Chapter 6
He reached her at the top of the stairs and grabbed her arm gently, just enough to turn her around.
“Let go of me.”
“Olivia.”
“Do ye think me a fool?” She rounded on him, and all the hurt came pouring out of her as fury, because fury was all she trusted to hold her upright.
“Ye stood in me room this very mornin’ and spoke to me of heirs, of givin’ ye a son, calm as a man orderin’ up his dinner, and ye’ve had a bairn of yer own tucked away behind a quiet door the whole while?
Were ye ever goin’ to tell me? Or did ye mean to make a fool of me in me own marriage, in front of the whole of yer clan, and let them laugh at the Blythe lass who didnae even ken her husband had a child? ”
He flinched. “She isnae mine.”
“Do ye think me simple as well as foolish?”
“She isnae mine,” he said again, and there was a weight to it the second time that stopped her tongue mid-breath.
He let go of her arm and stepped back, giving her space.
“Ye’re right that I’ve kept the truth from ye.
Nae all of it, and nae out of any cruelty, but I’ve kept it close, and that was wrong of me.
Come with me now. I will show ye everythin’, all of it, and then ye can decide for yerself what manner of monster I am, with the facts in yer two hands instead of yer fear. ”
He held out his hand to her.
She stared at it. A scarred, broad, dangerous hand, a hand that had held a claymore in her father’s yard, that not three minutes past had cradled a baby as if it were the most fragile and precious creature God had ever made.
She did not want to take it. She told herself, very firmly and several times over, that she did not in the least want to take it.
She took it.
A warmth went straight up her arm at the contact, sudden and unwelcome, a tingling she had no business feeling for this man of all the men alive, and she snatched her hand back as if he had scalded her.
“Lead the way,” she said, far too quickly. “I will follow ye on me own two feet, thank ye.”
He led her down a different corridor, narrower and dimmer than the rest, to a plain door that he opened without knocking, like a man opening a door he had opened a thousand grieving times.
And there, in a still room that smelled of dried herbs and stale air and long sorrow, sat a young woman in a chair drawn up to the window, staring at the bare stone wall.
She had been bonnie once. Olivia could see the ghost of it clearly, like a fine drawing left out in the rain. Dark hair, unbrushed now, hanging lank about a sweet pale face. Green eyes, deep as peat water, and not one single spark of life burning behind them.
She did not turn her head when the door opened. She did not blink. She did not seem to know there was another living soul in the room with her at all.
“This is me sister,” Ragnall said very quietly, as if loudness might break her. “Kate.”
“What happened to her?”
“Yer braither.”
The two words went through Olivia like a length of cold iron sliding between her ribs. “What?”
“Magnus happened to her.” He said the name carefully, like a man handling a blade that had already cut him once and might again.
“He came courtin’ her in secret, more than a year past, down by the river where the two lands meet.
She was lonely, and he was charmin’ when he chose to be, and she didnae ken whose son he was until it was far too late to matter.
He got her with child.” His jaw worked, and the scar pulled tight.
“And when the bairn was born, he tried to take it from her. To carry it off and raise it as his own with some clan wife, and leave me sister with nothin’, nae even her good name to keep her warm.
She fought him for her own child, Olivia.
And he broke her for it. Her arm in three places, three of her ribs, and somethin’ inside her that nay healer can knit back together, however well the bones come along. ”
“Nay.” Olivia shook her head. The word came out of her on pure instinct. “Nay, ye are lyin’ to me. Magnus was hot-tempered, I will grant ye that, and proud as Lucifer, but he’d never… he’d never have raised his hand to a woman. Ever. He was me braither. I’ve ken him me whole life.”
“Ye kent the braither he showed ye.” His tone was not unkind, and that was the cruelest part—that he would not even give her the gift of cruelty to push against. “None of us shows our sisters our whole face, lassie. Nor our whole hearts. He kept his darkness away from ye, as men do with the women of their families.”
Despite her resistance, her mind flashed back to Magnus standing on the keep steps, sword already in his hand, not once looking at her. She also recalled the unfamiliar, flat voice speaking through him, and how he had given her no answer when she called out to ask what Cairn could mean.
For over six months, she had patiently polished a dozen small darknesses into the bright, clean shine of a hero, because mourning a hero was so much easier than facing the truth.
“I am sorry,” she said, and was startled to the bone to find that she meant it, every word. “For yer sister. For whatever me braither did to her.”
“And I am sorry for yer braither,” Ragnall said. “Truly, I am. I take nay joy in any of it. A man who takes joy in killin’ is a man I’d nae let near a sword.”
“So ye killed him,” she whispered. “For that.”
“I challenged him.” His dark eyes held hers, steady and open, hiding nothing now, asking nothing.
“In open ground, blade to blade, the one honest way that was left to me after he refused all the others. Yer faither stepped between us into a blow that was never meant for him. I’d give a great deal of what’s left of me life to undo that part of it.
The rest of it I would do again tomorrow. ”
“But ye still had a choice,” she said, grasping at the air. “Ye could have forced him to wed her. Made it right that way, before God and the Council.”
“He hurt her.”
“Ye could have dragged him to yer dungeons, let the Elders judge him in their own time.”
