Chapter 19
“Pass the salt.”
Olivia passed the salt. She did not look at him while she did it. She set it down on the board within his reach, the way a servant would, withdrew her hand before there was any chance in the world of their fingers meeting, and resumed eating.
Ragnall sat with the salt cellar in front of him and no earthly use for it.
He had come down to the noon meal still warm from the morning.
From the sight of her flushed and furious and swearing at him in his own bed, from the way she had told him to close his eyes while she dressed and then accused him of peeping when he had done nothing of the sort.
He had been, God help him, very near to being happy. He had come down the stairs two at a time like a lad.
And then he had walked into a frosty hall.
“The bread’s good,” he tried.
“Aye.”
“Cook has a way with it.”
“She does.”
Down the table, Alastair had found something of great interest at the bottom of his cup. Maisie was watching the pair of them the way a cat watched a bird and had not said one word in ten minutes, which was as good as a scream.
“Ye’re nae eatin’,” Ragnall said.
“I ate this mornin’.”
“Ye ate half a bannock this mornin’ and gave the rest of it to me dog.”
“Then ye’ve been watchin’ me eat,” Olivia said to her plate. “How very close a study ye’ve made of me, me Laird.”
And there it was. He had no notion at all what he had done, but it was there in her voice, cold and clean and edged like new frost. It had not been there when he left her not two hours ago.
Two hours. I’ve been in me study for two hours, and she’s gone from cursin’ me for a peepin’ bampot to callin’ me me Laird across a table like I’m a stranger come to buy a horse.
“Olivia.”
“Me Laird?”
“Look at me.”
She did.
That was the worst of it. She looked at him with her chin up and her face perfectly composed and perfectly polite, and there was nobody behind it, and Ragnall discovered that he would rather she had thrown the salt cellar at his head.
Then she looked away almost as quickly as she’d looked at him. That was a first. Olivia, who met every soul she had ever crossed full in the eye, who had stared down a council and a clan and him, now kept her gaze on her plate and her words to a clipped polite nothing.
He told himself it was because of the wedding night, the strangeness of it, the morning after.
He told himself she wanted time, and that a wise man gave it.
He told himself a great many patient and reasonable things, and watched his wife turn to frost across his own table, and felt the lightness go out of the day by inches.
He gave her the day. He had a hundred duties, and he buried himself in them, the tenants and the tithes and the long grim aftermath of a wedding that had ended in a killing, and he did not seek her out, because he had learned young that one did not chase a thing that was bolting. One stood still and let it come back.
She did not come back.
She was awake when he went up to the room that night. Not feigning it this time. She sat up against the headboard with the candle still burning and her arms wrapped round her drawn-up knees, and she watched him come in with a look he could not read at all.
His stomach dropped.
“Say it,” he said, shutting the door at his back. “Whatever it is. Ye’ve been sharpenin’ it the whole day. Say it and be done with it.”
“Brigid MacKee,” Olivia said.
Ragnall understood everything in a single sick instant, before she ever said another word.
“What did she say to ye?” he asked quietly.
“Does it matter? She didnae lie, did she?” Olivia’s chin lifted. “Ye and she. For years. Until two years ago. In this castle. Under this very roof.” Her voice did not break, but it was a near thing, and the nearness was worse than the breaking.
“I ken I’ve nay right to it. I ken I am the one who drew the line and said nay touchin’. I ken what’s between us is a bargain and nae a marriage, and I’ve nay claim on yer history, nor yer heart, nor anythin’ else of ye.”
She drew a breath. “But she stood there with yer niece’s wee life in her two hands, and she made certain I kent exactly whose place it was I’d taken in yer bed, and she did it on purpose, to wound me, and it…” Her jaw worked. “It wasnae respectful to me. Was it? Whatever it is I am to ye.”
Ragnall stood very still in the middle of the room and felt a cold, clean, absolute calm settle over him.
“Nay,” he said. “It wasnae respectful. Nae to ye, nae to me wife, whatever ye think ye are within it.” He held her eyes.
“What was between Brigid and me ended a long while ago, long before yer name was spoken to me. It’s done.
It’s been done. There was nay tenderness in it at the end, and there’s nae an ember of it left in me now.
I will swear that to ye on whatever ye please.
