Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
The door closed behind them with a sound too small for the terror it sealed inside.
It was evening, and Isobel was standing near the hearth, still in the gown Sorcha had laced her into that morning and still wearing the MacDonald brooch at her shoulder as though silver and pride could save her from what came next.
The wedding feast had been mercifully short.
A few formal cups were raised, a little bread was broken, and a handful of words spoken because custom required them. No one had dared make merry.
Now, there were no witnesses, no priest, no Sorcha watching with gentle worry from the wall… only Ruaridh.
Her husband.
The word settled over her like a hand around her throat.
He crossed the room slowly, removing the belt at his waist. The sound of leather sliding free seemed far too loud.
Isobel’s heart struck hard against her ribs, but she forced herself to stand still.
If he meant to take what the Crown, her father, and the priest had all decided belonged to him, then he would find no soft, weeping bride waiting in his bed.
He set the belt over the back of a chair. Then he looked at her.
Isobel moved at once. She crossed to the far side of the bed, putting its great carved width between them like a battlement. The gown tangled around her legs, but she did not care. She caught the bedpost with one hand and lifted her chin.
“Dinnae come nearer.”
Ruaridh paused. Firelight moved over him, catching the dark fall of his hair. He looked too large for the room, too controlled and too dangerously handsome in a way that made fear and awareness twist together until she could not separate one from the other.
“I was merely removing me belt,” he told her.
“Fer what purpose?”
His brows drew together slightly. “Because I dinnae sleep armed.”
The answer did not ease her. Nothing could have eased her then.
“If ye touch me…” She started, and hated the faint roughness in her voice. “I would rather die before I let ye put yer hands on me.”
The room went still. For a moment, all she heard was the fire snapping in the hearth and the blood rushing in her ears.
She expected his anger. Men reverted to anger when denied something they believed was owed to them.
They liked command. They liked reminding women of vows and law and duty.
Ruaridh only looked at her as though she had struck him somewhere he had not thought to guard.
Then he began to move, not toward her directly, but around the bed.
Isobel’s fingers tightened on the post. “I said stay back.”
“I heard ye.”
He still kept moving, ever so slowly.
“Then obey.”
He smirked. “I am nae one of yer faither’s servants.”
“Nay,” she snapped. “Ye are the man he sold me tae.”
That landed. She saw it in the tightening of his jaw.
Still, he kept moving. There was something dangerous in the way he moved, quiet and certain, his every step unhurried.
He circled the bed like a wolf closing distance through snow, knowing the prey had already seen him and that panic would only waste strength.
Isobel backed away until her spine struck the wall.
The shock of cold stone through her gown made her breath catch.
Ruaridh stopped before her. He was too close, yet he wasn’t touching her.
He was close enough to feel the heat of him through the narrow space between them, and close enough that her body, treacherous and terrified and alive, became aware of him in ways she did not want to name.
She lifted her chin higher. “I meant what I said.”
“I ken.”
Her throat tightened. “Then why are ye still coming closer?”
His gaze dropped to her hair. One loose strand had fallen across her cheek, loosened from Sorcha’s careful pins during the long, awful day. Isobel saw his hand lift and turned her face sharply aside.
“Dinnae.”
He stopped at once. That, more than anything, unsettled her. He actually listened to her, and now, there was only his hand suspended in the air between them, then lowering slightly.
“I will move yer hair,” he told her softly. “Naething more.”
She should have refused. She should have spat at him, shoved him, scratched his face if he came nearer. Instead, she stood frozen, because he had asked without quite asking, because he had told her exactly what he intended, because he looked at her as though her answer mattered.
Her silence became permission before she could snatch it back.
Ruaridh moved his hand again. His fingers touched only the loose strand, not her skin.
He drew it from her face with a care so precise it felt more dangerous than roughness would have.
The backs of his knuckles barely grazed the air beside her cheek.
Even that seemed to burn. Isobel forgot to breathe.
“There,” he told her softly.
He let the strand fall behind her shoulder and lowered his hand. She stared at him, suddenly furious because she had braced herself for brutality and been given restraint instead. It left her nowhere to put the anger inside her.
