Chapter 30
Kristen barely remembered climbing up the stairs.
One moment, she was in the dungeons, Lachlan’s blood on the floor, Neil’s sword still wet; the next, she was in her chamber with her back to the door and her hands shaking so hard she could not turn the lock.
She pushed until the wood clicked, then dragged herself to the bed and sat on the edge.
She bent forward, her fingers digging into the blankets. The sobs came without mercy. It felt as if someone had grabbed her heart and twisted it until it could not find its rhythm.
She tried to breathe to no avail. Maggie paced by the fireplace, her paws tapping the stone floor and her tail hanging low. She came close and nosed at her knee, but Kristen did not seem to feel it.
Images struck like hail during a heavy storm. Images she had not been able to get out of her head since the attack at the village square.
She saw her father with a bottle. Neil turning away from her after the wedding ceremony. A knife going into the belly of the children’s mother while a crowd watched. Lachlan saying she was nothing but a tool.
Another sob tore through her. She wrapped her arms around her middle and rocked until the worst of the tremors passed. She tried to stand, to wash, to move, but her body refused to cooperate.
The door opened. Soft. Careful. Maggie crossed the room, gave an unhappy huff, then looked from Neil to Kristen as if she would scold them both.
“Kristen,” Neil said.
Kristen rubbed a hand over her face, and her palm came away damp. “Are ye here to see if I am still in one piece?” She hated that her voice sounded raw, and she hated that he heard it.
He crossed the room and stopped a pace away, as if drawing closer might hurt her. “Are ye hurt?”
His eyes dropped to the thin red line at her throat. She felt the sting then and touched it with two fingers, surprised to find the skin raised.
“Only everywhere,” she whispered.
He swallowed. His jaw clenched, then relaxed. “I never meant for any of this to happen. If I had ken—”
“I ken,” she interrupted, and her certainty startled them both.
She lifted her head. Tears blurred her vision, but her gaze was steady.
“I ken now that ye have endured cruelty all yer life. Yer faither. The bandits. Alex. Lachlan. Even me at times, when I threw yer hurt back at ye because I was afraid.”
Neil drew a breath. It sounded ragged. He opened his mouth to deny it. She raised a hand, and the words died in his throat.
“Ye have every reason to fear love,” she croaked. “Every time ye reached, it bit ye. I see that now.”
His expression shifted. The Wolf disappeared. For a moment, he looked like a man who had fought too long and just wanted to sit down.
The sight broke something in her chest. She held it together anyway.
“I only wanted to avoid distractions,” he said hoarsely. “Keep me head clear. Do me duty. I thought if I stayed away, I would hurt fewer people.”
She let out a tired, broken laugh. “Right. And look where that got us.”
He flinched as if struck.
“We daenae agree then, husband,” she continued. “Ye think love is a danger. I think the lack of it did more harm than any blade I have ever seen.”
He looked down at the floor. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. She watched him fumble for words, but none came.
“I am safe now,” she sniffed. “Me faither is gone. Lachlan is gone. The men who did this will face the consequences. For the first time in me life, I am nae living under a man’s rage or mercy every hour.”
She looked around the room. The low fire. His swordbelt on the chair. The window that opened over a courtyard still marked by blood.
“I should be relieved, should I nae? Yet I feel like I cannae breathe in this place.”
Neil frowned. “The windows are open. Do ye want to come to the tower instead? The air there is more—”
Kristen shook her head. “Nay, that isnae what I’m saying.”
His shoulders tensed. “What are ye saying?”
“I need to leave for a while.” She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “I will take the bairns to me braither. Murdock will keep us safe.”
She didn’t need to look up at his face to see the hurt on it.
“Kristen—”
“Please. This is important. It is important for me. Do ye nae see? I need to ken who I am if I am nae holding a castle together or living under the thumb of a man.”
He took a step toward her. “Kristen—”
She lifted her hand again, ignoring the way it shook. She kept it raised anyway.
“Thank ye for protecting me,” she murmured. “Ye did. In the square. In the cell. But I need to protect meself now, and the bairns. I need silence and some air.”
He stood very still, and they both ignored the pop of the fire.
Maggie shifted her weight and sighed.
“Kristen, ye cannae possibly mean—”
“Neil, I need to be alone for now.”
Another tense silence fell between them.
“Please,” Kristen said. “I need ye to leave.”
The word landed and settled.
Neil looked at her for a long moment, but she did not look away. His expression moved through a dozen emotions she could not name—anger, hurt, weariness.
At last, he nodded. “All right.”
He stepped back and turned for the door. Then he paused and waited, almost in anticipation.
Kristen felt the pause like a hand on her spine, even though he did not touch her. The lock lifted, and the door opened.
Before she could properly exhale, he was gone.
Silence filled the room as she lay down on her side without untying her gown, pulled a pillow into her arms, and held it as if it might keep her ribs from opening. Tears came again, this time a bit quieter. They slid down her temple into her hair and cooled there.
Maggie climbed up with a grunt, circled once, and pressed her warm back to Kristen’s shins.
Kristen curled her toes under the dog’s fur and breathed against the linen. She tried to sleep, but sleep evaded her.
