Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
For Elspeth, the morning arrived with considerably more noise than Ben Cruachan was accustomed to.
She heard the pipes somewhere in the yard, a fiddle answering from further off, Mrs. McAulay ’s voice carrying from the kitchens below in the pitch she reserved for directing large numbers of people who weren’t moving fast enough to suit her.
She lay still for a moment, staring at the ceiling, and noticed that her chest felt different than it had a fortnight ago. Lighter. Less braced.
She got up before Becky came to fetch her.
The Great Hall, when she reached it, had been overtaken.
Trestle tables pushed back against the walls, benches arranged in rows, greenery woven along the beams by women Elspeth recognized from the village.
Two boys hauled a barrel through the main doors, arguing in fierce whispers about who was carrying the heavier end.
A girl of perhaps twelve stood on a chair directing the placement of candles with so much authority.
Katherine appeared at Elspeth’s elbow.
“The flowers arrived.” She seized Elspeth’s arm and steered her toward the far end of the hall without breaking stride. “Mrs. McAulay wanted heather. I said white roses. We’ve reached an agreement that I’m choosing to call a compromise and she’s choosing to call a surrender.”
“What’s the agreement?”
“Heather and white roses.”
Elspeth laughed. “That sounds lovely.”
“It does, aye. I’m very reasonable.” Katherine stopped in front of a long table stacked with ribbon, greenery, and what appeared to be every candle Ben Cruachan possessed. “Help me with these. If I bend over one more time, Liam will have me carried back to the carriage and sit on the door.”
They worked side by side for a while, and Elspeth found she had stopped thinking in the future tense.
She was not dreading tomorrow. She was not counting the days until she could write to Katherine from a distance.
She was here, threading ribbon through greenery, listening to the pipes start and stop as the musicians negotiated something about tempo outside.
From across the hall, she heard Duncan’s voice rise above the noise.
“Nay, nay. The reel goes left first, or ye’ll have half the hall walkin’ into the other half, and there’ll be a war before the weddin’.”
A voice she didn’t recognize answered, “It’s always gone right in Glenmuir.”
“Aye. And in Glenmuir, ye’ve only got six people, and three of them are related. We’re doin’ it properly.”
Katherine caught Elspeth’s eye and pressed her lips together.
“Right.” She set down her ribbon and straightened, which took slightly longer than it once had. “Dancing.”
“Katherine.”
“Ye’ve nae practiced in a week, and the cèilidh is tomorrow. I willnae have ye standing on yer husband’s feet in front of the whole clan.”
“I’m perfectly capable of dancing without practice.”
“Elspeth.” Katherine looked at her. “He’ll be counting under his breath. Ye’ll need to be fast.”
She was not wrong. Elspeth found that out within ten minutes, when Liam had produced Magnus from somewhere—the yard, from the look of his boots—and deposited him in the center of the cleared floor.
“I ken how to dance,” Magnus protested.
“Aye, ye do. One dance. At yer cousin’s handfasting. Twelve years ago.” Duncan approached from the side table with a cup in hand, utterly relaxed, enjoying this immensely. “And ye stood in the corner for the reel.”
“I had business.”
“Ye hid behind old Tam.”
“Old Tam is tall.”
Elspeth stepped forward before Duncan could say whatever remark was building behind his grin. “Right. Show me what ye remember.”
Magnus looked at the floor, at her, at the floor again, then held out one hand. She took it.
What followed was not dancing. It was something adjacent to drilling, performed by a very large man who called out positions like he was directing a siege.
“One, forward. Two, left. Left. That’s… aye. Three, turn.” He executed the turn with military precision and nearly knocked Elspeth’s chin with his shoulder. “Four, together.”
“Magnus.” Elspeth stepped back a half-inch to preserve her nose. “The steps follow the music, nae the other way round.”
“The steps follow a specific order.”
“Aye, but the order follows the beat.”
“I’m keepin’ the beat.”
“The fiddle is keepin’ the beat. Ye’re keepin’ a different beat. A slower one. A battle march, possibly.”
Behind him, Katherine turned toward the wall, her shoulders shaking.
“One, forward,” Magnus said again, undeterred.
“Magnus.”
“Two, left.”
