Chapter 10 #2
The lairds lingered, the feeling was easy. Matilda sat in the middle of it and let herself feel, briefly and without examining it too closely, that this was not the worst place she had ever been.
It was Torvald who finally said something to Ivar that made him stand.
She stood with him.
They were nearly at the door when Henry materialized at Ivar's shoulder.
"Laird Gunnarsson." He had the timing of a man who had been waiting for the crowd to thin. "The matter of confirmation."
Ivar looked at him. "What about it."
"The King requires proof of consummation. It's standard under the terms of the law. Like we did with the other lairds."
The words landed in her chest like something cold.
She knew what it meant. She'd known it was coming.
She wasn't naive about the law, about what the Pact required, about what men like Henry considered their right to witness and record. She'd known it, and she'd put it in a box and set the box aside, because there was only so much a person could hold in one day.
But hearing it said aloud, there, in the middle of the hall with half his clan still within earshot. The sheet, the proof, the assumption that her body was a document requiring authentication. She felt her jaw tighten and her hands go very still at her sides.
She did not look at Ivar.
She looked at Henry. At his careful, cataloguing eyes and his travel-stained sleeve and the complete absence of anything on his face that suggested he understood what he was asking.
"Nay," Ivar said.
Henry blinked. "I beg yer pardon?"
"Nay." Flat. Final. "There'll be nay proof. Nay sheet, nay witness, nay confirmation of any kind. The wedding has been witnessed by yer own eyes and the eyes of every person in this hall." He looked at Henry steadily. "That's what ye'll report tae the King."
Matilda breathed.
Slowly, through her nose, the way she'd taught herself. Her hands uncurled at her sides one finger at a time.
"The Pact requires the sheet," Henry said.
"The Pact required a marriage. There's been a marriage. We're done."
Henry opened his mouth. Looked at Ivar's face. Looked at the other Viking lairds who had arranged themselves nearby, cups in hand, eyes elsewhere. He closed his mouth.
"I'll need tae note the refusal," he said carefully.
"Note what ye like," Ivar said. "Good evenin'."
And with that Henry left.
Matilda stood in the middle of the emptying hall and looked at the floor for a moment. Then she looked at Ivar.
He was already looking at her. Not with the careful softness she'd spent years dreading. Just looking. Waiting to see what she needed.
"Thank ye," she said.
He nodded once. Then he offered her his arm, and she took it, and they walked out of the hall together.
The chamber was quiet after the noise of the hall.
Matilda stood in the center of it and breathed.
The distant voices, the footsteps on the stairs, the fire Sigrid had built before leaving. The candles lit in every corner, all of them, because he'd told Sigrid and Sigrid had done it.
She heard the door.
Ivar entered, closed it behind him, and locked it. The sound, solid, final, did something unexpected to her chest. Not dread. Something else. The feeling of a door that was closed from the inside rather than the outside.
He turned.
They looked at each other across the lit room.
"He'll try again," she said. "Henry. Tomorrow, or the day after."
"Aye. Let him try."
"And ye'll say nay again."
"Aye."
She looked at him steadily. "Why?"
He met her eyes. "Because it's none of his concern."
She held his gaze.
There was more in that answer than the words of it and she understood it without needing it unpacked. He'd looked at Henry and said no the way he said everything that was final.
No anger, no performance.
Just nay.
"Thank ye," she said. "Fer all of it."
He nodded once.
Then he reached up and unclasped his raven brooch, set it on the table, and pulled his tunic over his head.
Matilda turned around.
The wall in front of her was very interesting. Stone, mostly. Some mortar.
"What," she said, "are ye daein'?"
"Gettin' comfortable. It's me chamber."
"It's me chamber as well now."
"Aye. Which means ye can dae the same if ye like."
She pressed her lips together.
Behind her, she could hear him moving. The buckle of a belt, the soft drop of something onto the chair, and she kept her eyes on the wall and her breathing very deliberate and told herself this was entirely normal. People changed clothes. It was a normal thing that people did.
It was the sound of it. That was the problem. The specific domestic sounds of a man she'd known for two days, making himself at home six feet behind her.
"Ye can turn around," he said. "I'm decent."
She turned around.
He was in the chair by the hearth in his breeches and nothing else.
