Chapter 14
Ragnall crossed the Great Hall before he had decided to move.
He did not remember the crossing, the shoving of bodies, the overturned bench, or the cup that shattered into splinters under his foot.
He only recalled that one moment he was at the far end of the hall with a tacksman jabbering in his ear about precedence, and the next he had a fistful of Dougal Ross’s collar and was hauling the man bodily off his wife.
“I said,” he told him, very quietly, into the sudden ringing silence, “take yer hands off me wife. Ye were slow about it.”
Dougal Ross was a big man, and drunk, and stupid with it, and he made the last mistake of his life. He laughed.
“She isnae yer wife, Cairn. She is yer leash. Yer faither would spit to see ye lick the boots of the clan that—”
Ragnall killed him. He did it clean, just like his father had taught him, the dirk up and in under the ribs and the whole grim business done before the laughter had finished leaving the man’s mouth.
He lowered the body to the rushes almost gently, because a laird did not make a butcher’s mess of his own hall on his own wedding day. Then he straightened and looked out at the silent, staring faces of his clan.
“Listen to me, and listen well.” He did not raise his voice. He had never once needed to. “This woman is me wife. She is yer Lady. The cord’s been tied, and the word’s been said, and there is nay undoin’ it in this world, and I will tell ye plain what it means.”
He let his gaze sweep across the hall and watched men who had stood at his shoulder in three battles drop their eyes to the floor.
“Whatever hand is laid on her in malice, I will consider laid on me. Whatever harm is wished on her, I will answer. She is mine to keep, and I protect what is mine, and the next fool who forgets it will leave this hall the same way Dougal Ross is leavin’ it. Feet first.”
Nobody spoke. Somewhere, a woman was weeping into her apron. Tattie, under a trestle, whined low in his throat.
“Get him out,” Ragnall said to Alastair casually, as if he had asked for more ale. “His kin can bury him. They’ll get nay quarrel from me over it.” Then, to the white-faced musicians frozen in the gallery: “Play. It’s a weddin’. We’ll nae let one fool’s funeral spoil it.”
A fiddle started up, thin and trembling, then a second, and the terrible spell over the hall broke into a quiet, uneasy murmur and the scrape of a tune.
Ragnall sheathed his dirk and turned to look at his bride.
She stood exactly where he had left her, one hand pressed flat against the torn blue bodice of her gown, holding the ripped fabric closed at her shoulder.
She was as white as bone. Her eyes were enormous and fixed on him, on the blood drying on his hand, on the dirk he had just put away, and he could not read what was in them at all.
She is lookin’ at the monster again. Aye. There he is, then. The one she kent was in me underneath it all.
He came toward her slowly, his hands open and held away from his sides, like a man approaching a wounded creature that might bolt or bite.
“Olivia, are ye hurt? Did he—”
“I… I am fine.” Her voice came out steady, and the steadiness cost her. He could see it. “He bruised me arm and tore me gown, but I am fine.”
“Ye’re nae fine. Ye’re swayin’ where ye stand.”
“I am nae—” Olivia’s eyes flicked past him, over his shoulder, and she froze.
Kate was standing. She had risen from her chair by the fire and was standing quite straight and quite still in the middle of that shrieking hall, with Maisie’s hand closed hard around her wrist and Maisie’s face turned up to her in open fear.
Kate was not looking at the body on the floor. She was looking at her brother. At the dirk in his hand, and the blood on his cuff, and the flat, unchanged calm of his face.
Olivia knew what she was seeing. She understood it in one cold rush, the way one understood a thing one had never once been told before.
She has stood in a room like this before. She has known him to do this before. And the man who was killed that time was the faither of her child.
“Kate,” Ragnall said. He had gone very white.
Kate did not answer him. She looked at him a moment longer, and there was no horror on her face, which was somehow far worse than horror, and then she gathered up her crooked green skirts in both hands and crossed the floor to Olivia.
She did not look at the blood. She had to step around it, but she did not look at it.
“Yer gown’s torn,” she said.
“Kate—”
“It’s torn at the shoulder. Come with me, and I’ll pin it.” Her voice was perfectly level, and it did not carry past the three of them. “Come with me now, Olivia. Ye daenae want to be in this room. I ken what this room does to a body, and ye daenae want to be in it.”
She put her thin arm through Olivia’s, not trembling at all, and took the first step toward the door.
Olivia got two paces. Then her body chose to betray her. The color drained clean from her face, the hall tilted, and her knees simply gave up holding her.
“Olivia—”
Ragnall had her before she reached the floor. He flew across the hall faster than a big man had any right to move, and he took her weight out of his sister’s thin arms as though she weighed nothing. Kate let her go and stood back, not making any sound.
Olivia came into his arms light as the bride in the auld song. Light as Kate had been on the stairs that night, with the blood on her.
The thought went through him cold as well water.
He slid one arm under her knees and lifted her clean off the floor, and she did not even fight him, which frightened him worse than anything else in that whole black night.
As he turned for the stairs with his wife cradled against his chest, he looked back once to find his sister standing in the middle of the hall in her crooked green gown, with her chin up and the blood on the flagstones behind her, watching him carry another woman out of a room he had just killed a man in.
Kate did not look away. She held his eyes until he was gone.
“I’ve got ye,” he murmured against Olivia’s hair, low enough that the hall could not catch it. “I’ve got ye, lassie. Nobody touches ye now. Nobody in this world.”
He carried her out of his wedding feast in his arms, past the body, the blood, and the staring eyes of two clans, up the cold stone stairs toward his chambers, with her heart pounding hard against his ribs, and her torn blue skirts trailing down over his arm.
On the third step, he understood, with a clarity that stopped the breath in his chest, that he would do it all over again. The killing. Any of it. All of it. For her.
God help me. God help us both.
I swore over me sister’s broken body that I’d never let a woman near me. That I’d never want a woman so badly that losin’ her would break me. For years I’ve kept that oath. Years, and nay one has come close. Until Olivia.
I’ve just slit a man from throat to belly in me own hall and felt nothin’ doin’ it. I’d do it again this minute. It wasnae for me clan, and it wasnae for me honor, and it wasnae for the peace.
It was for her. And she doesnae even ken it.