“Will ye please listen to the music and go with the flow.”
“Three.” He turned Elspeth sharply, and she stumbled a half-step. His hand tightened at her back to catch her. “Four.”
“I’m the one who’s supposed to be led,” she said to his collarbone, which was where her face had ended up.
“Ye are bein’ led.”
“Into a post.”
“The post was poorly placed.”
Liam, leaning against the far wall with his arms folded, said nothing. His face said enough.
They went round twice more. Magnus counted. Elspeth abandoned any hope of redirecting him and simply tried to stay out of range of his boots, which were large and had already found her left foot once with an apologetic grunt that she suspected was the closest he’d come to an apology.
“Ye’re thinkin’ too much about all this,” she told him on the fourth pass.
“I’m thinkin’ exactly the right amount.”
“Nay, ye’re thinkin’ about the steps. Stop thinkin’ about the steps; ye keep making mistakes.”
“If I stop thinkin’ about the steps, I’ll miss the steps.”
“If ye keep thinkin’ about the steps, ye’ll drop me before we reach the turn.”
He opened his mouth, closed it, and looked down at her. His hand shifted at her waist. She settled her own more firmly on his shoulder.
“Look at me,” she said. “Nae the floor.”
“I ken where the floor is, and that it’s what helps me ken where next to go. It’s simple logic.”
“Nay ye daenae need to look at it. Look at me.”
He did, and something shifted in the ordering of his attention. She could feel it in his hand, in the way his shoulders dropped a fraction.
The counting stopped. His feet found the beat, as if they’d known it all along and needed permission to stop being soldiers about it.
Then they were moving properly, actually moving, turning through the middle of the hall with something that could honestly be called grace if one was being generous and adequately surprised.
Elspeth’s breath caught.
He was watching her face, and she thought very briefly that she understood now what the children had meant about the staring.
The fiddle reached its bridge and circled back, and they turned with it, Magnus’s hand warm and certain on her waist.
She was two days from becoming Lady Wallace, and she found she was not frightened of that at all.
Then he noticed the hall.
The ribbon-threading had stopped. Mrs. McAulay stood with both hands clasped beneath her chin. Duncan had put down his cup. The girl on the chair had stopped directing candles. Even the boys with the barrel had set it down and were watching.
Magnus’s hand dropped from her waist. He stepped back, cleared his throat, and turned toward the door.
“I need to go for today’s border patrol, and there’s a gate hinge in the east paddock that needs seein’ to,” he said to no one in particular, and left before anyone could tell him that it had been seen to yesterday.
* * *
The western glen was quiet in the wrong way.
Magnus pulled up at the ridge and sat still, letting the horse settle beneath him. Below, the tree line ran dark and unbroken along the foot of the hill, the burn caught the late afternoon light between the rocks, and nothing moved.
That was the problem. No deer at the water. No birds along the upper branches. Something had moved through here recently enough that the glen hadn’t yet gone back to its default noise.
He dismounted and led the horse the last few yards to the soft ground at the edge of the tree line.
The tracks were there.
Two horses, unshod, which meant someone didn’t want them traced to a stable. They’d come in from the northwest, stood a while—the ground was churned in a loose circle where they’d held position—and left the same way they’d come.
He crouched and pressed two fingers into the nearest print. The edges were sharp. Yesterday, or last night at the latest.
He stood and looked back toward Ben Cruachan. From here, the castle sat in full view, the courtyard visible, the main gate, the track down to the village. He could see the smoke from the kitchens. He could see, if he looked, the window in Elspeth’s chamber.
He looked a moment longer than he needed to.
Then he turned back to the tracks. He followed the line of them along the tree edge for thirty yards before he found the second thing.
A branch, broken clean at shoulder height on the uphill side, the pale wood bright beneath the bark.
Not wind. Not deer. A man standing, leaning, watching long enough to want something to rest against.
Magnus stared at that broken branch for a long time.
He knew who had stood here. He’d known before he dismounted, if he was being honest with himself, which he generally tried not to be about O’Brien, because being honest about O’Brien meant sitting with thirteen years of a debt that hadn’t been paid.
He’d found it easier to function without doing that too often.