“Why?” she demanded.
His eyes held hers. “Why what?”
“Why pretend gentleness now?”
Something in his face closed, but his voice stayed low. “I am nae pretending.”
“The Crown has given ye rights.”
His mouth tightened. “The Crown gives many rights.”
“And…” she paused, swallowing heavily, “ye willnae claim this one?”
“Nay.” The word was quiet, but that didn’t make it any less powerful. “I have nay interest in bedding an unwilling lass.”
Isobel’s heart stumbled and she felt herself blush. She hated him for making her believe, even for a breath, that perhaps he meant it.
“Ye expect me tae trust that?”
“Nay.”
There it was again, that honesty that came too plainly and left her with no easy answer.
He leaned a fraction closer, and every nerve in her body went taut.
He smelled of smoke, cold air, and leather.
There was nothing soft about him, nothing delicate, and yet he had touched one strand of hair as though it were a vow he would be judged for breaking.
“I willnae force ye,” he promised.
Isobel’s lips parted, but no sound came. She hated herself for noticing how gentle he was, how the firelight drew the lines of his muscles and how his eyes shone. But most of all, she hated that she wanted to believe him.
“I willnae come tae ye unless ye ask it of me.”
Heat rushed to her face, swift and mortifying. “I will never ask.”
“Then I will never come.”
The words should have settled the matter. Instead, they seemed to draw the air from the room. Isobel became suddenly aware of the bed beside them, and the fact that they were married and alone and that he stood close enough to touch her but did not.
She had expected to fight him. She did not know what to do with wanting to step back and somehow not wanting to move at all. That thought horrified her.
She straightened, gathering every scrap of anger she still possessed. “Ye willnae sleep in that bed.”
Ruaridh glanced toward it. “I will. I am too large for the chair.”
“It is me bed.”
“It is our bed,” he corrected.
The word our made something in her stomach tighten. “Dinnae say that.”
He looked back at her, and for one moment the teasing faded again. “I will sleep above the covers fer now. I willnae touch ye. I am many things, and one of them is I a man of me word.”
“And I am meant tae simply believe that?”
“Nay,” he shrugged. “Ye can sleep with a dagger under yer pillow if it pleases ye. I dinnae care.”
That startled her. He stepped away then, giving her space so abruptly that she almost swayed with the loss of him near her.
He crossed the room, opened the chest, and took out an extra blanket.
Then, with no more ceremony than if they had settled the matter pleasantly, he sat on the edge of the bed and removed his boots.
He stretched out on the bed above the covers, as promised, fully clothed but for his boots and belt. He lay on his back, with one arm behind his head, and the blanket drawn over himself as though nothing about the arrangement was strange.
Isobel remained by the wall. She did not trust him. Yet minutes passed, and he did not move toward her. He did not coax. He did not command. He did not even look at her after a while. His eyes closed, though she doubted he slept.
Slowly, stiff with suspicion, Isobel moved to the other side of the bed. She pulled back the covers only enough to slip beneath them, fully dressed, keeping as close to the edge as possible. The mattress dipped under her weight. Across the space between them, Ruaridh remained still.
She lay on her side with her back to him, with every muscle locked, waiting for the betrayal of movement. None came.
After a long silence, she spoke. “I swear if ye touch me, I will scream.”
His muffled voice came from behind her. “I imagine half the castle expects ye tae murder me before dawn. Screaming may disappoint them.”
Against all reason, she smiled, hoping the darkness would hide her. She stared into the dark, listening to the fire, the wind, and the steady breathing of the man who had become her husband by law and remained, impossibly, on the other side of the bed by choice.
She did not sleep for a long time, but eventually, her body relinquished control. She still didn’t trust him, but she no longer knew exactly how to hate him.
The morning came pale and cold through the narrow slit of the window. Isobel opened her eyes to it slowly, with that heavy bewilderment which followed a night too full of humiliation for sleep to have been honest rest.
For one moment she did not remember where she was. Then all returned to her at once.
