Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
"We're takin' the forest roads."
He said it to Torvald as they cleared the gate, quiet and final. His men shifted without question, two ahead, two behind, the formation settling into place like something they'd done so many times it had stopped requiring thought.
Matilda said nothing.
She was sitting very straight in the saddle in front of him, her blue cloak pulled tight, her eyes on the dark between the trees. She hadn't asked why the forest roads. He suspected she already knew.
Good. It would make things simpler.
The castle disappeared behind them as the tree line closed in, the torchlight swallowed, the sounds of the courtyard replaced by the soft thud of hooves on packed earth and the distant sound of something moving high in the canopy.
His men were quiet. The horses were steady. The night held.
He kept his eyes on the path ahead and his attention everywhere else.
"Ye arrived early," she said.
He'd been wondering when she'd get there. "Aye."
"Me faither wasnae expectin' ye until dawn."
"Nay. He wasnae."
She waited.
He could feel her waiting, patient and deliberate.
"I dinnae like arrivin' when I'm expected," he said.
"Why?"
"Because if someone kens when ye're comin', they can plan fer it."
She was quiet for a moment, turning that over. "So ye planned to arrive early. Before anyone expected ye."
"Aye."
"And ye came through the gates just as the attack began."
"Just after." A beat. "I'd have preferred just before."
"They were already in the garden," she said. It wasn't an accusation. Just fact, laid out plainly, the way she seemed to prefer things. "If ye'd been any later, it might have been bad."
"I wasnae."
She exhaled, very quietly. "Nay. Ye werenae."
The path narrowed and he guided the horse through without slowing.
Branches closed on either side, and she didn't flinch or tighten, just moved with it, which told him something.
She was comfortable on horseback. She was comfortable in the dark, or at least practiced at appearing so. She was, he was beginning to understand, considerably more composed than most people would be right after having their castle attacked and their life upended.
He found that interesting.
"Did ye ken?" she said. "Before taenight. That there might be trouble."
"I kent there was a previous betrothal." He paused. "And that it had ended badly."
"That's a delicate way tae put it."
"I'm occasionally delicate."
She made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. Almost one. "Me faither didnae tell ye the full of it."
"Nay."
"Daes that bother ye?"
He considered that honestly. "It would've been useful information."
"Aye," she said quietly. "I imagine it would've."
Ahead, Torvald raised a hand and the column slowed briefly, then moved again, whatever he'd heard or seen resolving itself into nothing.
Ivar watched the trees on either side and waited until his shoulders settled before he spoke again.
"Are ye all right?" he said.
"Ye've asked me that several times taenight."
"Ye've given me an unconvincin' answer several times taenight."
She was quiet for a moment.
"I'm tired," she said finally. "And I'm angry. And I'm on a horse in the dark with a man I dinnae ken, ridin' away from the only home I've ever had." A pause. "But I'm nae hurt. If that's what ye're askin'."
"It was."
"Then aye. I'm all right."
He believed approximately half of that. He left the other half alone.
The forest thickened around them, the path winding south and west, the smell of pine replacing the smoke they'd ridden out of.
Somewhere to the left, water moved over stones, a burn running fast with the recent rain. One of his men said something low to another and was answered with a grunt.
"Can I ask ye somethin'?" she said.
"Ye've been askin' me things since the storage room."
"What did ye want tae ask?"
She shifted slightly. Not the uncomfortable shift from earlier, just settling.
"Yer men," she said. "They dinnae hesitate. Any of them. They moved intae formation before ye'd finished givin' the order."
"Of course, they're well trained."
"It's more than that." She paused. "They trust ye. There's a difference between men who follow orders and men who trust the person givin' them. Yers dae both."
He looked at the back of her head. At the dark hair escaping its pins in the wind, the straight set of her shoulders, the careful way she'd just described something most people wouldn't have noticed at all.
"Aye," he said. "They dae."
"How long have ye been laird?"
"Eleven years."
"Ye were young."
"Aye."
"Was it..." She stopped. Started again. "Did ye have family tae help ye? When ye took it on? Anyone?"
He felt it land before she'd finished the sentence.
The shape of that question, innocent and practical on the surface, and underneath it, the exact place he didn't let people look.
"Nae anymore," he said.
The words came out even. He made sure of it. But the silence that followed had a different quality than the ones before it.
