Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
"Hold."
The gates were already opening as they rode in, someone having spotted them on the path down, and Ivar brought his horse through at a walk and let the clan look.
They looked.
He'd expected it, of course. News traveled fast on a small island and his people were not ones for pretending they hadn't heard something when they had.
They lined the yard in the way people lined yards when they were trying to appear as though they'd simply been there already.
Stable hands who'd found reasons to be near the gate, kitchen women who'd stepped out for air at a convenient moment, three of his older council members who were doing an unconvincing impression of a casual conversation near the keep steps.
He dismounted and turned back to the horse.
Matilda was already moving to dismount herself, which he'd expected, and he put his hands at her waist before she'd finished deciding how to manage it. She let him, which meant the crossing had tired her more than she was going to say.
He set her on the ground and stepped back immediately.
She straightened her cloak. Looked at the yard. Looked at the people looking at her.
To his surprise, Matilda didn't shrink. She didn't perform either, no smile, no attempt to win anyone over. She just stood there and let them look back, calm and still and utterly composed.
He watched two of the kitchen women exchange a glance, before he turned to Torvald. "Get them stabled and fed, brither. Council in an hour."
"Aye." Torvald took the reins, then looked at Matilda briefly. He offered a sharp, singular nod of approval, then he moved on.
Sigrid was on the steps.
She'd been his housekeeper for six years, and she had learned how to assess situations quickly. She equally had opinions about them that she kept to herself until they were useful.
She was looking at Matilda now with the focused attention of someone trying to make up her mind.
"Sigrid," he said. "This is Lady Matilda MacInnes. She's had a long night and a longer mornin'. See tae her, please."
"Aye, me laird." Sigrid's eyes moved to him briefly, then back to Matilda. "Chamber's been prepared already, we were expecting ye."
"Good." He lowered his voice by half, making sure Matilda wouldn’t hear him. "Put candles in her chamber, as many as ye have. Keep them lit."
Sigrid didn't ask why. That was one of the things he valued most about her. "All of them?"
"All of them. And dinnae let them burn out without replacin' them."
She nodded once, no questions, no looks, and turned to Matilda with the brisk warmth of a woman who had decided something and intended to act on it.
"Come, me lady. I'll show ye the way. There's hot water waitin' and somethin' tae eat if ye need it."
Matilda glanced back at him once and nodded. It was clearly not a request for permission, but the acknowledgment of a silent bridge that had built between them in the chaos of the yard. Then she followed Sigrid up the steps and through the door and was gone.
He stood in the yard for a moment.
"She held up well," Torvald said, from beside him, not looking at him.
"Aye," Ivar said. "She did."
He turned toward the Great Hall and put it out of his mind. He had an hour.
The council chamber was low-ceilinged and smelled of tallow.
His Council was already there when he arrived.
Torvald at his right, Bronn––grey-haired and sharp-eyed, who'd served Ivar's father before him––at the far end with the expression of a man who'd been saving opinions, old Einar with his hands flat on the table and his eyes sharp as always, and two others who filled their chairs without doing much else.
Ivar sat and they looked at him.
"Hello, gentlemen. It’s good tae see ye. Let’s begin,” he said and looked to his left. “MacDougall," he nodded at one of his council members. "Talk."
Bronn leaned forward. He was broad and grey-haired and had been on Mull longer than anyone in the room.
"Word came two days ago that he'd been movin' men south. We dinnae ken toward what."
"Now we ken," Torvald said. He explained what had happened.
"Aye, now we ken." Bronn looked at Ivar. "How many did ye count?"
"Eight at the castle. There will have been more we didnae see." Ivar looked at Einar. "I want the coastal watch doubled. Anyone comin' tae Mull in the next fortnight gets stopped and questioned before they set foot on the shingle."
"The King's men are expected tomorrow," Einar said. "Along with the other lairds and their wives."
"They get stopped too. Question first, recognize later." He looked around the table. "MacDougall isnae stupid. He'll try again. Different approach, different timing, but he'll try. I want nay gaps."
He paused. "And what about the weddin’?"
"The envoy will want it done within the week," Bronn said. "King's orders."
"I ken the King's orders." He looked at Torvald. "Arrangements?"
"Hall can be ready in three days," Torvald said. "Four if ye want it done properly."
