied, her voice almost wistful.
With her words, of course, he did.
He had always preferred the quiet corners of the world—the stillness of the woods where he could breathe without the weight of conversation, where the sounds of nature filled the silence he cherished.
It was not that he disliked the company of others; he loved his family and the MacTavishes dearly.
Yet, he often found solace in withdrawing from the chaos, relishing in the clarity that came with solitude.
“Is it...” she began but then seemed to change direction, with a quick shake of her head. “What’s it like, Jacob? Fighting? What happens when men face each other with steel?”
Jacob blinked, momentarily dumbstruck—no one had ever asked him such a thing before.
Fighting was something he did, not something he dissected.
It happened in a blur—so fast and so final that there was little time to give it a name or texture.
It simply was. And it had always been that way, even from his earliest drills with wooden swords alongside his brothers and hers, and then the sickening leap to real steel, real blood, real consequence.
He was tempted to laugh, but something in Elena’s gaze—serious, unblinking—staved off the want. .
He searched for words, swinging his gaze toward the slow rolling surf, as if they might be hidden there.
After a lingering pause, he shrugged and said what he knew.
“It’s quick. Nae as long as ye’d think. Ye remember fragments after, bits of sound or pain or the way your hand feels cold even if it’s covered in blood.
” He shrugged, almost embarrassed by his answer, or by the subject, or maybe by being the subject; he wasn’t sure.
“It’s loud, sometimes, but the worst bits are quiet.
And it is nae half as grand as the old stories make it. ”
Elena sat up, hugging her knees to her chest, her bare toes peeking out from under the hem of her skirts.
“I always thought if it happened to me, I’d freeze,” she said, tone more musing than afraid.
“My father says nobody knows how they’ll react until steel’s at their throat.
Some men drop their swords before the fight’s even begun. ”
Jacob nodded. “Aye. That’s true enough.” He flexed his hand unconsciously, recalling the strange numbness that lingered after each fight—the way the air always seemed too thin, the noise of battle ringing in his ears long after silence had resumed.
He looked up, searching Elena’s face for judgment, but found none.
They stared for a moment but said nothing.
Rather than retreating from it, Elena filled the hush with another question. “Are...are you ever afraid?”
He hesitated, a thoughtful frown emerging.
“Aye, but nae while it’s happening. Only before.
Or after, sometimes.” He looked away again, out to where the sea blurred into the sky, a soft line indistinguishable in the morning haze.
He wondered what it would mean to admit to her, of all people, that he was not fearless.
Would it lessen him in her eyes? Or would she see the truth and respect him all the more for it?
After a moment, she added, almost absently, “Da says that courage is nae the absence of fear, but the strength to act despite it.”
Jacob nodded, having heard those very words from Liam MacTavish himself many times by now.
He turned back to her, to find her watching him still. Her expression was thoughtful, her eyes reflecting the soft light of the sun. With her chin resting on her knees, her attention was fixed wholly on him.
Jacob found himself oddly conscious of the quiet between them.
After a moment, he shifted in the saddle, clearing his throat. “Is that why ye come down here?” he asked, the question sounding a wee bit forced. “To be alone, I mean. To set things aside.” He hesitated, then added, more quietly, “To outrun what follows ye.”
One eyebrow arched upward while the corner of her mouth curled into something mischievous—not quite mockery, but the kind of smile that suggested she knew something he didn't.
“Nae,” she said, with a frankness that surprised him. “Nothing so dramatic.” She leaned back into the sand, bracing herself on her hands. “I come because my brothers dinna follow me here. Because nae one tells me to mind my skirts or comb my hair—here I can simply be.”
That startled a short breath of laughter from him. “So ye’re nae haunted, then?” he said.
“Only by Alexander,” she replied lightly. “And sometimes Michael, when he’s bored.”
Jacob shook his head, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “That sounds aboot right.”
She grinned at that, and turned her face back toward the sky, the moment settling into something easy and unremarkable—and, for that reason, memorable.
He stayed where he was, mounted and quiet, watching her.