He was thankful that she didn't push. She didn't soften it with something careful and well-meaning that would have made it worse. She just let it sit there.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly.
He said nothing. He looked at the path and kept his eyes there, and they rode on.
The problem announced itself approximately an hour later and Matilda dealt with it the way she dealt with most uncomfortable things, by deciding firmly that it wasn't happening and waiting for it to resolve itself.
It did not resolve itself.
It got considerably worse.
She shifted in the saddle. Then shifted back.
She made herself stop, which helped for approximately four minutes before the awareness returned with renewed insistence and she shifted again.
"What's wrong?" Ivar asked.
"Naethin'."
"Ye've moved six times in the past ten minutes."
Matilda adjusted again in the saddle, then went still out of sheer spite. "I'm uncomfortable. It's the horse."
"Ye were fine on the horse an hour ago."
"People change."
The answer came out crisp, but another shift betrayed her immediately. She bit the inside of her cheek. The blasted saddle had become unbearable. Every step of the horse seemed to jolt directly through her bones and into the last scraps of her composure.
"I'm fine," she added, because dignity, once cornered, was best defended with lies.
He went quiet.
She felt that more than if he had answered. The stillness of him behind her. The steady line of his chest at her back. The reins stayed loose in his hands, his breathing even, his body maddeningly at ease while she was slowly being murdered by embarrassment.
She fixed her gaze on the dark between the horse's ears and tried to think of literally anything else. Rain. Battlefields. Death. A convent.
"Dae ye need tae stop?"
"Nay."
"Matilda."
"I said nay."
The horse kept its patient rhythm beneath them. Somewhere ahead, leather creaked. One of the men murmured low to his mount. The whole company went on as though nothing at all was happening, which felt deeply unfair considering her private suffering had by now become biblical in scale.
Behind her, Ivar did not shift an inch.
That was almost the worst part. He did not fidget or sigh or pretend not to notice. He simply remained there, warm and solid and infuriatingly aware.
"Dae ye need tae—"
"I said I'm fine."
"—relieve yerself?"
The words fell into the dark between them.
Heat climbed her neck so quickly she felt it in her ears. Thank God he was behind her and could not properly see her face.
"That is an absolutely inappropriate question."
His tone stayed maddeningly level. "Is it a nay or an aye?"
"It is an inappropriate question, and I'll thank ye tae stop talkin' about it."
"Because we can stop."
"I dinnae need tae stop."
"Yer back has gone completely rigid."
"Me back is always rigid."
"It isnae," he said. "Right now, it could be used tae build a bridge."
She stared ahead in frozen silence.
Annoyingly, the corner of her mouth threatened to twitch. She killed it at once. He did not deserve that victory.
"I am perfectly comfortable," she said.
"Aye." His voice carried the faintest trace of amusement now. "Ye look near blessed."
She breathed in carefully through her nose, then out again. Very slow. Very measured. Like a woman in full command of herself, and not one heartbeat away from throwing herself into a bush out of desperation.
Behind her, he still had not laughed. Had not pressed. Had not made it easy.
It was deeply irritating.
"We can stop," he said again, quieter this time. "It's nae—"
"If ye finish that sentence, I will get off this horse and walk tae Mull."
As if to mock her, the horse stepped unevenly over a rut. Ivar's arm tightened just long enough to steady her, his forearm briefly hard across her middle before he loosened again.
"On that knee?" he asked.
"On that knee."
He said nothing for exactly three seconds. She counted them.
Then, "Torvald."
She closed her eyes.
He really could not leave a thing alone.
"Keep movin'," he called ahead. "We'll catch up with ye."
"I didnae say ye need tae stop," she said, twisting slightly to glare back at him and immediately regretting the motion.
"Ye didnae have tae
He was already slowing the horse, already swinging down with that easy, irritating competence men like him seemed to possess in all things.
Before she could newly object, his hands were at her waist.
Firm. Warm. Certain.
He lifted her down as though she weighed nothing at all and set her on the ground with infuriating care, his hands gone the instant her boots touched earth.
She stood there for one foolish moment, heat lingering where his palms had been.
His men kept riding.
Not one of them looked back.
The nearest found something of vast importance in the trees. Another appeared wholly consumed by the condition of his horse's left ear. A third stared straight down the path with pretended blindness.
Cowards. Every last one.
"The trees are thick enough there," Ivar said, nodding to the left.