The ache had edges now. It did not surge. It sat heavily, and she knew more than anything that it would be there in the morning.
It didn’t matter anyway. She had made up her mind, and while it wouldn’t ease the hurt, it would keep her in place until she was ready to heal.
Neil stood in the corridor with his back to the wall and watched servants file in and out of the chamber.
A maid hurried past with a neat stack of folded dresses.
Another followed with a small chest that he knew held Kristen’s books.
He saw the blue ribbon Kristen had bought for Anna, and the carved horse Finn chewed on whenever he was nervous.
Each piece left the room, and it felt like someone was tearing stones from the foundation of his life.
He did not cross the threshold. Kristen had asked him to leave.
He would not step back in and make it harder.
He stayed where he could hear the soft murmur of her voice as she directed the maids, and the little rise and fall of Anna’s babble, and Finn’s higher tone as he asked where they were going.
The sounds pricked at him.
A maid passed by with a bundle of shawls. “Me Laird,” she said, bowing her head.
He gave a short nod in response, his chest feeling both hollow and heavy.
He had buried a brother in truth if not in the ground. He had lost the last scraps of his childhood. Now his wife was walking away with the only light left in his bleak world.
He pressed his hands flat against the cold stone behind him in a bid to quell the thrum in his blood.
The door opened wider, and Kristen stepped into the corridor with Anna in her arms. The girl’s cheek rested against her shoulder, her jaw slack with sleep.
Finn walked beside her with his fingers curled into Maggie’s fur.
The dog kept pace at Kristen’s knee, her eyes fixed ahead as if she had decided that wherever her mistress went, she would follow.
Neil straightened. “Kristen.”
She did not look up. Her gaze was fixed on a point at the far end of the corridor. It was the look of someone who had marked a line she could not afford to cross. If she met his eyes, she might falter.
Finn glanced between them. It was clear he could feel the tension in the air, even if he did not understand it.
“Are ye nae coming with us?” he asked.
The question landed clean, and Neil felt it slide under his ribs. He drew a breath that did not fill his lungs.
Kristen tightened her hold on Anna. “Come along, Finn,” she said gently. “We talked about this, remember? We are visiting Uncle Murdock for a while.”
Finn’s mouth turned down, but he nodded and kept his hand in Maggie’s coat. The dog gave a soft whine and pressed closer to Kristen’s leg. Neil reached out and stopped short of the hem of Anna’s blanket. His fingers hovered, then fell.
“Be safe,” he said.
The words were sand-dry.
Kristen’s mouth opened as if a reply rose and caught. She closed it again and moved away. Her shoulder brushed past his arm. He caught the clean scent of soap from her hair and the tang of iron that lingered from the night before. She did not slow down as the servants fell into step behind her.
Neil followed at a distance as far as the main doors and stood there while she crossed the courtyard.
The early morning light lay still on the stones, and the remnants of the cèilidh were gone from the courtyard, almost like it never happened in the first place.
There was no laughter or music, only the steady shift of guards, the low voices of men who had seen too much, and the shape of a waiting carriage with lanterns still lit.
A footman lifted the step, and another checked the straps that held the trunks.
Davina stood near the bottom of the stairs with her hands clasped tight and her eyes red.
She looked as if she knew there had been a break, though not where the crack began.
Kristen did not look at her either. She only walked to the carriage as if pulled to it by a tether.
Neil watched her lift Anna into the seat and settle her against a cushion.
Finn climbed after with a small grunt. Maggie gathered herself and sprang up, then turned in a tight circle and planted herself across both children as if she could keep out the morning cold.
Kristen climbed in last, taking Finn’s hand and laying the other on Anna’s back.
The driver waited for the order.
Neil remained standing, unsure of what to say and how to say it. She had an air of finality about her. One that seemed to tell him this break was going to be longer and perhaps more permanent.
Kristen nodded to the driver, and he flicked the reins. The horses leaned into the harness, and the wheels rolled forward. The lanterns swung and threw long bars across the courtyard, and the grind of wood on stone echoed through the air.
Davina lifted a hand that did not quite wave, and the maids and guards stood back.
Kristen did not turn around, while Neil remained in the doorway, watching the carriage roll through the gate and into the fog beyond.
He stayed even after the last glimmer of lantern light disappeared around the bend in the road, even after the clip-clop of hooves faded and the only sound left was the hiss of torches on the walls.
He let out the breath he had been holding since Kristen stepped out of her room.
He could name the steel in his hand, and the distance between two men with swords, and the length of a road he had walked in chains.
But he could not name the weight that now sat under his breastbone.
He only knew that it was heavy and that he could not set it down.
A guard approached and stopped at the foot of the steps. “Me Laird,” he said. “Shall I close the gate?”
“Aye,” Neil muttered.
The gate swung shut with a dull thud.
He stood there a while longer, then turned around and walked back inside.
The corridor that led to Kristen’s chamber felt wrong for some reason, so he did not take it. Instead, he crossed the hall and climbed to his tower, where he had once chosen to be alone.
He found the window that looked out over the road she had taken and stood there until the torches below guttered out.
For the first time since his return, Kristen was truly gone.