Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Cormac chose the ruined chapel because no sensible man entered it after nightfall.
The roof had fallen inward years before, leaving the altar exposed to rain and nesting crows. Ivy strangled the eastern wall. Damp crept through every stone, carrying the smell of old earth, extinguished candles and the stagnant pool beneath the broken crypt stair.
Six men waited among the shattered pews.
Once, Cormac could have summoned three times that number with a word.
Now, those who remained avoided one another’s eyes.
Two bore wounds from the hunting lodge. Another kept his arm bound tightly against his chest, while blood darkened the linen beneath his cloak.
Cormac stood before the ruined altar and removed his gloves one finger at a time. His palms were blistered from the reins. Smoke still clung to his hair and clothing, though he rode through rain for half the night.
Roy MacIver had reached the lodge too quickly.
That truth followed Cormac through the forest like another rider. He expected fury. A man driven by affection could be made reckless. He expected MacIver to charge without thought, sacrifice his men and leave openings broad enough for a child to exploit.
Instead, Roy came through the trees with his warriors placed carefully around him. He cut off the northern track, secured the clearing and drove inward with the cold precision of a man taking an enemy fortification.
Even when Donaldina screamed from within the flames, he had not lost control. He chose her.
But he chose her without surrendering command.
Cormac hated him most for that.
“The attack failed,” one of the men muttered.
Cormac looked toward him. “I was present.”
The man lowered his gaze. Cormac crossed to the narrow opening where a window once stood. Rain whispered through the ivy beyond it.
Donaldina should have broken at the lodge.
She had been bound, surrounded, and carried beyond the reach of her walls.
Fear should have reduced her pride to pleading.
Instead, she looked at Cormac with contempt, as though he were not the man determining her fate, but some stain upon the floor beneath her feet.
Worse, she believed Roy would come. That certainty had remained in her eyes even when smoke filled the room.
Cormac once thought fear would teach her dependence. Instead, every hand he laid upon her drove her more firmly toward MacIver.
Another abduction would accomplish the same. Roy would rescue her. Donaldina would trust him more deeply. Dun Ard would see devotion where Cormac intended weakness. Each blade raised against them forged their alliance more securely.
The realization tasted bitterer than defeat.
“We willnae take her again,” he said.
Several men looked up.
“Then what remains?” asked Finlay, the youngest among them. “MacIver holds Dun Ard. The MacNicols stand beside him now.”
“They stand beside a royal decree.”
Cormac turned from the window. There lay the weakness. It was not in Roy’s sword, nor in Donaldina’s stubborn heart. It was not even in Dun Ard’s walls. It was the damn paper.
The King’s accord granted Roy MacIver access to the MacNicol lands, establishing him as a legitimate authority and turning an outsider into a husband the clan was obliged to follow.
Without it, he was just a foreign laird holding another clan’s fortress, and Donaldina was simply a woman who had chosen him.
Choice could be called seduction. Loyalty could be named betrayal. Peace could be made to resemble surrender, provided enough frightened men repeated the accusation.
“The marriage is the foundation,” Cormac continued. “Remove it, and MacIver’s claim falls with it.”
“The King sealed the agreement.”
“Eight years ago, before war altered every house named within it, before Lachlan died.”
The men listened more closely now. Cormac felt the room changing. Defeat loosened its grip as resentment took its place.
There were minor clans all along the western coast who received nothing from the accord.
There were men whose fathers lost grazing land to MacNicol expansion, younger sons who would never inherit while Roy united two strongholds beneath one name, and chiefs who feared that peace between MacIver and MacNicol would leave smaller houses without influence, tribute or useful enemies.
Such men did not require truth. They required permission to call ambition justice.
Cormac moved toward the broken altar. Upon it lay a strip of dry parchment, an ink horn and a list of names gathered during years spent listening in council chambers: MacAulay, MacRae.
Gunn families still bitter over lands absorbed by Lachlan’s father, two MacNicol cousins who believed blood placed them nearer the lairdship than Donaldina’s marriage ever could.
He dipped the quill.
“Send word tae each of them,” he ordered. “Tell them MacIver means tae use the accord tae swallow every lesser clan between Dun Ard and Black Craig.”
“And what dae we offer?”
Cormac looked down at the map spread beneath the parchment. Boundaries crossed the coast in fading ink. Forest, pasture and fishing coves waited beneath his hand.
“Land,” he replied. “Council seats. MacIver holdings when he is removed.”
They were not yet his to grant, but that scarcely mattered. A promise only required ownership after men had bled for it.
Cormac began the first letter. He would not strike Dun Ard’s walls again.
He would make those walls meaningless. He would turn neighboring clans against Roy, force the council to question Donaldina and place the King’s neglected agreement before every priest, chief and ambitious second son willing to condemn it.
Roy MacIver had won the woman.
Cormac would ensure that choosing him cost her the clan.
Donaldina went to the hives because bees required no explanation. They did not ask why she had awakened with the memory of Roy’s arms around her, or why the sound of his voice outside her chamber had remained with her long after he left.
The bees required steadiness. That, at least, she could give them.
Morning mist clung low over the garden, silvering the rosemary and dampening the hem of her gown as she crossed between the hives.
The air smelled of wet earth, crushed herbs and beeswax warmed slowly by the pale sun.
Beyond the garden wall, the sea moved against the cliffs with a low, ceaseless murmur.
Donaldina set down her basket and lifted the lid from the nearest hive.
The colony stirred beneath her hands. A soft humming rose from within, not threatening, but alive.