Duart… Ruaridh MacLean’s castle.
The bed beside her was empty. It wasn’t merely undisturbed, for he had lain there. She remembered it too clearly. But now the place where he had been held only the faint impression of his weight, and the linen was cool when, with a reluctance she despised in herself, she let her fingers brush it.
He was gone.
It ought to have pleased her. Indeed, she told herself so at once. A woman could scarcely lament the absence of a husband she had acquired as unwillingly as one might acquire a wound. Yet the emptiness at her side gave the chamber a desolate quality she had not expected.
She rose and composed herself with the careful haste of one who did not wish to be found uncertain. The gown Sorcha had laid out for her was warm and serviceable, though not her own, and the wool carried the faint scent of lavender.
At breakfast, she was received with no insult sharp enough to answer and no welcome generous enough to believe. She ate because pride required strength, and because hunger, unlike despair, had the impertinence to persist.
Afterward, with no Ruaridh to lead her and no guard at her elbow, Isobel found herself walking.
The castle unfolded before her in stern fragments: a passage smelling of wax and old rushes, a stair worn hollow by generations of MacLean feet, a narrow window where the sea showed itself in hard blue-grey flashes beyond the wall.
By degrees, the air warmed and thickened. The scent reached her before the sound did: bread, onions, smoke, hot iron, and the rich savor of broth beginning its long acquaintance with the fire. Isobel followed it and came at last to the kitchens.
No one saw her at once.
The room was large and low-ceilinged, alive with useful disorder. Women moved through steam and firelight with the brisk authority of those upon whom a household truly depended.
“She said there was none left?” one woman asked, bending over a bowl.
“None worth the name,” another replied. “A few dry stems at the bottom of the jar, and those fit only tae scent the shelf.”
“What of the village?”
“Nay fresh rosemary there till the next boat, and that willnae be fer a week, unless the weather turns kinder than it has any intention of daein’.”
The older woman made an irritated sound. “A week. And the laird wanting mutton taenight.”
At the word laird, Isobel felt something in her stiffen, as though the man himself had entered behind her.
“Use thyme,” said the girl at the table.
“I would, if thyme were rosemary and if men didnae notice the difference only when it gives them cause tae complain.”
There was laughter then, tired and real. Then one of the maids turned and saw her. The laughter faded. Isobel felt every inch of herself become visible, the MacDonald woman in borrowed wool.
“I beg yer pardon,” she said softly. “I didnae mean tae interrupt.”
The older woman wiped her hands slowly upon her apron and regarded her with an expression neither hostile nor kind. “The lady of the house can never interrupt.”
Lady of the house.
The words should have been absurd. Instead, they landed with a weight for which Isobel had no answer.
Isobel looked toward the table, the jars, the knives, the busy hands resuming their work with cautious curiosity. Rosemary was such a small want, and yet it had the dignity of usefulness. That was a lack she could understand.
“I used tae dry rosemary at Dunnyveg,” she told them before prudence could forbid her.
“If it is kept too near the hearth it loses its strength. But if there is any dried left, even poor stems, they may be bruised with salt and warmed in fat before the meat is turned. It willnae make them fresh, but it will persuade the tongue tae be generous.”
Several women looked at her now with more attention.
The older cook narrowed her eyes. “And ye ken this?”
“I ken a little of herbs,” Isobel replied. “Enough tae be blamed when a dish fails and forgotten when it daesnae.”
That earned another brief sound of amusement, this one less concealed. For the first time that morning, Isobel felt the smallest alteration in the room. It wasn’t acceptance, but something less rigid than suspicion.
The cook turned back toward the shelf of jars. “Mairi, fetch what is left. We’ll see if the lady’s MacDonald rosemary can survive a MacLean kitchen.”
Isobel ought to have objected to the phrasing. She ought to have raised her chin and reminded them she was not there to be tested like a seasoning. But the warmth, the smoke, the brisk purpose of the room, and the faint possibility of being useful held her still.
So she stepped farther into the kitchen, only one pace. But in Duart, where every stone seemed to know she did not belong, one pace felt perilously like courage.