The wind worried at a loose strand of her dark hair, lifting it, then laying it back across her cheek.
Sunlight caught the line of her throat where her collar had slipped, the skin there faintly flushed from the warmth of the sun.
She curled her slim fingers into the gritty shore, burying her hands almost completely in the sand, almost up to the hem of her sleeve, and she seemed not bothered at all.
She looked younger in her ease, and older in her stillness, and the discrepancy wrought another brooding frown.
He thought about the unusual encounter for many hours, recalling not so much her words, but the way she had been so utterly at ease, as if she owed nothing to the world.
HE WOKE WITH A START, though he could not have said what pulled him from that shallow sleep.
His hand closed around his dagger before he had fully straightened, instinct tightening every muscle.
He’d not meant to drift off, but exhaustion had its own pull after a day spent riding hard and fighting blindly through unfamiliar country.
He kept himself upright against the rock wall, half-alert even as his eyes slid shut now and again.
At first he listened for the ordinary pulse of the night, expecting to hear the same rustling and distant calls that had lulled him moments ago. Instead, the woods held an unnatural stillness. Even the wind seemed to have paused.
He let out a controlled breath, scanning the darkness. A quiet forest was never just quiet. Something had unsettled the brush nearby, something large enough or unexpected enough that the smaller creatures had fallen silent.
He touched Elena’s shoulder gently. “Wake, lass.”
She stirred, lifting her head in confusion, mimicking his whisper, “What is it?”
“We should move.” He continued to scan the midnight forest.
She blinked into the darkness, trying to gauge the danger. “I dinna hear anything.”
“Aye,” he said, pushing to his feet and then helping her stand. “And that’s what bothers me.”
They made their way to the mare, who was already shifting uneasily, ears turning toward the deeper woods.
Animals noticed things before men did, and the tension in the horse’s posture told him enough.
Jacob checked her legs, murmured a quiet reassurance, then steadied Elena as she climbed into the saddle.
When he mounted behind her, she leaned back against him, as if she would hide within his arms.
They rode at a careful walk, Jacob guiding the mare between the thick clusters of pines and leaning birch trunks.
He kept his attention trained on the spaces between the trees, attuned to every sound, waiting for the ordinary sounds that should return once whatever had passed through the forest had moved on.
For the moment, however, the woods felt suspended, waiting.
After a few minutes, Elena spoke quietly. “How did ye ken something was wrong?”
He considered how best to explain it without alarming her further.
“A forest has its own rhythm,” he said. “When that rhythm changes, ye pay attention. It dinna happen without cause.” Not wanting to frighten her unnecessarily, he added, “Might be naught but a stag or another predator on the hunt, but we shouldnae risk it.”
She nodded faintly, her gaze drifting toward the ground as if she were trying to hear the difference for herself.
They followed the slope of the land eastward, the mare’s hooves muffled by the thick carpet of needles. The longer they rode, the more certain he felt that something had moved near their resting place, though whether it had been raiders or some other wanderer of the night, he could not yet say.
He kept the mare to a steady pace, one hand on the reins, the other ready at his side, while Elena leaned quietly against him, slipping slowly back into sleep.
As they moved deeper into the trees, Jacob became aware of something he hadn’t fully registered earlier: Elena hadn’t cried. Not once. Not in all the hours since he’d recovered her. Mayhap she had, when she’d first been abducted, but he’d seen no evidence of it. He wasn’t sure what to make of it.
Some girls cried at the first sign of danger; others held themselves rigid until they reached safety, only to break afterward.
Elena, though, carried her fear quietly, as if she were determined to keep it contained until she found solid ground beneath her feet again.
It reminded him, unexpectedly, of Liam—her father had always been the sort to grit his teeth through pain, to suffer in silence until the danger passed.
It might just as easily have been learned from her mother as well; Jacob was aware, in mysterious bits and pieces, of the hard measure of life Isabel had known before Liam had taken her to wife.
Jacob guided the mare onward, supposing he shouldn’t have been surprised that the daughter of Liam and Isabel MacTavish did not break easily.