Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
He saw the smoke on the ride back.
It was the kind of thing that could be easily missed by a man less haunted.
A thin, skeletal thread of grey against a grey sky, rising from the dense tree line off the lesser-used path that cut inland from the cliff road.
It was the kind of thing a traveler not paying attention would take for a crofter's fire or a shepherd's lonely camp.
Ivar was always paying attention.
He slowed his horse without speaking, the leather of his saddle creaking in the sudden, heavy quiet. Matilda, reading the jagged shift in his posture, slowed beside him.
"What is it?" she said, her voice barely a whisper.
"Smoke. Off the inland path." He was already calculating the angle of it, the density, the way it was thinning at the top. Not a fresh, hungry fire, but a dying one. Something that had been tended and was now being left to go cold. "How long ago did we pass that fork?"
"Quarter mile, perhaps."
Ivar turned to the nearest guard, his expression turning to iron.
"Ride back to the fork and hold it. Nobody sets foot on that path until I've gone through." He looked at the second guard, his voice dropping into a register of command. "Stay with Lady Matilda."
"I'm coming with ye," Matilda said, her hand tightening on her reins.
"Ye're nae."
"Ivar."
"If it's naething, I'll be back in ten minutes and ye can be annoyed with me the whole ride home." He held her gaze, the intensity of his look pinning her in place. "If it's nae naething, I need tae ken ye're here and nae in the trees. Dae ye understand?"
She held his gaze for a long moment, her amber eyes searching his for a gap in his resolve. "Ten minutes," she said.
He went.
The path through the trees was a narrow, claustrophobic thing, barely wide enough for a horse ridden with extreme care.
Thick branches clawed at his cloak like skeletal fingers, cutting the already dim grey light into jagged shards.
The smoke was stronger here. The heavy scent of woodsmoke mingled with the smell of damp earth and something sharper underneath it: the stale odor of a fire that had recently been abandoned.
He dismounted at the tree line, his boots landing silently on the moss, and went the rest of the way on foot.
The camp was nestled in a natural hollow, screened by a dense stand of birch on three sides and open only to the south, toward the restless water. He stood at the edge of the clearing, his hand resting on the cold hilt of his blade, taking in the scene before he touched a single thing.
Four bedrolls, kicked aside rather than packed.
A fire pit with a good stack of seasoned wood still beside it, the embers a deep, pulsing orange that radiated a lingering heat.
This had been burning within the last two hours.
Provisions were scattered. A wrapped bundle of salt meat, a skin of water, hard bread.
Enough for several days. Enough for men who had expected to still be here when the stars came out.
They'd left in a hurry.
Someone had heard something. Perhaps the announcement of the gathering had been passed along by a disloyal ear, or one of Torvald's doubled patrols had come close enough to the tree line to spook the watchers.
He moved through the camp methodically, crouching at each bedroll, reading the site. Four men, at least, possibly five.
The boot prints in the soft ground near the fire were varied. Military men, he judged, or men used to sleeping rough in the Highlands. There were no unnecessary possessions, nothing that couldn't be abandoned without cost. No names.
He was about to stand when he saw it.
Caught on a low, jagged branch at the eastern edge of the clearing was a strip of fabric the width of his hand. It was torn rather than cut. The signature of a man moving too fast through the brush to notice he’d been snagged.
He crossed to it, worked it free from the branch, and held it up in the thin, filtered light.
He knew the pattern.
He'd made it his business to know it three months ago, when the name Callum MacDougall had first arrived in his hall attached to the word abduction.
He'd sourced a sample of MacDougall plaid through a contact in Oban and studied it until he could recognize it from fifty paces in a storm.
The dark green ground, the narrow red overcheck, the heavy weight of the wool.
This was it.
He stood in the clearing with the strip of fabric in his hand and looked at the fire and the scattered bedrolls. He felt the specific, cold sensation of a trap that hadn't yet been sprung.
Callum was close. Not rumors-and-messengers close. He was in the trees outside Duart's walls, within sight of the cliff road, within half a morning's ride of the castle gates.
He folded the fabric into the hidden pocket of his cloak.
He went back through the trees, memorizing the camp's orientation, the sight lines, and the angle of approach from the south. It was a perfect vantage point to watch the cliff path without being seen. He noted this with a grim, tactical satisfaction.
Matilda was exactly where he'd left her, upright on her horse, the second guard at a respectful distance.
"Well?" she said.
"Abandoned camp. Four men, perhaps five. Left in a hurry within the last two hours." He swung up into the saddle in one fluid motion. "And this." He held out the strip of plaid.
She looked at it. Her jaw tightened. Not with fear, but with a sharp, focused anger. "That's MacDougall colors."
"Aye."
She was quiet for a moment, her gaze fixed on the fabric as if she could see the man himself through the wool. "He was watching the cliff road," she said, her voice a low blade. "While we were at the promontory."
"Possibly."
"Probably," she corrected, with that directness she applied to conclusions she didn't see the point in softening. She handed the plaid back to him, her fingers lingering against his for a heartbeat. "Then he kens about the gathering."
"He likely kent as soon as we did. Someone talks." He tucked the fabric away. "The question is what he daes with the knowledge."
He looked at her, seeing the steel that had replaced the shadow in her eyes. "Ye've been thinking about this."
"I've been thinking about little else fer days." She turned her horse toward the castle, the wind snapping her cloak. "Come. Ye need tae talk tae Torvald."