She looked at him for exactly one second and wished she had not, because once she did, she could not help seeing too much.
The way the firelight caught across his shoulders, the bare line of his collarbone, the quiet strength of his forearms braced on his knees, and the particular stillness of a man entirely at ease in his own skin, which was, she was discovering, its own specific problem.
She looked at the middle distance instead.
"The bed is yers," he said, not looking at her. He said it the way he said things he meant completely, no room around the edges of it.
"Ye're nae sharin' it with me?"
"The chair is fine." He looked up then. "The bed is yers, Matilda. I'll stay here."
She looked at him. At the fire on his face and his hands loose between his knees, and the complete absence of anything she needed to brace against.
She'd spent the walk up the stairs trying to think about it plainly.
Two weeks. He'd said it in front of his entire clan, and of course he'd meant it.
That she was nearly certain of. What she was less certain of was what she wanted him to mean.
That was the part she hadn't expected. She'd prepared herself for dread.
She had not prepared herself for the absence of it.
He said two weeks and he means it. And if he didn't, what would ye dae?
She hadn't found an answer.
"Ye'll be uncomfortable," she said out loud instead.
"I've slept in worse."
"That isnae the reassurance ye think it is."
The corner of his mouth moved.
"Get intae bed," he said. "Ye're exhausted."
She was exhausted.
She'd been awake since before the bannocks and the day had been the kind of long that had nothing to do with hours. She looked at the bed. She looked at him. She thought about the kiss. The beat it had lasted, the second beat after that, his hand warm against her jaw, and looked back at the bed.
As though lighting every candle in a room for a woman he'd known for two days was simply the next thing that needed doing. She looked at the floor because she didn't trust what her face was doing, and stayed there until she heard him set the taper down.
There were things she wanted to say but she didn't trust her voice with everything she was feeling.
She climbed into bed and pulled the covers up and lay on her back and looked at the amber ceiling. Behind her she heard him settle into the chair, shifting once, then going still.
The room was warm. The candles burned in every corner.
"Ye can look if ye want," he said, from the chair.
She stared at the ceiling. "I beg yer pardon."
"Ye've been very carefully nae looking since I took me tunic off. Ye dinnae have tae be careful about it."
"I wasnae looking."
"Aye, I ken.” A pause, and she could hear the restraint in it, the space he was leaving deliberately. "That's what I'm sayin'. Ye can."
"I dinnae want tae."
"Aye ye dae."
She pulled the covers up to her chin and stared at the ceiling. She was absolutely furious about how accurate that was.
Her face was doing something she was profoundly grateful he couldn't see from the chair. She could feel the heat across her cheeks and down her neck, and she stared at the ceiling and said nothing.
She had looked. For only one second, and she'd seen enough exactly why she should not look again.
She was absolutely not thinking about the firelight moving across the plane of his chest, or the way his shoulders held their breadth even at rest, or the line of muscle along his forearm where it braced against his knee.
She was not thinking about the tautness of him, the economy of a body that had never carried anything unnecessary.
She was certainly not thinking about the way his hair had fallen forward slightly when he'd bent to set the taper down, or the strip of skin at his collar where the candlelight caught and held.
She was not thinking about any of it.
"Ye are," she said, to the ceiling, with great dignity, "the most insufferable man I have ever encountered in me entire life."
"And yet," he said, "here we are."
She said nothing. She closed her eyes. From the chair, she could hear, faint and quickly swallowed, him trying not to laugh.
Matilda's face was burning. "I looked fer exactly one second, Laird Gunnarsson. Dinnae let it go tae yer head."
"One second is a start," he murmured, not hiding his amusement. Then added, "Good night, Matilda."
"Good night," she muttered through clenched teeth.
The fire crackled, and the candles continued their slow burn.
She did not sleep immediately.
She lay in the warmth and looked at the amber ceiling and thought about a door barred from the inside. About a hand that had waited one beat before it touched her face. About a man moving through a room, lighting candles in the dark without being asked, and not making anything of it.
Two weeks, and after that, I have tae consummate.
Damn ye, Ivar. I looked fer longer than one second.
The chair creaked once as he shifted and went still. She listened to his steady breathing and just watched the candles burn.