Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ivar sat at the head of the table in the Great Hall and looked at Henry.
"We'll begin," he said.
"Me laird, it would be preferable tae wait a little longer."
"Now, Henry."
The torchlight caught the hard, flat planes of his face and made his eyes look like pits of dark glass, and Henry, to his credit, held the gaze without flinching, which told Ivar something about the man, though not enough to make him useful.
Henry had his paper in front of him. Of course, he did. Ivar watched the way the quill hovered between sentences, a small, bird-like tremor in the man's fingers that was either nerves or habit. He hadn't decided which.
The two men who had come with the delegation sat very still on either side of him.
Torvald was at Ivar's right. Bronn and Einar were ranged along the left, with two others who filled their chairs and occasionally said things worth hearing.
The hall was drafty, the smell of damp stone and old smoke hanging in the air, the fire doing its best against both.
"The Crown's expectation," Henry said, setting his quill down with the precision of a man who wanted to be heard without the distraction of movement, "is straightforward.
Ye must demonstrate Mull's stability visibly and unambiguously.
Nae merely assert it. The assertion has been made twice and noted twice and has nae satisfied the court.
" He looked at Ivar over the top of his paper.
Clinical. Assessing. Looking for the crack.
"What is required is evidence. Public. Observable. Reported back by men who were present."
"I understand what a public gatherin' is," Ivar said.
"Then ye understand that its success depends on presentation. The laird and his wife must appear at the town fair."
"They'll appear. Taegether. Fer as long as necessary."
"The court will want tae see the sheets."
The table went quiet.
Ivar looked at him for a long moment. Not the look he gave men who had said something stupid. The look he gave men who had said something he intended to answer only once.
"The sheets," he said, "are nae the court's concern."
Henry's quill hovered. "Laird Gunnarsson, with respect, the Crown has a legitimate interest in kennin' what is going on in this marriage."
"The Crown has an interest in the Pact standin'.
" Ivar's voice hadn't risen. It didn’t need to.
"The Pact stands. The marriage is witnessed, sealed, and binding.
What happens in me own chamber between me and me wife is mine, and it will stay mine, regardless of what the court believes it has a right to inspect.
" He held Henry's gaze and let the silence work.
"Once again, me wife is nae evidence tae be collected and filed.
She is Lady Matilda Gunnarsson of Mull. What passes between us is ours. "
Henry's pen hovered. "Laird Gunnarsson, with respect, the optics of—"
"The optics," Ivar said, "are nae yer concern.
Me wife is nae a prop in a stage performance fer the King's peace of mind.
" He held Henry's gaze and let the silence work.
"She'll be there. I'll be there. The people of this island will be there, and the merchants, and yer men, and anyone else who wants to come.
They'll see a laird and his wife at their village fair.
" He paused. "If that's insufficient fer the court, then the court and I have a disagreement that willnae be resolved by managin' where me wife stands or how she looks at me. "
The fire hissed. Somewhere down the table, someone released a careful breath.
Torvald said nothing. He didn't need to. His hand rested on the hilt of his blade with the relaxed certainty of a man who had already decided how the evening was going to go if it needed to go that way.
Henry picked up his quill then set it down again. Ivar watched him make the calculation. How hard to push, what the ceiling was, whether this was the wall or just a door being held shut, and watched him arrive at the right answer.
Bronn cleared his throat loudly, with the energy of a man changing a subject before someone bled on the floor. "The harbor," he said. "The order around the docks. We'll want every merchant vessel checked before it berths."
"Aye." Ivar let the shift happen. "Every vessel. Every man aboard. I want faces matched tae names before anyone sets foot on the shingle."
"The coastal watch?" Einar said.
"Doubled fer the duration. Before and after." He looked at Torvald. "Erikson's men on the north approach, our best on the south. Anyone who comes to this island who wasnae invited, I want tae ken about it before they've finished tying off."
Torvald nodded. One sharp movement, jaw set. Settled.
Henry was writing again. Ivar let him write.
Whatever went on that paper was going back to the King regardless, and the King would read what he read, and the court would think what it thought, and none of that changed a single thing Ivar was or wasn't going to do.
He watched the ink dry with the patience of a man who had already made every decision that mattered and was simply waiting for the room to catch up.
"The Crown's eyes remain on Mull," Henry said, without looking up. The tone of a prepared closin'. Neat. Deliberate.
"They're welcome tae look," Ivar said. "There's naethin' here tae hide."
He stood, and the meeting ended.
The garden was cold but bright, the afternoon sun finding the gap between the east wing and the keep wall and laying thin strips of warmth across the gravel path. The air was still.
Matilda was walking the circuit with Sigrid, their breath misting, their voices low. She had her blue cloak on, the one from Kinlochaline.
He crossed toward them without hurry, his eyes finding hers first. A fraction of a second before they moved to Sigrid, but she caught it. He stopped a few feet short of where they stood.
"Sigrid." He said it pleasantly, with the neutrality of a man who wanted a word with his wife and was being civil about it. "I'll walk with her a while."
Sigrid looked at him. Then at Matilda.
The look she gave Matilda communicated several things without requiring any of them to be spoken aloud. Among them was that she had opinions about being dismissed from her own garden circuit and was choosing, on this occasion, to keep them to herself.
"Aye, me laird," she said, with great dignity, and went.
Matilda watched her go.
