Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
They had scarcely returned to the yard when Torin came toward them with the expression of a man marching willingly into battle and fearing he might forget how to hold a sword. Ruaridh stopped at once.
“What has happened?”
“Naething,” Torin answered, which was plainly untrue.
His hair was wind-tossed, his eyes too bright, and he held himself with such rigid purpose that even Brodie turned from the stable door to look at him.
Isobel, standing beside Ruaridh, narrowed her eyes with immediate interest. “That is the least convincing naething I have ever heard.”
Torin looked at her, then at Ruaridh, then finally at Brodie, as if each of them might provide mercy by becoming suddenly absent. None did.
“Well… I am going tae ask Sorcha tae marry me,” he divulged with a smile.
For one heartbeat, the yard seemed to still around them. Even the wind, coming sharp from the sea, appeared to pause. Then, Isobel’s face softened so beautifully that Ruaridh forgot the cold entirely.
“Oh, Torin,” she gushed. “Truly?”
“Aye.” He swallowed. “If she’ll have me, of course.”
“If she’ll have ye? The lass has looked at ye like sunrise fer years,” Brodie exclaimed.
Ruaridh stepped closer, laying a hand briefly on Torin’s shoulder. Beneath his palm, the man was tense as drawn wire.
“What dae ye need, old friend?”
The question seemed to steady him. Torin drew in a breath. “A quiet place. Flowers, perhaps, if any still grow worth picking. And…” He glanced toward Isobel with the helplessness of a man wise enough to know when he was outmatched. “Words.”
Isobel’s smile deepened. “I cannae give ye the words. They must be yers. But I can prevent ye from sounding as though ye are issuing orders tae a guard post.”
Brodie nodded gravely. “A true danger.”
Torin muttered something unkind, and within half an hour, they had made a conspiracy of happiness.
Isobel found late heather and small white flowers growing near the wall.
Brodie brought a bench from the side passage and placed it beneath the shelter of the old apple tree in the inner yard, then moved it three times at Isobel’s instruction and complained only twice.
Ruaridh sent two lads away from the yard with such quiet authority that no child remained close enough to spy, though several attempted it from distant corners.
Torin, meanwhile, looked increasingly ill.
“She will say aye,” Isobel told him softly.
“Ye cannae ken that.”
“I can. Sorcha has been smiling at empty walls fer days.”
That made Torin close his eyes briefly, as if the thought hurt him.
Ruaridh watched him and felt, unexpectedly, a sharp tenderness.
Torin had stood beside him through blood, Council, storm, and hunger.
He had seen the man fearless before enemies and silent beneath grief.
Yet love brought him to this: pale, earnest, almost young.
It was not weakness. Ruaridh knew that now.
At last, Sorcha was brought to the yard by Isobel under some excuse so poor that Ruaridh doubted even the hens would have believed it. Sorcha came laughing, then stopped when she saw Torin standing beneath the tree.
Isobel returned to Ruaridh’s side. Brodie stood slightly behind them, with his arms folded, though his expression had gone suspiciously soft.
Torin took one step toward Sorcha. Then another. For once, he seemed to have no use for command.
“Sorcha,” he spoke, and his voice caught a little on her name.
Her hands rose to clasp before her. “Torin?”
He looked down at the flowers in his hand as though surprised to find them there, then offered them to her. “I have faced men who wished me dead with less fear than I feel at this moment.”
Sorcha’s mouth trembled.
“But there is nay man living I would rather become than the one who belongs tae ye, if ye would have him.” He drew a breath, which was rough and honest. “I love ye. I have loved ye longer than I had the sense tae say. Marry me, Sorcha.”
Silence followed, the kind every soul present knew better than to break. Then Sorcha gave a small, broken laugh and pressed the flowers to her heart.
“Aye,” she whispered.
Torin went still.
Sorcha laughed again, her tears shining now. “Aye, ye great solemn fool. Of course, aye.”
The yard erupted. Brodie let out a shout loud enough to startle the horses. Isobel covered her mouth, though tears slipped past her smile. Ruaridh found himself laughing, as Torin gathered Sorcha into his arms and held her as if the world had narrowed to that single answer.