Bees moved across the frames in orderly paths, their small bodies dark and gold against the comb.
Donaldina worked carefully, checking for damp, clearing away fragments of old wax and adjusting a frame that sat too close to its neighbor.
Each task followed another.
Lift. Examine. Clean. Replace.
There was comfort in work that obeyed reason.
Her thoughts did not. She remembered smoke catching in her throat, the lodge roof groaning above her, and Roy appearing through the fire as though flame itself had failed to understand that it ought to stop him.
She remembered later, within the safety of Dun Ard, when the fear she denied for hours finally found her.
She had not asked him to stay. He stayed, nevertheless.
Donaldina pressed her thumb too firmly against the edge of the frame. Honey welled from the damaged comb and spread warm and sticky across her glove.
“Careless,” she muttered.
“A rare condition.”
She turned, only to find Roy standing just inside the garden gate.
He wore no cloak despite the cool morning.
His dark hair stirred in the wind, and one sleeve of his linen shirt had been pushed up past his forearm.
He must have come from the yard, for mud clung to one boot and the leather guard at his wrist bore a fresh scrape.
“How long have ye been standing there?” she asked.
“Long enough tae see ye scold honey.”
He came farther into the garden, though he stopped beyond the nearest hive. The bees circling Donaldina appeared to concern him less than they once had, but she noticed he still watched each one that drifted too near his face.
Donaldina turned back to her work before she smiled.
Roy remained silent. She felt his gaze follow the movement of her hands as she lifted another frame.
There was nothing possessive in his watching.
He observed her as he observed a landscape before battle, with patience and an attention so complete it made concealment difficult.
“What?” she asked at last.
Roy leaned one shoulder against the stone wall.
“This is the only place ye seem entirely yourself.”
Donaldina’s hands slowed. “I am always myself.”
“Aye. But elsewhere ye are also Lachlan’s sister, mistress of Dun Ard, keeper of the stores and the woman half the council expects tae solve whatever trouble they have made before midday.”
“And here?”
“Here ye are a woman arguing with bees.”
She looked over her shoulder. “They are more reasonable than most councilmen.”
“I have met few creatures that are nae.”
The answer should have amused her. Instead, something gentler moved through her chest.
Donaldina replaced the frame and lowered the lid. Roy stepped forward before she could reach for the next box. Without asking, he lifted the basket and carried it beside her.
They moved to the newest hive. The wood still smelled faintly of fresh-cut pine beneath the wax and salt air. Donaldina knelt to inspect the entrance. Roy crouched beside her, close enough that his shoulder brushed hers. Neither moved away.
“The council spoke again this morning,” he told her.
The quiet change in his voice warned her before the words did. Donaldina brushed loose soil from the base of the hive.
“About Cormac?” she asked.
“About us.”
Her fingers stilled against the wood.
Roy looked toward the bees rather than at her. “They want the marriage completed formally… soon.”
Donaldina had known the question waited for them. It stood behind every council meeting, and every glance exchanged across the great hall. The accord brought him to Dun Ard. Their growing attachment made obedience to it more complicated, not less.
Once, she feared this marriage because it represented the loss of choice. Now she feared speaking of it because choice had begun to matter too much.
She removed one glove. Honey had seeped through the leather, coating her fingers with gold.
“We should dae it properly,” she said.
Roy did not move. Donaldina wiped her thumb against her palm, though it only spread the sweetness farther.
“Nae because the council demands it. And nae merely because the King wrote our names upon the same agreement.”
His gaze settled upon hers.
“But we should marry?” he asked.
The question was quiet. For all his strength, Roy offered it without defense. Donaldina felt the answer within her before she found the courage to speak it.
“Aye,” she replied. “Naething feels more right.”
Roy’s mouth moved. Donaldina turned back to the hive before his almost-smile could unsettle her further.
She reached for the wooden cover. Roy reached at the same time. Their hands met. Honey transferred from her fingers to his, bright against the scars crossing his knuckles. Roy looked down at it. Donaldina attempted to withdraw, but he caught her fingertips lightly.
“Ye have made a ruin of me hand,” he spoke playfully.
“Ye have survived worse.”
“Scarcely.”
She laughed, and the sound escaped more freely than she intended.
Roy released her only to lift the cover into place.
The edge caught badly. Donaldina leaned closer to correct it, pressing her palm beside his.
Damp soil darkened her skirt. Wax clung to Roy’s sleeve.
A bee settled briefly upon his shoulder, and he became so still that she laughed again before gently brushing it away.
They continued through the garden together.
Roy carried the heavier frames while Donaldina inspected the comb.
She corrected his grip twice and accused him of treating the hives like siege engines.
He replied that siege engines were less temperamental.
By the time they reached the final box, dirt marked his knees, honey stained both their hands and a streak of wax crossed Donaldina’s sleeve.
Nothing had been settled entirely.
Cormac remained beyond the walls. The council would continue pressing.
Marriage would bind not only two people but also clans, lands, and every expectation attached to their names.
Yet, Roy stood beside her with honey upon his scarred hands, listening while she explained how to recognize a weakened colony.
Roy glanced down at the mud upon his knees, then at the honey streaking Donaldina’s gown. “We are both remarkably dirty.”
Donaldina inspected her sticky hands. “Aye. We should take a bath.”
Roy’s gaze lifted slowly to hers. “I shall have water sent tae yer chamber.”
“No,” she corrected, with a calmness entirely betrayed by the warmth rising into her cheeks. “Together.”
For once, Roy MacIver appeared to have no answer prepared.