Chapter 16
It was long past midnight when Ragnall climbed the stairs to his chamber for the second time that night, having drunk precisely enough to be a fool and nowhere near enough to forget why he was one.
He had thought she would be asleep. He had hoped for it, in the cowardly corner of him, because a sleeping wife was a wife he could lie down beside and not lose his mind over.
She was not asleep.
She lay on her side, facing away from the door, her red hair spilling across his pillow, with the blankets pulled up to her chin.
She breathed steadily and deliberately, having heard the latch lift and immediately flung herself down to feign sleep.
The tension in her bare shoulder was visible, and he could hear her heart pounding.
He ought to have let her keep up the pretense.
“Ye’re a poor liar, wife,” he said, pulling his shirt over his head, “for a woman with such a wicked tongue on her. Yer breathin’ gives ye clean away.”
A pause. Then, with great dignity, she said into the pillow, “I cannae sleep.”
“I noticed.” He lay down on his own side of the great bed, on his back, a careful foot of cold linen left between them, and laced his hands behind his head and stared up into the dark. “It’s been a long day.”
She turned over. He felt the bed shift, felt her settle to face him, and did not trust himself to look.
“Should we nae…” she trailed off. “I daenae ken. Get to ken each other? We’re wed. It seems we ought at least to be acquainted.”
“I thought,” Ragnall said to the canopy, “ye didnae want me to touch ye.”
“There are other ways to get to ken a person.”
He turned his head then. She was a handsbreadth from him in the firelight, propped on one elbow, her hair spilling everywhere, her eyes bright and challenging and just a little afraid, and he understood that he was in the gravest danger of his life and could not make himself care a whit.
“Such as?” he prompted.
She had a chessboard, as it happened. She had found it on the shelf by the window, and she set it up between them on the coverlet with brisk determination, the little carved pieces gleaming.
“Here are me rules,” she said, laying them down with the gravity of a peace treaty. “Every piece ye take of mine buys ye a question. Every piece I take of yers buys me one. And they’re answered honestly, mind, on yer word, on pain of forfeit.”
“And if I daenae answer?” he asked.
“Then ye pay a forfeit of me choosin’.” She smiled, sharp and sweet. “I’d think hard before lyin’ to me, me Laird. I have a long memory and a wicked imagination.”
“I daenae doubt it,” he said.
He moved a pawn, and the game began.
She played as she did everything—recklessly and brilliantly, with no concern for her own defense—and he captured her first knight in just a dozen moves.
“What did ye think,” he asked, “the first time ye saw me clean-shaven in yer courtyard?”
“That ye had nay right to be handsome,” she said at once, scowling, “after bein’ a monster in me memory for six months. It felt like cheatin’.”
Ragnall’s mouth curved slowly and dangerously. “So ye think me handsome.”
“I said nay such thing.”
“Ye said it twice, near enough. Monster and handsome both.” He moved a pawn, unhurried, and watched the color climb up her throat. “Ye’re generous with compliments, lassie. I will be keepin’ that one.”
“Move yer piece and hold yer tongue.” But the scowl had cracked, and she was fighting a smile and losing.
She took his bishop two moves on, fierce with triumph, her cheeks gone pink.
“Why did ye stop the night before in the study? Why did ye nae just finish it?”
“Because ye’d have let me and hated me for it after. And I find I cannae stomach the thought of ye hatin’ me for a new thing. The old ones are plenty.”
She didn’t say anything to that. She bent over the board, the color high in her cheeks, and the game went on. Somewhere in the middle of it, the questions stopped being light.
She took a pawn and asked sweetly, “Did ye always want to be a monster? Or did it come later, like a gift?”
She meant it to sting. She was not remotely prepared for him to consider it.
“Nay,” Ragnall said after a while. He did not look up from the board.
“I wanted to be me faither. He was a fair man and a slow one to anger. The villages came to him with their quarrels because he’d hear both sides out before he opened his mouth.
I meant to be that.” He moved a knight. “And then he died at yer faither’s hand, and me maither made me swear at her deathbed that I’d find a way to end the war that took him, and I said nothin’ at all, because I kent well I couldnae let me people starve for the sake of a promise.
That’s the first lie I ever told a soul I loved, and I told it by keepin’ me mouth shut.
” He looked up. “So, nay, lassie. I didnae want to be a monster, but I’ve been one, and I’ll nae stand here and tell ye I havenae. ”
Olivia found she had nothing to say.