For a few moments, there was no Ewen, no cut saddle, no Crown silence and no fear lying in wait beyond the walls. There was only Sorcha’s delighted weeping, Torin’s stunned happiness, Brodie pretending not to be moved.
Isobel looked up at Ruaridh. “This is good.”
“Aye,” he said softly.
Her hand found his. He closed his fingers around it. Across the yard, Sorcha rose on her toes and kissed Torin before all of them, which earned cheers from the stable lads and a scandalized gasp from one elderly woman who was smiling too broadly to mean it.
Ruaridh looked at his people gathered in the thin afternoon light, their faces warmed by a joy that had come unexpectedly and was therefore all the more precious. He felt Isobel’s hand tighten in his, and knew she felt it, too.
Happiness was a rare visitor at Duart. That afternoon, they welcomed it as though it had every right to stay.
When Sorcha came to tell Isobel later that same afternoon, informing her that she was wanted below, Isobel looked up from the mending in her lap with immediate suspicion.
“Wanted by whom?”
Sorcha’s smile was far too innocent. “The household.”
Isobel frowned. “What daes this mean?”
Before Sorcha could reply, Ruaridh appeared in the doorway. One glance at his face told Isobel he knew more than she did, which was intolerable.
“What is this?” she asked.
He came to her and held out his hand. “Come and see.”
“I dislike mysteries.”
“Aye,” he said, with grave tenderness. “I have noticed.”
Still, she took his hand. They went down together, and with every step Isobel became more aware of the unusual quiet below. There were no hurried servants, no clatter and no loud command.
When they entered the hall, she stopped.
The people of Duart were gathered there: servants, guards, stable lads, women from the kitchens, old men from the yard, children pressed shyly behind their mothers.
Upon the table before them lay small offerings.
There was a length of embroidered linen, a carved comb, a basket of oatcakes, dried heather tied with blue thread, a pair of finely worked gloves, and a little wooden bird smoothed by careful hands.
An older woman stepped forward first, twisting her apron between her fingers.
“Me lady,” she started softly in an unsteady voice, “I was cold tae ye when ye first came, colder than a woman should be tae another woman alone in a strange place. I am sorry fer it.”
Another came after her. Then a stable lad, red-faced and staring at his boots. Then one of the guards who had once looked through Isobel as if her name made her less than present.
One by one, they apologized. Their words were not grand, but they were honest.
“We judged ye by old grief.”
“We forgot ye had grief of yer own.”
“Ye have been kinder tae our bairns than we were tae ye.”
“Ye stood fer this clan when ye had little reason tae love it.”
The words blurred at the edges. Isobel stood very still, because if she moved, she feared she might break entirely. Ruaridh’s hand rested warm at the small of her back, not holding her up, only reminding her she need not stand alone.
At last, a little girl came forward with the wooden bird in both hands.
“I made this fer ye,” she whispered. “Because ye taught me the bow. And because ye are ours now.”
Ours.
The word struck deeper than any insult ever had.
Isobel could not speak.
She bent to take the bird, but her hands trembled. “Thank ye,” she managed. “It is beautiful.”
The girl beamed. Around the hall, faces softened, faces that had once watched her with suspicion, resentment, even hatred. Now they looked at her as if they saw a woman who had taken root among them despite every unkindness. Isobel pressed the little carving to her chest.
“I dinnae ken what tae say,” she barely managed to say.
Ruaridh’s voice came low beside her. “Then say only what is true.”
She looked at the gathered clan, at Sorcha smiling through tears, at Brodie and Torin standing close and solemn, at the children watching her as if her answer mattered very much.
For so long, she had been endured, used, sent away and brought where she had not chosen to go. But here, in this hall that had once seemed made only of stone and old enmity, she was being welcomed.
Her throat tightened. “I came here believing there would never be a place fer me among ye. I thought I would always be a name ye hated before I was a woman ye kent.”
Several heads lowered.
“But ye have given me more than apology today. Ye have given me a home.”
A quiet sound moved through the hall. Ruaridh’s hand pressed gently against her back. Isobel looked down at the carved bird in her hands and smiled through the tears she could no longer command.
“And I am very proud,” she added, voice breaking softly, “tae be one of ye.”
This time, when the hall answered, it was not with silence.
It was with warmth.