Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
"Move. Stay close."
He said it quietly, the way men said things when they weren't asking.
Matilda moved.
The corridor outside the storage chamber was chaos. Guards pushing forward, voices crossing over each other, torchlight jumping off stone walls thick with smoke.
The attackers were retreating, she could tell by the sound of it, the way the violence was becoming more ragged and less organized, men running rather than fighting.
The warrior kept himself between her and the open courtyard without making a show of it. Every time the corridor narrowed he was simply there, slightly ahead, slightly to her left, blocking the angles without being asked.
She noticed. She said nothing about it.
Her knee screamed with every step and she was doing a reasonable job of hiding it until she wasn't, and then his eyes dropped to her leg for exactly one second before he looked away again.
"I'm fine," she said, before he could speak.
"Ye said that already."
"It keeps being true."
He said nothing. But he slowed his pace by half a step, and she hated that too.
They came out into the courtyard and she made herself look at it plainly. The fallen men, the blood dark across the stone, the torches burning too bright over all of it.
She had learned a long time ago that looking directly at something terrible was better than glimpsing it sideways. Sideways was what gave you nightmares.
She was still looking when her father came through the far gate.
"Matilda." His voice carried the sound of a man who had been frightened and was presenting relief as anger instead.
He pushed through his guards and took her face briefly in his hands, scanning her the way he always did. The full inventory, top to bottom, checking for damage. "Ye're all right. Tell me ye're all right."
"I'm all right, Faither."
His eyes moved past her to the warrior, and something passed between the two men. Recognition, she realized, immediate and certain, no introduction required. Her stomach dropped.
He knew him. He knew exactly who he was.
"Laird Gunnarsson." Her father's voice shifted into something careful and formal. "Ye arrived ahead of time."
"Aye." The warrior, Gunnarsson, said it without inflection. "Fortunate, as it turns out."
Matilda turned around and looked at him fully.
He was already looking at her.
"Gunnarsson," she said.
"Aye."
"Ivar Gunnarsson."
"That's generally what Gunnarsson means."
"Ye're the Raven of Mull."
"I've been called worse." Something moved at the corner of his mouth. "And ye're Matilda MacInnes. Which means we've already met, which saves time."
She stared at him. He looked back at her with those black eyes that gave nothing away and the faint ghost of amusement that she was already finding deeply irritating.
"Faither." She turned back. "Ye kenned he was arrivin’?"
"Matilda."
"Because the timing is suspicious."
"Matilda." Her father's voice dropped. "Listen tae me. There isnae time."
He took her hands and she felt it then, the tremble in his fingers, barely there, the thing he was working very hard to hide. Whatever he was about to say was frightening him. "The men who attacked taenight. They werenae brigands."
She went still. "Who were they?"
Her father exhaled. "They were Callum MacDougall's men."
The courtyard didn't change. The torches kept burning. The name landed the way it always landed, and the impact was that she was left with the acute feeling that a door was swinging open onto something she'd spent eight years keeping shut.
"He's come back," Her voice came out perfectly steady. She was proud of that.
"He wants tae stop the marriage." Her father's grip tightened on her hands. "If he takes ye before the Pact binds ye tae Mull, he believes he can force ye tae become his."
"I ken what he believes." She pulled her hands back gently. "I ken exactly what he believes."
Behind her, she heard Ivar Gunnarsson say, very quietly, "Who is Callum MacDougall?"
Her father looked at her. Asking permission, she realized. Waiting to see how much she wanted said aloud, here, in a smoky courtyard full of guards.
"A laird from Lorne," she said, without turning around. "We have a history."
"What kind of history?"
"The kind that's none of yer concern."
She felt rather than saw him decide not to push it. Which surprised her slightly. Her father turned to Ivar then, his voice dropping into the register he used for things that couldn't be unsaid.
"MacDougall's intent is clear. He means tae take her before the Pact is sealed. Which means she cannae stay here. The gates willnae hold against another coordinated assault, he's already proven he has the men and the plannin’ fer it. If she's still within these walls by dawn, he'll come again."
"Then we leave taenight," Ivar said.
It wasn't a question.
"Aye. Taenight. Now." Her father looked between them both.
"The marriage must proceed without delay.