The ride back was faster and considerably quieter than the ride out. She asked nothing further and offered nothing, but she rode close beside him.
He was aware of her awareness. The way her eyes searched the tree line, the slight straightening of her spine when the grey towers of Duart came into view. It wasn't fear. It was preparation. It was the quiet readiness of a woman who had decided the answer to danger was not to look away from it.
He found Torvald in the outer hall, where the man seemed to live these days.
"Close the door," Ivar said.
Torvald looked at his face and obeyed without a word.
Ivar laid the strip of plaid on the table. It looked small and insignificant against the heavy oak, yet it carried the weight of a declaration of war.
Torvald looked at it. Looked at Ivar. "How close?"
"Quarter mile off the cliff road. The fire was still hot when I found it."
He sat down across from Torvald and laid out everything else, the bedrolls, the provisions, the boot prints, and the sight lines from the camp to the path. Torvald listened without interrupting, his brow furrowed. When Ivar finished, Torvald picked up the plaid and turned it in his hands.
"He's positioning fer the gathering," Torvald said.
"Aye."
"He'll move during it. When there are enough bodies in the courtyard tae create confusion and the royal observers are watching the main event." He set the fabric down with a sharp thud. "Same method as the harbor fire. Create chaos, use it."
"He's predictable," Ivar said.
"Predictable men are still dangerous."
"More dangerous. Ye ken what they're going tae dae, and ye have tae let them dae it." Ivar had been turning this over since the tree line. "If we tighten the guard now, visibly, he'll ken we found the camp. He'll change his approach. We lose the advantage of knowing his method."
Torvald was quiet, working through the tactical logic. "So we let him think we're unprepared."
"We let him think the gathering is exactly what we've presented it as. A loyalty demonstration. A public occasion with nay particular military posture." Ivar looked at the plaid. "And we put the right men in the right places, quietly, where he willnae see them until he's already committed."
"A trap," Torvald said, a grim light entering his eyes.
"He's been planning one fer a long time. It's our turn tae return the courtesy."
Torvald sat back.
"The letter tae the King," he said. "We should still send it. Nae about the gathering, about the camp. Document that we found it, document the plaid, document the proximity. If this goes sideways, the Crown needs a record that we flagged the threat before it materialized."
"Agreed." Ivar pulled paper toward him. "We write it taenight."
They worked for the better part of two hours, the letter taking longer than it should have because every word required weighing.
The tone needed to be measured without being submissive, firm without being aggressive.
Something that communicated that they were loyal, they had evidence, they were managing the threat, and were informing the Crown, not because they required intervention, but because transparency was the act of men with nothing to hide.
Torvald drafted. Ivar revised.
They went back and forth twice before they had something that satisfied both of them, which was how they'd made most of the important decisions over the last eleven years. Not quickly, and not easily, and better for both.
When it was done and sealed, Ivar sat back and looked at the candle between them, burning low.
"Four days," Torvald said.
"Aye."
"Get some sleep." Torvald stood. "Ye're nae useful tae anyone running on calculations and three hours of rest." He paused at the door. "She all right?"
Ivar thought about her on the cliff road. The look on her face when she'd identified the plaid without flinching and said, " Probably, " and handed it back to him. "She's well."
"Good." Torvald went.
The chamber was dim when he entered.
As always that was the first thing he noticed. The candle count, the quality of the light, where the shadows were. It was a habit formed since she had entered his life.
One candle burning on the far table. Not the one beside the bed. Not the three she usually kept within reach.
Matilda was at the window, already in her nightgown, unbraiding her hair. She turned when he came in.
"How was Torvald?" she asked.
"Sharp. He usually is." He set his cloak aside and moved through the room, the familiar last-things circuit. Shutters checked, fire banked, the world made smaller and warmer for the night.
She was quiet behind him.
When he turned, she got into bed.
The silence held for a moment, heavy and thick.
"I'm nae going tae pretend I’m fine with only one lit candle," she said, from beneath the covers, looking at the ceiling.
Her voice was steady, but he heard the work in it, the same quality he'd heard in her breathing at the three-quarter mark of the dark passage. "It's nae fine. Me heart is doing something fairly unreasonable right now, and I'm choosing tae ignore it."
He crossed to the bed and sat on the edge of it.
"Then why?" he said. Quietly. Not challenging. He genuinely wanted to know the heart of it.
She turned her head toward him.
"Because I feel safe with ye," she said. Simply. "And I'm tired of letting the fear be louder than that." A pause. "It's been louder than everything fer eight years. I think it's had enough time." She held his gaze. "I'm nae saying it'll work. I'm saying I'm trying."
He looked at her for a long moment, the sheer force of her trust hitting him harder than any physical blow. Then he got into bed beside her, close enough that she could feel the radiating warmth of him and lay back and looked at the ceiling with her.
The last candle burned on the far table. The fire was low and warm. The room was as close to dark as she'd allowed it in since she had come to the keep, and she was still breathing, her hands flat on the covers rather than reaching for flint.
"I've got ye," he said. Low. It wasn't a question; it was a fact.
"I ken," she said. "That's the whole point."
They lay in the amber dark and listened to the wind moving around the walls, and he stayed awake long after her breathing told him she'd found sleep.
He watched the last candle burn, thinking about the four days and Callum's plaid and the way she'd cupped her hand around the flame and blown it out like it was simply a thing she did.
When the candle guttered low, he didn't replace it.
He let it go dark, because she was sleeping, and she was fine, and some things only needed doing once to become true.