Chapter 8
Neil sat on the edge of the bed with his shirt back on, his fingers resting on the bandage. Warmth lived in the linen, and a faint herbal scent clung to it.
“I daenae fear ye enough to want ye dead.”
Her voice stayed in the room and would not leave, no matter how long he fixed his eyes on stone or wood.
He rose to his feet and walked to the mirror by the dressing table. Over the years, he had learned to keep his own company so he wouldn’t go mad.
One of the ways he did that was to speak out loud. Not only did it help him combat the loneliness that came with being a captive, but it also planted doubts in the minds of his captors.
“I didnae want ye afraid, Kristen,” he said to the mirror. “That was never the point.”
A gust of wind found the candle and bent the flame. He pressed his palm flat and felt the slow throb under the linen. A sound drifted through the stone, a clatter that could have been a dropped cup or a chain striking wood. His breath snagged, and he could feel smoke clog his nostrils.
Except there was no smoke.
Heat flared in the brand on his shoulder. He could hear the guard’s laughter as he stood over him, telling him what they planned to do to Kristen. He could hear and feel everything, including the rope biting his wrists and the air leaving his lungs.
He clenched his fingers until his knuckles whitened. The grain under his skin gave him something solid to name. He slowed his breathing.
“Quiet,” he muttered to the mirror. “Breathe.”
The mirror didn’t respond, but a part of him wished it did. Perhaps spending nights alone in a room after returning was not the best idea.
“Look,” he told himself. “It is wood. It is a table. It isnae the cabin.”
The shadows retreated momentarily, and sweat cooled at his spine. He rolled his shoulders back and stood taller.
“I’m in control,” he said to the mirror. “I kept it, even when they tried to scrape it off me bones.”
The candle burned lower, and his breathing slowly evened out. He didn’t want to think of his wife, but thinking found him anyway.
“She walked away,” he rasped. “She kept her head up.”
The words echoed, cold as a stream in shadow.
Why did he say that she wasn’t important to him?
“That was cruel,” he said. “Ye wanted to be cruel, did ye nae?”
Silence answered him.
He crossed to the narrow window, watching as the night blanketed everything in shadow. The courtyard lay quiet, and one time he saw a guard move beneath the wall and settle again.
“A rule is a rule,” he murmured.
He did not have to like it. He only had to make it hold.
He sat again and laced his boots slowly to keep his hands steady. The bandage pulled when he bent. He tied the knot again, but not as tightly as Kristen had.
“Ye can sleep here,” he told the empty bed. “It is cold, and it suits the life ye made.”
He pushed to his feet.
“Stop thinking. Walk.”
The corridor met him with a silence that felt like the pause before dawn. A guard shifted somewhere below and cleared his throat as Neil slowly stepped down the stairs, letting the stone indicate each turn.
At a corner near the far end of the castle, he passed a footman with a load of kindling.
The footman dipped his head and kept to the side. “Me Laird,” he greeted.
“Aye,” Neil muttered.
The footman reached the landing, and another joined him. Their voices lowered.
Neil walked on. When he passed the next corner, he caught the tail of a whisper. “… the lady and the bairns.”
He kept moving anyway until he reached the long corridor that led to Kristen’s room. The scent of lavender and smoke greeted him. Soon, he got to her door and paused, his hand resting on the handle.
“Ye hate it when ye need something,” he muttered to himself. “Ye hate it like a burn.”
He stood there a moment longer and listened.
The keep breathed low around him. Owls hunted in the dark beyond the wall. A man snored two rooms off and then fell quiet.
Neil closed his hand around the handle.
“A rule is a rule,” he murmured, before slipping inside.
Kristen lay on her side, her eyes fluttering open to the wind that brushed her face. The empty space beside her felt cold, but she kept her breathing even anyway.
Still half dreaming, she reached across the bed for cool linen or a pillow to prop her shoulders. Her palm touched heat instead.
Not just heat.