“He. Hurt. Her.” Each word fell like a separate stone dropped into still black water, and the rings of them spread out across the quiet room. “Nay one hurts me family and walks the green earth after. I willnae beg yer pardon for that, lassie. Nae if ye go on hatin’ me for a hundred years.”
“There were a thousand things ye might have done that wouldnae have ended in any man’s death.”
“Aye,” he said. “And I laid every one of them before him on that field. Wed her. Stand for the Council’s judgment.
Leave the Highlands and never come back.
I offered him each in turn, in front of witnesses, and he refused them all.
So I called him out in yer yard, and he met me gladly, blade in hand. He chose the duel, Olivia.”
“And what am I, then?” The question tore out of her before she could think to stop it. “Yer revenge? Is that all this is? All I am? A Blythe handed over by the Council for ye to do with as ye please?”
“Never say that again.” It came out low and hard, the nearest to true anger she had yet seen from him, and the scar stood white against his cheek.
“I’d never do what he did. Nae to ye, nae to any woman who draws breath.
If ye learn one thing about me before ye stand up beside me in that kirk, Olivia, learn that one. ”
She had no response for him. The hatred she had guarded for months was a straightforward, warming fire, but he had shattered it completely. Beneath its ruin, a grief deeper than hatred remained, with no villain to direct it at.
If Magnus wasnae the man I mourned, then I daenae even ken who I’ve been grievin’. I’ve wept half a year for a stranger wearin’ me braither’s face.
She shook her head, helpless, drowning. “I need… I cannae… I need some time. To think on all of it. Please.”
He immediately backed away from her without any protest, and she escaped the dim, silent room and the broken girl inside. She moved blindly down the corridor, her pulse pounding loudly in her ears.
And there, coming toward her the other way, was Maisie, with the baby riding on her hip.
The child caught sight of Olivia and made up her whole small mind on the spot. She gave a fat, gummy, delighted shriek and flung both her arms straight out, leaning so hard and so suddenly from the old woman’s grip that Maisie staggered a half step to keep her.
“Och, she is determined,” Maisie said, comfortable as anything. “She does that, our Rosie. Picks her folk and willnae be argued out of them. Will ye take her, lass, before she flings herself clean to the floor for the love of ye?”
Olivia turned. Ragnall had followed her out into the corridor and stood a little way off, watching, his scarred face unreadable in the gray light.
“May I?” she asked him.
His expression shifted. “She is yer niece too, lassie,” he murmured. “Ye’ve nay need to ask me leave to hold her.”
Olivia cradled the baby in her arms, feeling the warmth and weight of her, the scent of milk and woodsmoke lingering. The tiny, fierce starfish fingers immediately clutched a loose lock of her red hair, slowly undoing her, even after the exhausting afternoon had not quite succeeded in doing so.
“What’s her name?”
“Rosie,” Maisie said. “For her cheeks, ye ken, like two wee roses. Her maither never named her, ye’ll understand. Hadnae the heart for it, so the maids took it upon themselves, and it stuck fast.”
“And how old are ye, then, Rosie?” Olivia asked, soft and foolish. “And what’s yer favorite thing in the world?”
Rosie answered by closing one fat fist around a loose lock of red hair and pulling on it, which Olivia chose to take as a full and satisfactory reply.
“Rosie.” Olivia pressed her lips to the soft dark crown of the baby’s head and breathed her in.
The baby leaned back to look up at her. Her eyes were the exact clear blue of Olivia’s. Of her father’s. Of Magnus’s. The Blythe blue, a color that had persisted through ten generations of a proud, fierce clan.
The tears Olivia had so stubbornly refused to shed for her enemy in the muddy yard, and had again denied not long ago, now came silently and beyond her control.
“She has me eyes,” she whispered, a half-laugh and a half-sob caught together in her throat. “Isnae that the strangest thing in all the world? She has me very eyes.”
She did not see Ragnall’s face as he watched her hold the child. She did not see Maisie’s sharp old gaze move bright and satisfied from one to the other, with the quiet pleasure of a woman who had just watched two heavy stones begin to lean their weight together against every expectation.
What she did see was a maid hurrying up the corridor toward them, breathless, before bobbing a brief curtsy.
“Beggin’ yer pardon, me Lady. There are riders comin’ up the glen road. A cart, and an armed escort, and…” The maid’s eyes went wide as plates. “They’re flyin’ the banner of Blythe.”
Olivia’s heart leapt so hard it hurt her. She gave the baby back to Ragnall.
“Me maither,” she breathed. “Ragnall, it’s me maither. She’s—”
But when she turned, he was already handing the baby back to the maid and reaching for the sword-belt hung on the peg by the door, and his face had shuttered like a gate.
“Alastair. With me.”
“Where are ye goin’?” She heard the words come out of her too sharp, too much like a wife, and hated herself for it.
He was already three strides down the corridor. “Out.”
“Out where? Me maither is at yer gate.”
“And she’ll be met with every honor this keep can muster, and I’ll nae be the first face she claps eyes on after what I did to her husband.” He did not slow down or look back, and his voice came flat over his shoulder as he went. “Maisie will see to them. I’ll be back before supper.”
With that, he disappeared around the corner.
A moment later, she heard a horse gallop out from under the arch.
Maisie clicked her tongue softly beside her. “He’s nae runnin’ from yer maither, lass,” she said. “He’s runnin’ from himself. He just hasnae worked out yet that the beast follows him.”