Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
By the time they returned to Duart, Ruaridh had spoken little enough for the whole party to notice.
The reins lay hard in his hand, his knuckles pale around the leather, though he had long since stopped feeling the bite of it.
Isobel rode beside him, straight-backed and stubbornly composed, as if nearly being thrown from a cliff were no more than an inconvenience she meant to overcome by refusing to acknowledge it.
She was pale. That concerned him very much.
Whenever the track narrowed, his gaze went to her before he could prevent it. Once, the wind lifted a loose strand of hair across her cheek, and she turned her face toward him as if she had felt the weight of his watching. Her eyes softened for the briefest moment.
“I am well,” she said quietly.
He could not answer. If he opened his mouth, he feared what might come out of it.
In the yard, the others dismounted in grim silence.
The cheer of the morning had gone from them all.
Colin’s usual wit remained absent, which told Ruaridh more than words would have.
Domhnall gave orders for his own men to be ready, though his gaze rested on Isobel with unmistakable concern.
Margaret embraced her before leaving, holding her close with a gentleness that made Isobel’s mouth tremble before she mastered it.
“We shall write,” Margaret promised lovingly.
Isobel nodded. “Aye. Please.”
Colin clasped Ruaridh’s arm. “Send word the moment ye learn anything.”
“I will.”
“And dinnae blame yerself for a trap another man set.”
Ruaridh looked at him.
Colin’s expression tightened. “Aye. I thought as much.”
There was no more time for farewell. The guests departed sooner than they had meant to, the danger having soured all easy lingering.
Their horses passed through the gates one after another, leaving behind the hollow sound of hooves, the bitter taste of parting, and the knowledge that Ewen’s hand had reached too far inside Ruaridh’s own walls.
But Ruaridh didn’t watch them long.
“Fetch the healer,” he ordered.
Isobel turned at once. “Ruaridh.”
“Now,” he said to the nearest servant.
“I am nae hurt.”
“We shall hear that from someone who isnae ye.”
Her brows rose. “Dae ye often distrust women about their own bodies?”
“When they are white as milk and stubborn, aye.”
That earned him the faintest flash of indignation, and it steadied something in him to see it.
The healer came to their chamber shortly after, an older woman with gentle hands and no patience for either pride or panic.
Isobel submitted to the examination with visible restraint, sitting near the hearth while the woman checked her wrists, her shoulders, her ribs, the ankle that had caught in the stirrup.
Ruaridh stood by the window, too far to crowd her and too near to leave.
He watched every change in the healer’s face. He watched every breath Isobel took. At one point, the healer pressed carefully along Isobel’s side. Ruaridh moved before he knew it.
Isobel looked up. “It daesnae hurt.”
He stopped. The healer glanced between them and continued with admirable diplomacy.
At last, she straightened. “The lady is shaken, but unharmed. Nay swelling, nay break, nay wound that I can find. Rest will dae more than fussing.”
Isobel’s eyes came to him at once, as if the verdict had been delivered for his sake rather than hers.
“There,” she told him, evidently fighting a smirk.
Ruaridh inclined his head, but the relief that should have come did not arrive cleanly. It struck him instead like weakness. His chest tightened until breath became something he had to remember.
The healer left them with a tisane Isobel plainly did not intend to drink. Silence settled in her place. Firelight moved softly over the chamber walls. Isobel sat with her hands in her lap, alive and whole and too close to what might have been for him to bear.
“Ruaridh,” she called out softly.
He looked toward the window rather than at her. “Ye should rest.”
“What is wrong?”
“Nay.”
“Ruaridh, please…”
His mouth tightened.
She rose, though he made a sharp motion as if to stop her. She gave him a look that halted him better than any command, then crossed the chamber slowly. When she reached him, she stood close enough that the hem of her gown brushed his boot.
“What is wrong?” she asked again, more gently this time.
He stared down at her. He meant to say there was nothing. He meant to spare her the ugliness of his guilt, for she had endured enough fear for one day. Instead, the truth came roughly from him.
“It is me fault.”
Her expression changed. “Nay.”
“Aye.”
“Nay, Ruaridh.”
“I gave ye me horse.” The words cut on the way out. “It was meant fer me, and I put ye in its place.”
“Ye didnae set the trap.”
“I put ye on the saddle.”
“Because I challenged ye.”
“Because I let ye.” His control broke enough that his voice lowered to something raw. “Because I was amused, and proud, and foolish enough tae enjoy ye besting me before me friends. I saw ye smile, and I forgot that men are trying tae kill me.”
Isobel went very still.
He looked away, unable now to bear the mercy in her face. “I forgot fer one moment, and it nearly cost me ye.”
Her hand came to his chest. It was such a small touch, light, warm and steadying.
“Look at me,” she whispered.
He did. Her eyes were bright with feeling, with something so tender that he almost stepped back from it.
“It didnae cost ye me.”
“It could have.”
“But it didnae.”
His hand lifted before he could decide against it. His fingers touched her cheek, careful as if she had become something breakable. She leaned into the touch.
“I saw ye at the edge,” he said, and his voice was nearly gone. “Fer one second, I saw ye falling. I have seen men die. I have stood in halls with blood on the rushes and nae trembled after. But that…”
He stopped. Isobel covered his hand with hers.