On me sister’s life. On me faither’s grave. ”
Olivia’s eyes shone. “Ye daenae have to—”
“And I will tell ye one more thing.” His voice had gone quiet and terrible. “Nay one in this castle—nae the healer, nae the maids, nae the whole mutterin’ pack of them—gets to make me wife feel small under me own roof. Nay one. I will take care of it.”
The words went through Olivia like cold water.
She was on her feet before she had decided to stand. “Nay.”
He stopped in the doorway and turned.
“Nay, Ragnall. Ye’ll nae.”
Her heart was beating too fast. She could see it again, and it would not go away, the tearing cloth and the flat, unchanged face and the wet, terrible ease of the blade going in, and the fiddles starting up again afterward as if nothing had happened.
“I ken what I’ll take care of it means in this castle. I’ve seen what it means. I’ve stood in yer hall and watched it. But I’ll nae have another death on me conscience. I’ll nae have her death on me conscience.”
“Olivia—”
“She insulted me. She was cruel to me, and she meant it, and she’ll do it again.
That is all she did.” Her voice had risen, and she could not seem to lower it.
“A man laid his hands on me, and ye killed him for it in front of three hundred souls without flinching. So ye’ll tell me now plainly what it is ye intend to do, because I willnae lie in yer bed tonight wonderin’ if there’s a woman bleedin’ somewhere in this castle with me name on it—”
“Olivia.”
He had crossed the room. She had not seen him move. He did not touch her.
“I’m sendin’ her away,” he said.
She froze. “What?”
“Brigid. She’ll be gone by the week’s end. There’s a laird at Kilmory who needs a healer. I’ll pay her a year’s wage, for she and her faither had served the clan well, and I’ll nae see her ruined for it.” His jaw was tight. “But she’ll nae stay under this roof. Nae after that.”
Olivia plopped down on the edge of the bed.
“Ye thought I meant to kill her,” Ragnall said.
“I…” She could not look at him. “Aye.”
“Aye.” He said it very quietly. “Well, I’ve given ye nay great cause to think otherwise, have I?”
The silence stretched out between them, and it was a dreadful one. Olivia found she could not leave it there.
“I saw ye kill a man at me weddin’ feast,” she said to the floor.
“I have watched ye kill twice now, Ragnall, and both of them the same. There’s something that comes into yer face.
Or rather, it doesnae come into it, and that’s the whole horror of it.
Ye go quiet. Ye vanish somewhere behind yer eyes, and a man dies, and then ye come back.
” She lifted her head. “I daenae ken how to live with a man I’ve seen do that.
I daenae ken which of ye I’m talkin’ to. ”
He did not defend himself. That was the thing that undid her. He stood there in the candlelight and took it and let the silence hold.
When he finally spoke, his voice was rough.
“The one that’s standin’ here. That’s the honest answer.
It’s nae a comfortable one, but I’ll nae dress it up for ye.
I’m both. I’ve been both since I was two-and-twenty and me faither came home over a saddle.
There’s a thing in me that goes cold and does what wants doin’, and I’ve never once been able to put it down, and I’ve stopped tryin’ to pretend I dinnae have it.
” He looked at her steadily. “But I’ll tell ye what I’ve never done with it, Olivia.
I’ve never turned it on a soul under me protection.
Nae once. Nae ever. It doesnae come out for spite, and it doesnae come out for a sharp word, and it will never come out for ye or any woman in this castle.
Brigid MacKee was cruel to me wife, and she’ll leave me castle with her purse full and her health whole.
That is what I’ll take care of it means. ”
Some of the frost was going out of Olivia, and a new feeling was coming in to take its place, uncertain and raw and very close to hope. It undid him more thoroughly than all her fury had.
“Ye’d send away yer healer,” she said slowly, “for the likes of me? For an insult to a bride ye never wanted?”
Ragnall looked at her in the candlelight, at the place where the flame caught in her loose red hair, and thought of all the things he could not say to her—the great, dangerous, unsayable size of what he felt—and gave her the one piece of the truth he dared.
“Aye,” he said. “I would. And it’s nae for the likes of ye, lassie. It’s for ye.”
Then, before she could answer, before the look on her face could finish ruining him, he turned for the door.
“Sleep, now. I have a thing to see to in the mornin’.”
And God forgive me, I’d send away a deal more than one bitter healer to keep that look on her face. That’s the problem. There’s near nothin’ left in this world I’d nae do.