He matched her pace without adjusting it, settling into the circuit as though he'd been walking it all along, and the silence that opened between them was the comfortable kind. The kind that had been building for two weeks without either of them deciding to build it.
Ivar told Matilda about the Council meeting with the envoy.
"Henry, the envoy," he said, "he wants us tae go tae the town fair tae be observed."
"Observed how?" She kept her eyes on the path, but he caught the small shift in her shoulders that meant she was already running calculations.
"How we present ourselves. Where we stand. How we look at each other." He paused. "He had specific thoughts about how a wife ought tae position herself beside her husband fer maximum political effect."
She turned her head. "He said that."
"Near enough."
"And what did ye tell him?"
"I told him nay."
She was quiet for a moment. The gravel turned under their boots, slow and even. "He accepted that."
"He accepted that I wasnae going tae change me mind about it." He glanced at her sideways. "There's a difference."
"Aye." She made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "I'm familiar with that particular distinction."
"I imagine ye are."
She looked at him then, properly, and the corner of her mouth had gone tight. "He'll try again. At the gathering. When he thinks ye're distracted."
"Aye."
"And ye'll say nay again."
"Aye."
"Even if it costs ye politically."
He said nothing for a moment. They reached the end of the path and turned, the dead herb stems chattering softly against the wall.
"There are things I'll spend political goodwill on," he said finally. "Henry's opinions about where ye stand isnae one of them." He paused. "Ye're me wife. Ye stand where ye want tae stand. That's the end of it."
"That's a very straightforward position for a man dealing with the King's envoy," she said.
"I'm a straightforward man."
She made the sound again, the almost-laugh. "Ye're the least straightforward man I've ever encountered."
"And yet the position stands."
She glanced at him.
He kept his face composed, which cost him something, because she was looking at him the way she did since the bath. With something behind her eyes that had moved closer, and he was very aware of it, and the exact number of inches between his arm and hers.
Two weeks had changed the arithmetic of proximity entirely.
Before, he'd been careful about distance, deliberate, considerate, always leaving her room.
Now the room was still there but it was hers to close or not close, and she had been closing it by degrees, so gradually he might have missed it if he hadn't been paying attention.
"Ye're daein’ it again," she said.
"Daein’ what?"
"That thing where ye go quiet and think very loudly."
He looked at her. "I dinnae think loudly."
"Ye dae" She turned at the fig tree without breaking stride, unhurried, entirely at home in that small cold garden that she'd found herself and made hers. "Ye get a look. Like ye're running calculations."
"I'm always running calculations."
"Aye, but usually they're about coastal patrol routes and grain stores." She kept her eyes forward but she was almost smiling. "These ones look different."
The silence that followed lasted exactly long enough to be its own answer. He watched her register that and decide, graciously, not to press it, which was its own kind of torture.
They turned at the end of the path.
The afternoon sun had shifted, laying its thin warmth along the south wall now, and she moved toward it instinctively the way she always moved toward light. Not thinking about it, just finding it.
Then she stopped.
There was a flower along the south wall. Late, pale, barely there. Sheltered enough by the stone that it had held on past its season, past any reasonable expectation of survival. Small and stubborn and entirely improbable in the cold.
She looked at it for a long moment without speaking.
"That's beautiful," she said.
She'd simply seen it and said so, the way she said things that were simply true, without dressing them up.
He looked at the flower. Then at her face, which was open in the way it was only when she'd forgotten to manage it.
The cold had put color in her cheeks and the light was on her hair and she was looking at a small pale flower on a wall in his garden as though it had done something worth remarking on.
He was not, absolutely not, thinking about the bath and the steam and the specific warmth of her palm flat against his chest.
He reached past her and pulled the flower by its stem. He held it out.
She turned from the wall and found it there, in his hand, closer than she'd expected. He watched the awareness of that move across her face in the half-second before she composed it.
She took the flower. Her fingers brushed his in the taking of it, and neither of them moved immediately, and the garden was very quiet, and the wall was warm behind her from the afternoon sun.
"Ye pick flowers now," she said. Her voice was steady. Her eyes were not entirely.
"I picked one flower." He dropped his hand. "Dinnae make it a habit."
"God forbid," she said, "anyone think ye capable of a gentle gesture."
"I'm nae gentle. I'm practical. Ye wanted it. It was in me way."
The corner of her mouth curved again. "It was in yer way."
"Aye."
She turned the flower once between her fingers, looking at the pale petals. He felt his own pulse in his palms.
"Thank ye," she said quietly.
Not for the flower only. He could tell by the way she said it, the weight behind it, the steadiness of it. For what he'd said about Henry. For the two weeks and the chair and the things he'd held in place so she could find her own way to put them down.
He held her gaze for a moment.
"Dinnae mention it," he said. And then, because he was very aware of the wall behind her and the inch and a half between them and the fact that they were entirely alone in a small cold garden with no particular reason to stop being alone: "Come. We must prepare fer the fair."
She looked at him. "Now ye're interested in the fair."
"I'm always thinkin’ about it."
"A moment ago ye were very interested in a flower."
"That was practical. I told ye."
She pressed her lips together hard, which meant she was laughing and not going to let it out.
She fell into step beside him toward the door and he held it open and she went through and he followed, and neither of them mentioned the flower again.
She was still holding it when she turned the corridor.
He noticed. He said nothing about it.
He was very good at that.