That's the King's decree and it's the only thing that puts her beyond MacDougall's reach legally.
The moment the Pact is sealed, any move he makes against her becomes treason against the Crown.
" He paused. "The horses are being saddled as we speak. "
Matilda looked at her father. "Ye've already ordered it."
"Aye."
"Before ye even spoke tae me."
"Matilda, this is nae time fer this."
"Ye ordered the horses before ye told me any of this." She kept her voice very even. "So this was never actually a conversation."
Her father had the grace to look tired rather than defensive. "There isnae time fer it ae be a conversation, mo chridhe. I'm sorry. I am truly sorry. But MacDougall willnae wait and neither can we."
“Aye.”
Her father blinked. He'd expected an argument. She could see it.
She held his gaze for a long moment. Then she turned to face the keep.
"I need five minutes upstairs," she said. "There are things I willnae leave without."
"Matilda, there isnae time tae start pickin’ things that are nae necessary."
"Five minutes, Faither."
She turned and walked toward the keep steps, and had made it exactly four of them before the pain in her knee buckled her stride and she grabbed the rail and—
She was in the air.
"Put me down," she said.
Ivar Gunnarsson had lifted her as though she weighed nothing in particular and was now carrying her up the stairs with the same confidence he appeared to bring to everything.
"Ye cannae walk on that."
"I was walkin’ on it perfectly well."
"Ye were limpin’. Are ye dumb or ye just choose nae to receive help?"
"There is absolutely nay difference between limpin’ and walkin’."
"Aye, very convincin’" He said it without looking at her. “Which room?
She stared at the side of his face.
He was looking at the corridor ahead, not at her, which was almost more infuriating than if he'd been smiling. "Second door on the left," she said, with great dignity.
"Thank ye. That wasnae so hard, was it?"
He carried her through the door and set her on the edge of the bed and stepped back immediately, and she had about one second to register that before she was on her feet moving toward the chest under the window.
"What are ye doing?" he said.
"Packin’. I told ye, five minutes."
"Sit down and tell me what ye need. I'll get it."
She turned and looked at him.
He was standing in the center of her chamber, looking around it with those assessing eyes. He was reading the room— quickly, thoroughly, already deciding.
"Ye'll get it," she repeated.
"Aye."
“So ye’ll get me chemise if it’s what I need?”
“Aye. Try me.”
"Ye dinnae ken where anything is."
"Then tell me." He looked at her steadily. "Ye're bleedin’ through yer stockin’. Sit."
She looked down. He was right, a thin dark stain, not dramatic but undeniably real. She sat.
"The chest under the window," she said. "The green wrap on top. Under it there's a leather satchel, bring the whole thing, dinnae open it. The book on the table by the candle. The blue cloak on the hook by the door. The small wooden box on the shelf."
"This one?" He held it up.
"Aye. That one."
She watched him move through her chamber, collecting her things with a brisk efficiency that should have felt intrusive and somehow didn't quite manage it.
He handled the satchel without opening it. He tucked the book under his arm.
He unhooked the cloak, glanced at it, folded it once, and added it to the pile.
"The candle," she said.
He stopped. "What?"
"The candle on the table. I need it."
A pause. "It's half-burned."
"I ken that it is. I need it."
He looked at her for a moment. Not with pity, not with that careful softness she had spent years dreading, just a brief direct attention, and then he picked up the candle and added it to the pile without another word.
"Is that everything?" he said.
“Aye. That's everything."
He carried her back down the stairs.
She should have hated it. Every instinct she'd spent years carefully building told her she should. The closeness of it, the lack of control, the simple physical fact of being held by a man she'd known for less than an hour.
Her body had made a study of threat for eight years. It catalogued proximity and grip and the weight of another person's hands without being asked.
It was not cataloguing anything right now.
That was, in its own way, more unsettling than if it had.
She was aware of the warmth of him. The steadiness. The way he carried her without any of the performance she might have expected. No flexing of effort, no expected gratitude.
He was simply moving down a staircase with her in his arms.
She did not freeze. She did not feel the walls closing.
She wasn't sure what to do with that.
"Ye dinnae have tae make carryin' me a habit," she said, because she needed to say something, and that was what came out. "I can walk."
"Another word from ye about walkin' and I'm carryin' ye everywhere fer a week."