Skin.
It was warm and smooth, and for some reason, it rose and fell under her fingertips.
Her eyes widened in shock. For a brief second, she saw only skin. Then she saw the curve of a shoulder and the blanket lying low on narrow hips.
The realization that she wasn’t dreaming, that there was a stranger in her bed, slammed through her.
A small sound tore free and sharpened into a scream.
Neil opened his eyes, flinching just a little. “Kristen,” he groaned.
“What in God’s name are ye doing here?!” Kristen yelped, clutching the blanket to her chest.
“Do ye already regret yer rule, wife?”
Her gaze flicked down to the tented linen over his hips. Heat rose to her face, and she tore her eyes away.
“I daenae… I never thought ye would stick to it.”
“They are yer rules at the end of the day, are they nae?”
“Ye never honor rules or vows,” she scoffed. “Nae with me.”
Neil pulled at the blanket. “Kristen, it is too late to talk about this. I did what I had to do so I could protect me braither.”
“By vanishing the night we wed,” she fired back. “By never writing. Five years, Neil. Five years of silence.”
Neil pushed up on one elbow, and the blanket slipped dangerously low over his belly. “Ye think I chose to do that, do ye nae? Ye think I went wandering for sport.”
“Ye could have written to me. Or at the very least to Lachlan.”
They stared at one another in the dim light, both breathing hard.
“Captives arenae allowed to write, Kristen,” he snapped.
The word froze the air.
Captives.
“I waited,” she whispered. “I prayed ye would walk through that door. For years.”
“Prayer doesnae open locks or untie ropes,” he huffed. “Ye ken what does? A sword.”
His mouth hardened at a memory, then softened as he took in her face. “I willnae speak any more of this with the castle listening.”
“In case ye cannae tell, Neil, the castle has been listening for five years,” she said. “It kens more about me than me husband does.”
“Enough,” he grunted.
“Nay!” she protested, her voice surprisingly low. “Nae until ye say it. Say ye are sorry.”
“I am here,” he offered.
“That isnae the same,” she argued. “I learned to live without ye. I learned how to bear the looks. I learned how to make a day that didnae break. I willnae unlearn it all because ye chose to lie in this bed.”
“I didnae choose for ye,” he said. “I chose for the clan.”
“And for the clan, ye made me a ghost,” she retorted. “A wife who never was.”
His jaw worked. “Ye have a sharp tongue at dawn, do ye nae?”
“I will give ye one guess as to what caused that,” she hissed.
Silence gathered.
Neil let his head fall back against the pillow and looked up. Kristen watched the rise and fall of his chest, hating that her body had memorized the rhythm already.
“I kept me word,” Neil murmured, eventually. “I came back. That should be the most important thing at the moment, should it nae?”
Kristen exhaled. He was right, of course. He had honored the rules she had set. Yet it didn’t stop the frustration that tugged at her heart harshly like a puppeteer.
He turned his head toward her, his proximity punching through her like cold. They were almost seven inches apart, and she could still feel the heat of his skin.
“Do ye want me here or nae?” he asked, his voice dropping.
“I want a husband,” she replied. “The question now is whether ye want a wife.”
The words landed but did not settle. She could not forgive the night he had left, nor the sentence that had cut her in his tower. He could not forgive the life she had made without him.
All of a sudden, the bed felt too small for the five years they had spent apart. She got up.
“Get in the bed, Kristen.” His voice slithered in the darkness, as rough as the floor and cold as the wind.
Kristen wanted to argue. She wanted to fight a little more, but then thought better of it. At last, she climbed into the bed, turned onto her side, and drew the blanket up around her shoulders like armor.
“Sleep,” she said.
Neil lay back, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. “Aye.”
The span of linen between them felt as wide as a road that had swallowed a man whole. His warmth seeped into her back all the same.
Kristen fixed her gaze on the windowsill and traced its pale edge with slow breaths.
God help me.