Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The package came just after noon, when the hall was at its busiest. That alone made Ruaridh wary.
It was not large, just a rough wooden box, bound in cord, with no proper name upon it. Only a mark declared it for the MacLean household. The lad who carried it in looked more confused than alarmed, but Torin, seeing Ruaridh’s face, took it from him at once and set it upon the table.
“Who brought it?” Ruaridh asked.
“A man from the lower road,” the lad replied. “Said it was left with him near the crossing.”
“Find him,” Ruaridh ordered.
The lad ran. By then, the hall had quieted. Servants paused with platters in hand. Brodie came to stand near the door. Torin drew his knife and cut the cord. The lid opened. For one moment, no one spoke.
Inside lay a white bird… dead.
Its feathers were still soft and pale, cruelly clean against the dark cloth beneath it. Its neck had been broken, and one wing spread as if in the last mockery of flight. Beside it lay a folded scrap of parchment, fixed with a smear of red wax.
Ruaridh felt the room change. He did not need to read the message to know whose hand had sent it. Ewen had always had a taste for gestures that mistook ugliness for power.
Torin unfolded the parchment and went still. Ruaridh took it from him.
What was claimed from me will be returned.
That was all. It was enough.
At that moment, a small gasp came from Isobel.
Yet Ruaridh heard it as if the whole hall had emptied around them.
He turned at once. She was standing near the hearth, one hand pressed against the back of a chair.
Her face had lost color, and her eyes were fixed upon the bird.
The white feathers seemed to hold her entirely.
Ruaridh crossed to her before he remembered deciding to move. “Isobel.”
She blinked, but her gaze did not lift at once.
He stepped between her and the table, blocking the sight with his body.
“Take it away,” he ordered in a voice that was low and dangerous.
Brodie moved at once.
“Nay,” Isobel said suddenly.
Ruaridh looked down at her.
Her throat worked. “Nay. I have seen it now.”
A fierceness came into her expression, but it trembled at the edges. She was trying to master herself before them all, trying to make horror into anger because anger had always been safer.
Ruaridh lowered his voice. “Ye neednae look longer.”
“I ken what he means.”
“Aye,” he nodded. “So dae I.”
Her eyes came to his then, bright and stricken. “He sent it here on purpose, intae Duart.”
That was the worst of it, not the threat alone or the dead creature, but the insult of its arrival. Ewen was circling on the island. He had put his hand through Ruaridh’s gates and once again laid violence upon his table.
Ruaridh felt a coldness settle inside him.
“Torin,” he called out.
“Aye.”
“Nay package enters the keep again without being opened outside the walls. Nay messenger leaves until questioned. Double the yard watch. Triple the postern. I want the lower road searched before dusk.”
Torin was already moving. “Done.”
“Brodie.”
The older man looked up from where he had covered the box with a cloth.
“Men on the cliffs and the shore until further orders. Nay boat approaches unseen.”
Brodie’s face was grim. “Aye.”
The servants appeared quiet and frightened, but they began to move. The hall, so recently warmed by daily life, had become a place of whispers.
Ruaridh turned back to Isobel. She didn’t move. Her eyes lowered again, though the bird was covered now and the feathers hidden. He touched her hand where it gripped the chair. Her fingers were cold.
“Come away,” he urged.
She let him lead her from the hall, but even in the passage, with stone walls between her and the box, he felt the tremor that passed through her.
“It was so white,” she whispered.
His hand tightened around hers. “He wanted ye frightened.”
“Well, he succeeded, didnae he?”
The honesty of it struck him harder than defiance would have done.
Ruaridh stopped and turned to her. “Then hear me plainly. He willnae have ye, Isobel.”
She looked up at him, searching his face as if she wanted to believe in strength and feared the cost of it.
“He thinks he can send death intae our home and make us wait fer the next blow,” Ruaridh said. “He is wrong.”
Isobel’s breath caught.
He lifted her hand and pressed his mouth to her knuckles, careless of anyone who might see. “Nay one takes ye from me.”
The fear in her eyes did not vanish. Such things did not obey vows merely because men made them. But her fingers curled into his, holding fast.
Behind them, men moved through Duart with new orders, with the castle drawing itself tight around the threat. Yet Ruaridh knew the truth.
The package had already entered. Its white feathers, its broken neck, its message of possession had passed beyond the gates and settled where no guard could drag it out: in Isobel’s memory, in the silence between them, in the place where his fear for her lived sharper than any blade.
He drew her close, and she came without argument. For a precious moment, he held her there in the dim passage, with his cheek against her hair and while the whole keep seemed to listen for what would come next.
When it came, Ruaridh thought, it would find him ready.
But readiness did not make the woman in his arms tremble less.
That evening, Isobel tried very hard not to think of the bird.
She sat beside Ruaridh at supper. She answered when spoken to. She even smiled once when Brodie said something dry enough to make Torin choke into his cup. But beneath every careful act of normal life, she saw white feathers, so clean and so still.
