Chapter 3 #2
She looked at the side of his face. He wasn't smiling, exactly. But there was something there, in the set of his jaw, the slight ease around his eyes, that told her he meant it precisely as much as he didn't.
She didn't bother a second time.
The stables smelled of smoke and horses and controlled urgency. Her father was there, his men moving around him, and he gripped her hands once more before stepping back to let the grooms work.
"Ye'll write," he said. It wasn't a question.
"Yes, Faither. I'll write."
"And if ye need anything, anything at all, ye let me ken."
"Aye." She squeezed his hands once. "I ken."
She turned before she could see his face do what she suspected it was about to do.
Ivar was beside her at the gate, her satchel over his shoulder, the blue cloak now around her shoulders, she wasn't entirely sure when that had happened.
He wasn't touching her. He wasn't speaking. He was simply there, steady and watchful, facing the dark beyond the gate.
The groom brought one horse.
Matilda looked at it. Then at her father's men, already mounted and moving into position. Then back at the horse, at the single saddle, at the very obvious and unavoidable arithmetic of the situation.
She moved toward it anyway. Her knee had stiffened during the time upstairs and the first attempt to reach the stirrup made that immediately, humiliatingly clear. She tried again, jaw set, weight shifting, and got nowhere.
"Here."
Ivar was beside her before she'd registered him moving.
He didn't make a production of it, no pointed look at her knee, no comment about walking.
He simply positioned himself at her left side and offered his cupped hands as a step, his eyes already on the gate ahead, as though helping her mount was simply the next thing that needed doing and he saw no reason to draw attention to it.
She looked at his hands. Then at the horse. Then, briefly, at him.
"I can manage," she said.
"Aye." He didn't move. "And yet."
She wanted to argue.
The part of her that had spent eight years learning how to need nothing from anyone wanted very badly to argue. But her knee had its own opinion and the gate needed to open and Callum MacDougall was somewhere in the dark beyond these walls, so she put her foot in his hands and let him lift her.
He was in the saddle behind her before she'd finished settling.
And then she understood the full problem.
His chest against her back. His arms coming around her on either side, loose on the reins, close but not confining.
The warmth of him was immediate and unreasonable for a cold night, and she was very acutely aware of every point where they were touching and every point where they nearly were.
Her body waited for the familiar tightening.
The instinct that had never once failed to rise when a man stood too close, sat too near, reached without warning.
It didn't come.
She didn't know what to do with that. This man's chest was warm against her back, and certain things were stirring up inside her without her permission.
"Comfortable?" he said, very close to her ear.
"Perfectly," she said, very crisply. "Yet I dinnae ken ye," she added, because it felt important to establish.
"Ye ken me name. Ye ken me isle." She felt rather than saw the shift at the corner of his mouth. "Ye'll ken the rest soon enough. I willnae bite, Matilda MacInnes. Unless asked."
Her face went warm. She was furious about it.
"That is completely absurd," she said.
"Is it?" he asked.
Against her back, she felt the slight shift that meant he was trying not to laugh, and she stared straight ahead into the dark and told herself very firmly that she felt absolutely nothing about any of this.
The gates opened and the cold night air hit them both like a wall. She didn't look back at the castle.
His chest was warm against her back. She was intensely aware of it and intensely annoyed at being aware of it.
"Comfortable?" he said, very close to her ear.
"Perfectly," she said, very crisply.
He said nothing else. But she felt, against her back, the slight shift that meant he was trying not to laugh.
She stared straight ahead into the dark and felt absolutely nothing about any of it.
The horse moved at a steady pace through the dark, with Ivar's men positioned ahead and behind them.
His arms bracketed her on either side, loose on the reins, and the specific geometry of it, how little space existed between his chest and her back, and how easily the cold outside stopped mattering, was a problem she had not anticipated.
She had anticipated fear. She had anticipated the locked-jaw endurance of proximity to a stranger. She had not anticipated this.
Infuriating. It was infuriating.
"Ye're very tense," he said.
"I'm perfectly relaxed."
"Aye, that's why yer spine looks like a sword."
She made a conscious effort to drop her shoulders. Immediately regretted it because it brought her half an inch closer to him. She straightened again.
She heard him exhale, not quite a laugh. Almost one.
"Something funny?" she said.
"Nay. Nae at all."
The castle disappeared behind them.
And somewhere in the hills to the south, Callum MacDougall was still out there. Waiting, watching, counting on the fact that fear had always been enough to hold her.
He didn't know her anymore.
She wasn't entirely sure she did either. But the gates were open, and it would soon be dark. But what concerned her more was the man at her back who had carried her up a staircase and packed her candle without asking why.
That could become a problem of a different kind.