Chapter 29 #2
“Aye. Do ye want to ken the moment I understood exactly what I was to ye? The mornin’ ye sent me off.
I stood in that cold yard with me trunk loaded in the cart, and I waited, like the very fool ye took me for, for ye to come down those steps and say one true word to me that wasnae safety nor duty nor the good of the clans.
One word. That’s all I wanted, Ragnall. Stay.
One word from ye, and I’d have climbed out of that litter and never given it another thought as long as I lived.
But ye couldnae find it. Ye couldnae find one single word.
” Her voice cracked, and she let it. “Ye didnae even come down.”
He said nothing.
“I stood in yer courtyard with me shoulder still bleedin’ and yer grandmaither holdin’ me hand, and I asked her, ‘He isnae comin’ down, is he?
’ and she said nay. Yer own grandmaither had to tell me.
Ye couldnae be bothered to come down yer own stairs and tell me yerself.
” She was shaking now. “And I looked back at the bend. God forgive me, I swore I wouldnae, and I did it anyway. I looked back like a fool, and there was nothin’ at that window.
Nae a candle. Nae a shadow. Nae a thing.
Ye couldnae even come to the glass, Ragnall. Ye couldnae give me that much.”
Her laugh was devoid of mirth.
“A fortnight yer wife, and a man come into me room in the dark, and yer own sister broke on the stones below yer tower, and at the end of it all, ye’d nothin’ left to give me but the depth of the cursed river.”
“Olivia—”
“I am nae done.” She took a step closer, chin up, and he gave back not an inch.
She was close enough now to see his pulse fluttering in the scarred column of his throat.
“Ye stood in that nursery, with me hand on yer face, and ye told me the feud ended that day, that it was business, a treaty and nay more. Ye looked me dead in the eye, and ye lied. I ken ye lied, Ragnall, for nay man holds a woman the way ye held me in that room and feels nothin’.”
Her voice cracked clean across the middle, and she hated it, hated the wet heat behind her eyes, yet she pressed on.
“Ye made me a piece on yer board. A hostage with a weddin’ ring. I will spend the rest of me days at Blythe in peace, and I will be glad of the peace, but I came all this way to stand in front of ye one last time and tell ye that I ken exactly what ye did to me. And then I will be done.”
Ragnall did not defend himself.
That was what broke her, where a hundred arguments could not. He did not straighten up and call it duty. He did not mention the war, nor the Council, nor the safety of the two clans.
He stood in the green shade and took every word of it full in the chest with his dark eyes steady on her face, and when she had spent every word of it and stood there shaking, he was quiet for a long moment and then said, “Every word of what ye said is true.”
Her breath rushed out of her.
“Every word,” he said again. “I put ye in the tower because I didnae trust meself to have ye any closer. I sent ye home because the sight of ye bleedin’ did somethin’ to me that I’d sworn years ago I’d never let happen again, and I was too much of a coward to look straight at the why of it.
“I told ye what I did in the yard for the very same reason, for it was the one safe word I had left in me mouth, and if I’d opened it to say what I truly meant to say to ye, I’d never have let that cart roll through me gate at all. And I lied to ye in that nursery with yer hand on me face, aye.”
His jaw worked. Something moved behind his eyes, there and gone, a crack in the stone sealed over before she could read what lived in it.
“I lied to ye because the truth wasnae mine to say. Ye’d been handed to me to settle a debt. A man doesnae take a woman who’s been handed to him and tell her—” He stopped himself and turned his face half away toward the water, and the silence after it rang louder than any shout.
“Tell her what?” Olivia’s voice had dropped to almost nothing.
“Give me yer hand at the dancin’ tonight,” Ragnall said instead, his voice rough, “and I will tell ye then. The whole of it. I swear it on whatever ye like.”
“That’s nae an answer.”
“Nay,” he agreed. “It isnae.” He looked back at her, and there was heat in his gaze now, banked and patient and certain, that frightened her worse than the burnt fire on the bank had.
“But it’s the one ye’ll get from me with three hundred of our folk waitin’ on the green for their Laird and Lady.
Ask me again tonight, Olivia. When the fire’s low.
And mind ye are sure ye want to ken the answer, for I willnae be able to take it back once it’s said. ”
Then he walked her back to the festival, saying nothing.
Her heart was in worse turmoil than it had been the whole month, the unspoken weight between them having grown so large that she could scarcely see the path around it.
Curse the man. Curse him and his patience and his steady eyes. I came to say me piece and be free of him, and he has gone and made it worse. Ask me again tonight. As if I have the first scrap of sense left to keep from doin’ exactly that.