"Four. Dae it properly." He looked back at Bronn. "And I want a man on her at all times when she's outside the keep. She daesnae ken the island. She daesnae ken the people. Until MacDougall is dealt with, she daesnae go anywhere without eyes on her."
"She'll love that," Torvald said, with the tone of a man who had spent approximately twelve hours watching Matilda MacInnes operate and had formed views.
"She daesnae have tae love it."
"Aye, I'm just sayin'."
"I ken what ye're sayin'." Ivar looked at him. "Two men. Good ones. Ones who ken how tae be present without bein' obvious about it."
Torvald nodded. "I ken the ones."
Einar cleared his throat. "There's the matter of the sheets," he said, in the tone of a man raising something he'd rather not raise. "The envoy will expect the marriage sheets."
"The envoy," Ivar said, "can expect what he likes. We'll deal with that when we get there."
Einar looked like he had more to say about that. He chose not to say it.
Wise.
Bronn shifted in his chair, turning his cup in his hands, and said, mostly to the table. "His brither wouldnae have stood fer any of this business. Raud always said bringin' Highland women into Norse keeps was askin' fer the kind of trouble that didnae announce itself before it arrived."
The room went quiet.
Not the quiet of men who hadn't heard. The quiet of men who had heard and were very carefully deciding where to look.
Ivar looked at Bronn.
Bronn realized what he'd said approximately two seconds after he'd said it. The color moved up his neck. His mouth closed.
The silence lasted long enough that everyone in the room understood what it meant.
"Me brither," Ivar said, and his voice came out level because he made it level, each word placed down with the care of a man who knew that the alternative was something he wasn't going to do in this room, "is nae here tae have opinions about anythin'."
He looked at Bronn steadily. "And the Pact is what keeps Mull standin'. Ye'd dae well tae remember that." He looked around the table slowly. "All of ye."
Nobody spoke.
"We're done," he said, and stood, and left.
The hall at supper was fuller than it needed to be.
Half his clan had apparently discovered urgent reasons to eat in the Great Hall that night, and they were doing a poor job of pretending otherwise. Heads that turned a fraction too far, conversations that paused a beat too long whenever Matilda reached for her cup.
She'd noticed. He could tell by the way she'd straightened her spine about ten minutes ago and hadn't moved it since.
She was sitting across from him in a green dress Sigrid had found for her. Her hair up properly for the first time since the night they'd left her father's castle, and she looked,
Beautiful.
He picked up his cup and looked at it instead.
She looked like she belonged there. That was the problem.
She'd walked into his castle twelve hours before, not knowing a single person in it, and she was already reading the room the way you read a room you intended to stay in. Quietly. Thoroughly.
Her eyes moved across the tables and came back, and he'd watched her file three separate things in the past two minutes without her expression changing once.
It was deeply inconvenient.
Her sleeve caught the edge of her plate. She steadied it with one hand before it went anywhere, quick and neat, and went back to her supper without comment.
He'd watched the whole thing. He wasn't sure why.
She reached for her cup and caught him looking. He looked back at his plate.
"The dress," he said. "Daes it fit?"
"Well enough." She smoothed the front of it briefly with one hand. "Sigrid has a good eye."
"She daes."
A pause. The hall murmured around them.
"It's nae me favorite color though," she said.
He looked up. She was looking at the dress, not at him, her chin tilted down slightly, her attention seemingly on her food, but the spark in her eyes was unmistakable.
"What's yer color, then?" he asked.
"Blue."
He glanced at the blue cloak folded over the back of her chair, where she'd draped it when she had sat down, and said nothing.
She followed his eyes. Looked at the cloak, then looked back at him.
"Aye, well," she said, and reached for her cup.
"Still, the dress suits ye," he said, his voice dropping into that low, rough register. "Though I suppose I am doomed tae be a disappointment tae yer wardrobe".
"Ye are merely an unavoidable presence, Laird Gunnarsson," she replied, a faint, almost-smile tugging at her mouth. "Nae necessarily a disappointing one."
Her fingers brushed the edge of the table at the same moment his hand shifted, and for the briefest instant the back of her knuckles grazed his.
It should have been nothing.
Yet he felt her stop. He looked at her hand, then up at her face.
Neither of them moved.
The noise of the hall seemed to blur at the edges.
He withdrew his hand first and reached for his wine, though he did not drink. He only held the cup a moment, his gaze lowered, as if choosing his words more carefully than usual.