He’d been fifteen when his father’s men had started trusting the wrong man. Sixteen when he’d come home from training to find the ash.
He’d spent thirteen years since then building back everything that fire had taken—the walls, the crops, the people, the trust—and telling himself that he wasn’t building it in fear.
That he was building it because it needed building, because his people needed a laird and his father’s name needed a clan still standing beneath it, and not because he was afraid of what happened to the things he let himself want.
He snapped the branch from the tree and dropped it, before walking back to his horse.
The ride back was fast. He didn’t push the horse harder than was wise, but he didn’t slow down for the rougher ground either.
By the time he came through the western gate, the yard was bustling with wedding preparation, villagers carrying wood and musicians arguing about something near the stable doors.
Not one of them needed to see whatever was on his face right now.
He spotted Duncan above the crowd near the water trough, talking to two of the guards with a cup in one hand.
Magnus came up beside him without breaking stride. “Walk with me.”
Duncan glanced at him, took in whatever he saw, set the cup down on the trough wall, and fell into step. He didn’t ask questions while they were still in the yard. That was one of the things Magnus had always valued about him.
They reached the armory and stepped inside. Magnus shut the door behind them.
“The western glen,” Magnus said. “Two horses. They were watching the castle. Close enough to see the gate.”
Duncan’s jaw tightened. “How long ago?”
“Last night. Maybe the night before.” Magnus crossed to the weapon rack and lifted Jinny from her hook without thinking about it, checked the blade by feel rather than sight.
“The branch was broken where a man stood and waited. Northwest approach. Same ground O’Brien used thirteen years ago before the first fire, when he was scouting before he moved. ”
“Ye’re certain it’s him.”
“I’m nae uncertain.”
Duncan pulled out the bench beside the window and sat on it, elbows on his knees, looking at the floor. “The handfasting is tomorrow.”
“Aye.”
“He kens that.”
“He kens everything about this castle. He’s been watchin’ since before the furnace fire.” Magnus set Jinny back on the rack and turned. “He wanted us to see those tracks.”
Duncan’s head snapped up.
“He could have sent men through the lower pass, and we’d never have found them in time,” Magnus said. “The western glen is visible from the ridge on a clear ride. He put those horses there to be found. He wants me to ken that he’s comin’.”
“Or he wants ye rattled before tomorrow.”
“Same thing.”
Duncan rubbed the back of his neck and stood up. “What do ye want to do?”
“Double the night watch. No announcements, no alarm. I daenae want the household unsettled the night before the handfasting. I want six men on the western approach from dark onward, two at the north postern, and I want the gate guards changed out every two hours so none of them go dull-eyed standin’ in the cold. ”
He moved to the window and looked out at the yard. Laughter drifted from somewhere near the kitchens. He could see the edge of the hall where they’d pushed the tables back earlier, could see the glow of candles already being lit inside. “Liam’s men, does he have any he trusts on a border watch?”
“Aye. He brought four.”
“Ask him. Quietly.”
“He’ll want to ken why.”
“Tell him.”
Duncan raised his eyebrows.
Magnus understood the surprise. He’d spent the better part of the last thirteen years telling no one anything they didn’t need to know, managing everything himself, trusting that the fewer hands on a problem, the fewer ways it could be dropped.
“Liam’s reliable,” he said. “And if somethin’ goes wrong, I daenae want to have to explain to Katherine why her husband wasnae warned.”
“And Elspeth?”
Magnus looked back out at the yard. The girl on the chair was directing candles somewhere he couldn’t see. The pipes started up again, badly, cut off, started over.
“Nay,” he said.
“Magnus.”
“It’s the night before our handfasting.” He stepped back from the window. “She’s been…” He stopped, picked up a cloth from the shelf, set it down again. “Nay. She doesnae need O’Brien’s name in her head tonight.”
Duncan watched him with an expression Magnus chose not to look at directly. “That’s nae the only reason.”
“It’s reason enough.” Magnus crossed to the door and pulled it open, letting the noise of the yard back in. “Get the men sorted before supper. I daenae want a single unaccounted soul on this land by nightfall.”
He stepped back out into the light without waiting for the answer, and didn’t look up at Elspeth’s window as he crossed the yard.