A message made of death.
By the time she lay in bed beside Ruaridh, the chamber seemed too quiet.
The fire had burned low, casting a dull red glow over the stone walls.
Ruaridh’s arm was heavy and warm around her waist, and his breath slow against her hair.
He had checked the door twice before joining her.
He had said nothing of it, and somehow that made her love him more.
She told herself she was safe. She slept, but the dream came like cold water.
She could see white wings beating against her face, a broken neck, Ewen’s voice somewhere beyond the dark, saying ‘what was claimed from me will be returned’ and then hands, not Ruaridh’s hands, closing around her arms and dragging her backward while the castle doors stood open and no sound came from her throat.
She woke gasping for air. For one terrible moment, she didn’t know where she was. The room was dark. The sheets twisted around her legs. Her heart was beating so violently it hurt.
“Isobel.”
Ruaridh was awake at once. She tried to speak, but the dream left her breathless and shaking. He rose beside her, with one hand coming gently to her face, and the other settling at her back.
“Look at me,” he spoke tenderly. “Only me.”
She did.
“It was the bird,” she whispered. “And him. I couldnae… he was taking me, and I couldnae…”
“He isnae here.” Ruaridh drew her into him, firm and warm and real. “Ye are in our chamber, in Duart, with me.”
Her fingers caught at his shirt. “I was so frightened.”
“I ken.” His mouth touched her temple. “I have ye.”
He held her until the worst of the trembling passed, his palm moving slowly along her spine, and his voice murmuring quiet certainties into the dark. She listened to each one as if they were ropes lowered into deep water.
He is nae here.
Ye are safe.
Breathe with me.
I have ye.
At last, she became aware of his body around hers, the hard warmth of his chest and the steady beat beneath her palm. Her breathing eased. The dream loosened its grip.
Ruaridh shifted enough to look at her. “Better?”
“A little.”
His thumb moved over her cheek. “What more dae ye need?”
The question was so simple, so completely offered, that tears stung her eyes.
“Ye,” she whispered.
He didn’t move too quickly. He lowered his mouth to hers with almost unbearable tenderness, letting her decide how much of the kiss she wanted. Isobel answered by pressing closer, by parting her lips beneath his, by letting the fear drain into something warmer, needier, alive.
He made a rough sound and drew back. “Isobel.”
“I want tae feel here,” she said, touching his chest, then her own. “Nae there, nae in that dream.”
His eyes darkened with understanding. “Then stay with me.”
She nodded. His hands were gentle as he laid her back against the pillows.
He kissed her slowly, thoroughly, each touch a reassurance before it became desire.
His mouth moved from hers to her throat, to the place beneath her jaw where her pulse still fluttered too quickly.
He lingered there until she sighed and threaded her fingers into his hair.
“There,” he murmured against her skin. “Come back tae me.”
“I am here…”
He kissed lower, with reverence enough to make her ache. She could feel the flutter of a million butterflies explode inside her stomach. The fear that had chilled her turned to heat beneath his hands, beneath his mouth, beneath every careful question he asked without words.
When he settled between her thighs and looked up at her, there was no demand in him, only devotion. His dark eyes were burning into hers.
“Tell me,” he murmured.
“Aye…”
The word was barely breath, but he heard it.
Then his mouth was on her, and the last cold remnants of the nightmare scattered beneath the force of pleasure.
His tongue flicked slowly and gently at first, playing with her swollen bead.
She moaned softly, gripping a fistful of his hair, and keeping him there, as if afraid that he might move away.
She arched softly, keeping her eyes focused on the carnal sight between her thighs. When he slid his tongue inside of her, she gasped loudly. Pleasure unfurled in the pit of her stomach, and warmth spread throughout her entire body.
“Dinnae stop,” she moaned, biting her lower lip.
He kept sliding his tongue inside of her, sucking her, teasing her, playing with her. He held her steady through it, giving without haste, as if her undoing were a prayer he meant to learn by heart.
When she came undone, it was with his name on her lips.
“Ruaridh…” she gasped through the onslaught of pleasure.
He didn’t stop. He met her frantic need with softness, waiting for her body to unclench, then flutter down back to him.
When she stopped trembling, he gathered her close, kissing her lips with the taste of her still between them.
She felt no shame in it, only the strange, fierce comfort of being wanted so tenderly that even fear had no room left to breathe.
Isobel rested her cheek against his chest, listening to his heart slow beneath her ear. The fear had not vanished entirely. Somewhere beyond the walls, Ewen still existed. The message had still come. The bird’s white feathers would not be forgotten merely because the night had turned warm.
But she was no longer alone with them.
Ruaridh kissed the top of her head. “Sleep, mo chridhe.”
This time, when Isobel closed her eyes, she did not see the bird. She felt his hand over hers and slept.