“Me turn,” he said, and took her bishop. “Who were ye? Before.”
“Before what?”
“Ye ken fine before what.”
She did. She looked at the board for a long moment.
“I was a horror,” she began. “Ask anyone. I could ride afore I could plait me hair. I broke me arm at seven fallin’ out of the rowan by the well, and I told me maither I’d been pushed, and I let a stable lad take the blame for it a fortnight before me conscience got the better of me.
” She moved a piece without much attention to where.
“Magnus taught me to ride. That’s the thing nay one wants to hear now.
He put me up on his garron when I was small enough that me feet didnae reach the stirrups, and he walked the beast around the home pasture with his hand on me knee so I wouldnae fall off, and he told me I had a better seat than any lad in the glen.
” Her voice thinned. “He was seventeen. He was kind to me. Whatever else he was, he was kind to me.”
The silence stretched.
“Say it,” she said.
“I’ve said nothin’.”
“Ye’re thinkin’ it so loud that I can hear it from here.
” She looked up, and her eyes were bright and furious.
“Say it, then. Say, ‘He was kind to ye, and he threw me sister from a window.’ Say, ‘Ye’re mournin’ a man who isnae worth the water it’d take to weep for him.
’ Ye’re thinkin’ it. Have the decency to say it out loud. ”
“I’m thinkin’,” said Ragnall, “that a man can be two things. And that it’s the cruelest trick this world plays on the folk left behind.”
Olivia stood up from the bed. She could not stay still in it. She paced to the window and back again, twice, with her arms wrapped tight around her. She was not weeping. She absolutely would not weep in front of him, yet her breath was coming short and ragged all the same.
“I daenae ken how to grieve him,” she said to the wall.
“That’s the whole of it. I have nay road through it.
If I mourn him, I’m mournin’ a man who did that to yer sister, and if I daenae mourn him, I’m the sort of woman who can put a braither down like a lame dog.
There’s nay door out of that room, Ragnall.
I’ve been lookin’ for one for six months. ”
She did not hear him move. But his hand gently closed around her wrist and turned her. She found him standing far too close, in his shirt, with the candlelight behind him, and all the breath left her at once.
“There isnae a door.” His voice had dropped low. “I’ll nae lie to ye about it. I’ve looked as well.”
“That’s nay comfort.”
“Nay.” His thumb moved once, slowly, over the thin skin on the inside of her wrist, and she felt it in her knees. “But I’d sooner give ye the truth than comfort. Ye’ve had a bellyful of men decidin’ what ye’re strong enough to hear.”
He was close enough that she could see the small silver line where the scar ran into his lip. Close enough that if either of them moved a handsbreadth, the entire thing would be over.
Neither of them moved.
“The board,” Olivia said, her voice wrecked.
“Aye.”
“Ye’ve nae won yet.”
“Nay,” Ragnall agreed, and did not let go of her wrist for a moment longer than he had any business to. “Nae yet.”
He let her go. She sat back down on the coverlet with her heart pounding and her hands not entirely steady, and he sat down across from her, and the game went on.
But the air had changed entirely, and they both knew it, and neither said one word about it.
Four moves later, he took her queen.
The board tipped over as she reached for it, the pieces scattering across the coverlet and onto the floor. Neither of them moved to set it right, because they were both breathing too hard for any game at all.
“Ask, then,” she whispered. “Ye won. Ask yer question.”
“It’s nae another question I want,” he said.
“Then what?” she breathed.
He pushed himself up on one elbow above her, careful to keep his hand fisted in the linen to avoid touching her skin.
In the firelight, he looked down at her with her wild hair, parted lips, and her pulse pounding at her throat.
In that moment, he made the most critical and yet the most heartfelt decision of his life.
“Ye set the rule,” he said, his voice low.
“Nay touchin’. And I am a man of me word, whatever else ye think of me.
So I willnae lay a finger on ye, lassie.
Nae one. But that doesnae mean I cannae have ye come apart for me right here, tonight, in me own bed.
” He watched her eyes go dark and wide. “If ye want it. Only if ye want it. Say the word, and I will turn over and sleep like the dead and never speak of it again.”
She did not say the word.
After a long moment, she said in a voice he felt down his spine, “What would I have to do?”
“Only what I tell ye,” he said. “Can ye do that? Can that wicked, stubborn head of yers do a single thing it’s bid?”
“Try me,” she whispered.
So he told her.
“Pull up yer shift,” he said. “Over yer knees. I want to see ye.”