Chapter 12 #2
He had told her two weeks and he had meant it and he was going to keep it and what was left were not very many days at all, and she had laughed in his kitchen at four in the morning with flour in her hair, and he was going to need to find something useful to do with himself before he saw her again.
Once he turned the corridor away from the kitchen, he paused for a moment. The cold air was a mercy against his heated skin.
He had intended, when he took the Pact and agreed to this marriage, to be fair to her. To be decent. To give her time and space and not make her afraid. But he felt the weight of his own desire like an anchor.
He had not intended that.
He needed to put his mind to something useful.
"Get me Torvald."
He watched the guard hurry away. His jaw remained set, his focus narrowing back to the keep.
Torvald's report came that evening after supper. The steward’s face was grave in the torchlight.
"Offshore," he said, from the study doorway. "Small vessel. Single sail. Betha's lad saw it from the north cliffs an hour past. By the time Erikson got up there it was gone." Torvald’s hands were behind his back, his posture alert.
Ivar set down the map. He felt a cold, familiar spark of anger. "Running without lights?"
"Aye."
"That's nae a fisherman." He stood. His shoulders squared, the Laird of Duart back in command. "I'll take the north cliffs meself. Double the watch on the south. And put two more men on the corridor outside our chamber."
"Already done," Torvald said, and handed him his cloak. The exchange was quick, practiced.
The north cliffs were black and cold, the wind off the sound sharp and purposeful.
He walked the full length of them with Torvald two steps behind, checking the coves, the angles, the places a small vessel could sit dark and watch the keep without being seen from the dock.
The dark was absolute, the sea a restless, hidden monster below.
Nothing.
The water was empty. Whatever had been there was gone. He stared into the void, his mind cataloging every approach.
He stood at the cliff edge and looked out at the dark sound. The wind whipped his cloak around his legs, a restless, biting thing.
"MacDougall," he said. The name was a curse in the cold air.
"Aye. Probably." Torvald stood beside him, hands behind his back, eyes on the water. "Countin’ guards. Looking for gaps."
"Then we give him none." Ivar’s jaw was a hard line against the dark.
He looked down at the keep below them. The torches along the wall burning steady. The window of their chamber, amber and lit, the candles behind the glass burning steady. The sight of that light made a strange, protective heat rise in his chest.
He stood there longer than he needed to.
"She's good fer ye," Torvald said. The voice was quiet, a soft probe into a tender place.
"Aye, well." Ivar's eyes stayed on the window. "Dinnae go writing songs about it."
"The men have noticed."
“She threw flour at me."
"Aye." Torvald's mouth moved. "That's what I mean."
Ivar said nothing to that.
The amber light held in the window, and he stood there looking at it longer than the looking required, and something underneath the dry answer he'd given was considerably less dry than the answer.
"I didnae intend fer it," he said quietly. "Any of it." The confession was a whisper in the wind.
Torvald said nothing.
"She's…" He stopped. His jaw tightened. Tried again.
"I went looking fer her this mornin’ because she wasnae in the bed, and fer the three minutes it took me tae find her I was scared.
" He stopped again. Looked at the water.
"I dinnae like that. What those three minutes felt like.
I cared more than I should have." His hands were clenched at his sides, his knuckles white.
Torvald was quiet for a long moment.
"Nay," he said. "I imagine ye dinnae like what it felt like." The steward’s voice was steady, a grounding force.
Ivar thought about flour on her jaw and a laugh that had come out startled and real, and himself standing there watching it like a man who had forgotten such a thing was possible. The warmth of it was terrifying.
"I didnae intend fer it," he said. Quiet, to the cliff edge, to the dark water below. He felt the weight of his own admission, a new, heavy responsibility.
Torvald was quiet for a moment. Then he said: "I ken."
"It complicates things."
"Most things worth havin' are complicated." Torvald looked at him, his gaze wise and unblinking.
Ivar looked at him sideways.
"MacDougall. The King. The sheet. All of it is already too much on her." He felt a surge of fierce, protective anger. "She's nae what I expected," Ivar said.
"Nay," Torvald agreed. "She isnae."
"She's more." He looked back at the water. The word was a quiet, profound realization.
Ivar looked at the window again. The candles still burning. Her in there and the laugh he'd watched come out of her like something she hadn't known she still had. He felt his breath hitch in his throat.
He thought about her eyes in the kitchen. Steady, direct, looking back at him without flinching. He thought about her eyes in the kitchen. Steady, direct. She hadn't flinched.
They walked back down to the keep in silence, and Ivar went upstairs and opened the door quietly. The air in the chamber was warm and smelled of wax.
She was in bed with the covers pulled up and a book open in her lap. She looked up when he came in and her eyes found his immediately, a quiet question in them.
"Naething," he said. "A boat offshore. We found naething." He moved across the room, his voice a low rumble.
She held his gaze for a moment, reading him the way she read everything. Quickly, thoroughly, filing what she found. Then she nodded and returned to her book.
He stood there one beat longer than the answer required.
He crossed to the chair and took off his cloak. He sat down. The wood creaked under his weight, something familiar, solid against the unfamiliar that had been happening all night inside his chest.
The candles burned in every corner.
She turned a page. The keep was quiet around them. It was warm, genuinely warm, and she was here and the door was shut.
She was there, still turning pages, still breathing in the slow, even way she breathed when she was actually absorbed in something rather than performing absorption.
He watched her without appearing to. He had become very good at that.
He sat in the chair and stared at the fire and let the room do what it was doing, which was being warm and lit and full of her without asking anything of him.
His heart was beating a rhythm he hadn't decided on yet.
He thought about the cliff. About what he'd said to Torvald in the dark. On that north cliff he'd said things aloud that he hadn't meant to.
She's more.
Two words. Plain and unguarded and entirely without the armor he usually wore. Torvald had said nothing in response, which was the most effective thing Torvald could have done.
He stared at the fire.
He understood now that he was going to be thinking about those words for considerably longer than he should. That was new. That was, if he was being precise about it, the part that frightened him.
He did not look at her again.
He sat with the fire and the candles and the sound of her breathing and told himself that was enough.
It wasn't enough.
But it was what he had, and he was holding on to it.