Chapter 19 #2
He pressed his hand against the edge of the frame, his knuckles white, and looked out at the gray, churning water of the sound. The wind was up, the harbor showing its teeth in whitecaps, and the scent of the salt sea came in cold and sharp around the shutter.
He stood there and forced himself to breathe. He reminded himself that a man who couldn't be questioned today could be questioned tomorrow, and that losing his temper at a window was not a strategy.
He heard her before she reached the door. He knew her footsteps now, lighter than his, quicker, the cadence of a woman who moved with purpose. He didn't turn around.
"Ye should be in bed," she said from the doorway.
"I’ve been in bed fer four days."
"Aye. Because ye had a blade in yer side." She came into the room, stopping a few feet behind him. He could feel the heat of her presence. "The Council is over?"
"Aye."
"And the envoy?"
"Still here. Still watchin' and writin' things down in his silly little notebook." He paused, his gaze fixed on the horizon.
A beat of quiet passed. Then: "Come back to our chamber."
He turned. She was standing in the middle of the study in the dark wool dress she'd been wearing the last two days. Her hair was pinned back with less care than usual, stray wisps framing a face that had changed.
The careful composure she had maintained in the hall was gone. The deliberate neutrality she wore for the envoy was stripped away. What was left was direct, tired, and not particularly interested in managing his reaction.
"Ye sat through a full Council," she said. "Ye walked here from the hall. Oswin said ye should always rest."
"I ken what Oswin said."
"Then ye ken that pushin' yerself today means another three days in bed instead of one." Her voice was flat. Not unkind, but as unyielding as the sea. "Come back tae the chamber."
He looked at her.
There were shadows under her eyes that hadn't been there before the harbor attack. Her hands were still, a sign he'd learned meant she was holding something steady inside.
He thought about the dried blood on her sleeve that she'd dismissed as nothing. He thought about waking in the dark to find her hand on his jaw, her voice anchoring him through the fever, the way she'd held him down with both palms flat and not been gentle about it.
He thought about what it would have taken for her to sit in that chair for four days, watching him bleed.
"Matilda," he said.
"Dinnae." Her jaw tightened. "Whatever ye’re about to say, dinnae. Just come back to the chamber."
He went.
They walked without speaking, through the corridor and up the stone stairs. She stayed at his shoulder the entire way. Not holding on to him, not hovering, but close enough that he could have reached for her without even extending his arm.
The wound pulled with every step, a sharp, physical grounding, and he was almost grateful for it. It gave him something concrete to manage.
In the chamber, she pointed at the bed with the certainty of a woman who was done making suggestions. He sat on the edge of it, and she pulled the small table close, setting the basin and the linen down with that unhesitating, practical calm he had come to realize was a shield.
"Take the tunic off."
He did. She unwound the linen at his side and checked the wound closely and thoroughly, her lower lip caught between her teeth. The stitches were holding. He watched her face while she assessed the damage.
"It’s clean," she said softly.
"Aye."
She began rewinding the fresh linen, her hands steady and certain against his skin.
The ache in his side was a constant reminder that his body was betraying him, but it was the quiet that threatened to break him. The silence stretched, heavy with things unsaid.
Matilda, too, had become quiet, her gaze soft, almost unreadable. She had never been one to rush into words, but today, there was something more to her silence. Something that felt like waiting, like she was holding something back, a truth unspoken.
He finally turned to her, his throat tight as if the words had to break through something thick, something stubborn. And when he spoke, it was with a kind of low, reluctant honesty that felt foreign to him.
"I had a brither."
Her eyes widened slightly, but she said nothing, just letting him continue. She knew that silence was often the most patient answer.
Her hands went still.
He looked at the far wall. The words were there, in the order they'd always been, the words he'd been carrying for eleven years in the room he didn't open for anyone.
He wasn't sure what had unlocked the door.
The fever, perhaps. Four days lying on a table in a room that smelled of blood and tallow, listening to her breathe while she kept watch.
"His name was Raud," he said. "He was three years older than me. Better with a sword. Better with most things."
He paused, the memory surfacing like a wreck at low tide.
"We raided a village on the mainland when I was twenty-one. A routine thing, naethin' it wasnae supposed tae be. But the Highlanders had more men than we'd counted. They cut us off from the boats and took six of us." He took a slow breath. "They held us fer three weeks."
She didn't say anything. She sat with the used linen in her hands and waited, which was exactly what he needed.
"On the twenty-third day, there was a moment.
A guard changed rotation at the wrong time.
A window, maybe two minutes, maybe less.
Raud saw it before I did." He looked down at his scarred hands.
"He made a sound that pulled the guards toward him.
All of them. All at once." The words were flat, specific.
"I ran. He'd left me just enough room tae run, and I ran.
I got tae the boats and I got out, and I never stopped. "
He stopped. "He was alive when I left. I told meself that fer a long time. "
The fire crackled. A log shifted in the hearth.
"I’ve been laird of Mull fer eleven years," he said. "I’ve been good at it. I’ve kept the clan, I’ve kept the Pact, I’ve kept everything that needed keeping.
And every morning I wake up in a chamber that he would have had, if he’d been the one who ran.
" He paused. "I stopped lettin' things matter after that. It seemed like the correct solution."
He heard her set the linen down. He felt the mattress shift as she moved, and then her hand came around his jaw, turning his face toward hers.
He let her.
He looked at her, and she looked back at him, her hazel eyes bright in the firelight. She didn't say it wasn't his fault, or that he did what he had to. She didn't offer any of the empty things people said when they were afraid of the truth. She simply looked at him for a long, heavy moment.
Then she kissed him.
It was slow and certain, her hand firm at his jaw. He felt that familiar pull, the specific effort of staying exactly where he was, except that this time there was no gathering outside, no Henry with his prying quill, and no reason to be measured.
The effort lasted only as long as it took for her to exhale against his mouth and lean in.
He kissed her back. Her hand slid from his jaw to the back of his neck, and he let himself follow, careful only of the wound at his side.
She pulled back just far enough to look at him, her breath hitching. Then she stood.
He watched her cross to the far wall where two of the candles burned in their brackets. She cupped her hand around one flame and blew it out, then did the same to the second. The room went amber and soft, the fire and the remaining candles casting long, dancing shadows.
He understood what she was doing. He knew what the candles meant to her, what extinguishing them cost her. She was showing him, without being asked, that she was no longer in the dark when he was there.
She came back to the bed and reached for his hand, placing it at her waist. She kept her fingers over his, guiding the placement. He felt the heat of her through the wool. His hand closed of its own accord.
"Matilda," he growled.
It wasn't a warning. Just her name, and the question inside it.
She met his eyes. "The two weeks have passed," she said, her voice steady even as her pulse hammered at her throat. "Even if ye were unconscious fer part of them."
He searched her face with the thoroughness he gave everything that mattered. He looked for hesitation, for the held breath, for the flinch of the past. He found none of it. What he found was her, unarmored, decided.
He brought his free hand up slowly and tucked a loose strand of hair back from her face. His thumb traced the line of her cheekbone. He felt her breath shift, not a brace, but a soft, loose release.
"Aye," he said quietly. "They have."
He drew her down.