“That,” he continued, forcing the words through the tightness in his throat, “emptied the world of everything but ye.”
Her breath caught.
“I thought I kent what fear was. I didnae… nae until I thought I had lost ye.”
“Ruaridh.”
“I cannae lose ye, Isobel.” The confession came low, stripped of pride and caution. “I ken I have nay right tae ask the world fer mercy after the life I have lived. But I cannae lose ye.”
Her face softened in a way that hurt him.
Then she rose on her toes and set her mouth to his.
It was not a kiss of hunger, though hunger lived beneath it.
It was a kiss given like an answer, like forgiveness, like a promise neither of them had yet found courage to shape properly.
When she drew back, her hand remained against his heart.
“I was frightened, too,” she confessed. “Nae only when the saddle slipped, but after, when I saw yer face.”
His brows drew together. Her eyes searched his. He took her hand from his chest and pressed it to his mouth, holding it there longer than courtesy required. Her fingers trembled against his lips.
“Ye are the first peace I have wanted more than victory,” he admitted.
Isobel’s mouth parted softly. For once, no sharp reply came.
He drew her into his arms then, slowly enough that she might refuse, tightly enough when she came that she would know he needed the holding.
Her cheek rested against his shoulder. His hand spread over her back, feeling the steady rise and fall of her breath.
Alive.
Here.
His.
But not his as men claimed things. She was his as one soul might turn toward another in the dark and be answered.
“I am here,” she murmured, as she had upon the cliffside.
His eyes closed.
“Aye,” he said against her hair. “And God help me, I love that ye are.”
She went still in his arms.
Then she held him closer. He bowed his head to hers, and for a long while they stood that way before the fire, with the sea raging beyond the walls and danger waiting somewhere beyond the reach of candlelight.
The damaged saddle lay upon the table between them like a thing accused. Ruaridh had not touched it since Brodie had brought it in. The cut strap hung loose, cleanly severed where no wear or accident could have made such a wound.
Torin stood with his arms folded. Brodie paced once before the hearth, then stopped as if movement alone offended him.
“It was nay accident,” Brodie said.
Torin leaned over the saddle, studying the strap with cold attention. “Done with a sharp blade. Nae hurried. Whoever did it, had time enough.”
That was the part that sat heaviest in Ruaridh’s chest.
Time enough.
It was done inside his own stables, beneath his own roof, within reach of his men, his horses, his wife.
His hands closed at his sides. He saw again the saddle slipping, Isobel’s body thrown toward the cliff’s edge, her hand reaching for him in that one terrible instant when the world had narrowed to whether he could get to her before the sea did.
He turned from the table before memory showed him more.
“How did they get so close?” Brodie demanded. “The yard was watched. The stables were watched.”
“Watched by men who thought themselves watching fer strangers,” Torin corrected. “Nae fer someone already permitted inside.”
Ruaridh looked back at him.
Torin did not soften it. “We have tae consider it.”
“I have considered it,” Ruaridh replied.
The admission tasted like iron.
Brodie swore under his breath. “A man under this roof, then. Or a servant bribed or threatened.”
Ruaridh set one hand on the table at last, not upon the saddle, but near enough to feel its presence like an accusation.
“The Crown has sent nay answer,” Brodie said after a moment.
“Nay” Torin replied.
“And now this,” Brodie added. “Their silence grows expensive.”
Ruaridh looked toward the dark window. Beyond it, the sea struck the rocks below Duart with a steady violence that seemed almost peaceful beside what moved in him.
“We cannae wait fer royal action while Isobel remains a target in me own home,” he told them.
Neither man argued. That, more than agreement, told him how bad the matter was.
“We prepare properly. The roads watched from first light tae dark, and the coastal points through the night,” Ruaridh ordered.
“Aye,” Brodie nodded.
“I’ll question the stable hands first,” Torin shared. “Every man who touched the horse, every lad who came near the tack, every servant who crossed the yard. Then the kitchen passages, linen rooms, lower stairs, postern doors.”
“Dae it without spreading panic,” Ruaridh advised.
Torin’s mouth tightened. “Panic would be less trouble than ignorance.”
“Then avoid both.”
Brodie then asked the question. “And if we find the hand that cut it?”
Ruaridh looked down at the saddle. For a long moment, he said nothing. He thought of justice. He thought of fear. He thought of Isobel standing before the healer, insisting she was well while her face remained too pale and her fingers trembled when she believed no one saw.
“Bring him tae me alive.”
Brodie’s eyes lifted. “They tried tae kill ye, me laird, nae just Lady Isobel.”
“Alive,” Ruaridh repeated. “Dead men answer poorly.”
Torin inclined his head. “And Ewen?”
Ruaridh’s hand moved at last, closing over the cut strap. The leather bent beneath his fingers.
“If the Crown refuses tae act in time, then we shall be ready without them.”
The words settled heavily in the small chamber.
Brodie’s expression darkened with approval. Torin, more cautious by nature, did not disagree.
“And if Ewen wants blood,” he added, “he will find us ready.”
And beneath the quiet fury of the vow lay the truer one, the one that had driven every order, every breath, every beat of his heart since the cliff.
No one would kill his wife… not while he lived.