Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
After Murchadh MacLean looked away, the village did not become kind. That would have been too simple, and Isobel had never known life to be fond of simplicity.
But the silence that followed her and Ruaridh through the narrow street was no longer quite so sharp. It remained watchful, certainly. It was also suspicious and still wounded. Yet the villagers did not stare at her as if she had arrived with a torch in one hand and a MacDonald blade in the other.
That, she supposed, was improvement.
Ruaridh walked beside her rather than before her, which she noticed against her will.
It would have been easy for him to lead, to make a display of his authority and of her dependence upon it.
Instead, he kept his pace even with hers, close enough that no one might mistake his protection, but not so close as to crowd her.
It was a maddening sort of consideration.
“This is Beathag,” he told her, stopping before a woman with sleeves rolled above her elbows and flour dusted over one cheek. “She bakes for half the village and scolds the other half.”
The woman gave him a look that would have withered a lesser man. “Only because the other half requires it.”
Ruaridh’s mouth almost moved. “Lady Isobel.”
Beathag’s gaze came to Isobel. It lingered a moment on the brooch at her breast, but when she spoke, her voice was not unkind. “Me lady.”
“Good morning,” Isobel greeted her politely.
The woman nodded once, then thrust a small warm oatcake into Ruaridh’s hand as though he were still a boy attempting to go without breakfast. He accepted it without surprise.
Isobel looked at him. “Daes everyone feed ye by force?”
“When they dare.”
“And many dare?”
“Too many.”
Beathag snorted. “Nae enough.”
They continued on, and Isobel found herself holding back a smile.
He introduced her to a fisherman mending nets near the shore, an old woman who kept two goats and apparently trusted neither, and a cooper whose youngest daughter hid behind his leg until Ruaridh crouched and asked whether she had beaten her brother at stones that morning.
The girl nodded solemnly. He received the news with equal solemnity, as though it were a matter of clan governance.
Isobel watched him with unwilling attention.
The villagers did not soften in his presence the way people softened before a beloved man.
It was not that simple. They stood straighter.
They measured their words. Some lowered their heads with visible respect, and others spoke to him with the wary frankness of people who trusted his judgment but did not forget his power.
He was feared. That much was plain.
But fear alone did not explain the old woman pressing a complaint about a leaking roof into his hands, nor the fisherman asking whether his brother’s widow might keep the extra strip of grazing land until winter, nor the way Ruaridh answered each as though the matter deserved the whole of his attention.
He did not smile easily. He did not flatter. He made no grand show of kindness. Yet he listened. And that counted so much more than mere charm.
At the tavern, the room quieted when they entered.
The smell of peat smoke, ale, fried onions, and warm bread wrapped around Isobel at once.
Men sat at rough tables, women moved between them with cups, and a broad-shouldered innkeeper froze for only the smallest instant before bowing his head to Ruaridh.
“Me laird.”
“Finlay.”
The man’s gaze flicked to Isobel. “Me lady.”
This time, there was only a little hesitation.
They were given a table near the hearth.
Isobel sat with her back very straight, aware of every eye that tried not to be seen looking.
Ruaridh ordered without asking what she wanted, which should have offended her, until bread, cheese, honeyed carrots, and a bowl of thick broth were placed before her, and she realized he had chosen well.
She disliked that, too.
“I was capable of ordering fer meself,” she said through a frown.
“Aye.”
“And yet?”
“And yet ye have food. Good food.”
She looked down at the bowl, then back at him. “How efficient. Is tyranny always so practical?”
“When well managed.”
A laugh escaped her before she could prevent it. It was small, but his gaze lifted at once, and she hated the heat that came to her face because of it.
To cover it, she broke a piece of bread. “They respect ye.”
His expression closed slightly. “They are me people.”
“That wasnae what I said.”
“Nay,” he replied.
Isobel looked across the room. An old man near the far wall was watching Ruaridh with the grave attention one gave to a priest, a judge, or a storm one hoped would pass without harm.
Near the counter, a woman argued with a boy over spilled ale, but her gaze kept returning to their table, not with fear exactly, but with expectation.
“They bring ye everything,” Isobel said quietly. “Leaking roofs. Grazing land. Brithers’ widows.”
“If I dinnae carry it, who will?”
The answer was plain, and there was no complaint in it. It struck her strangely. At Dunnyveg, responsibility had often been spoken of as a crown men wore when they wished others to admire its weight. Ruaridh spoke of it like weather. Unwelcome at times, perhaps, but undeniable.
For the first time, Isobel wondered whether the Wolf of the Western Isles had ever been allowed to be only a man. The thought felt dangerous, so she set it aside.
When they left the tavern, the village seemed a fraction less hostile than before. A boy whispered something to another and stared at Isobel’s bow hand rather than her brooch. Beathag gave her a second oatcake wrapped in cloth “fer the walk,” though she pretended to hand it to Ruaridh.
They passed a small stand near the road where herbs, thread, dried fish, candles, and carved wooden buttons had been arranged beneath a canvas awning. Isobel’s attention caught at once.
Rosemary.
Fresh, green, and sharp-scented, tied in neat bundles with twine.
She stopped.
Ruaridh followed her gaze. “What?”
“Rosemary,” she said simply, picking up a small branch and bringing it to her nose. The scent immediately soothed her.
He didn’t ask anything. He looked at the bundles, then at the woman behind the stand. “How much?”
Isobel glanced at him, surprised despite herself. She had expected a question. Instead, he reached for his purse. The woman named the price. Ruaridh paid it and took all the bundles she had.
“All?” Isobel asked.
He shrugged.
She almost smiled again. The rosemary scent followed them as they left the village behind, green and bright against the salt wind. Ruaridh carried the bundles himself without remark. That small fact touched some tender, foolish place in her.
The road narrowed as they climbed away from the cottages.
Grass bent beneath the wind, silver at the edges.
The village fell behind them, with smoke lifting in pale threads from the roofs, and the sea stretching beyond it in restless blue-grey bands.
Ruaridh led her higher still, along a path cut near the cliffs.
“Careful here,” he urged.
“I have seen cliffs before.”
“Aye. And they have seen proud women before. They remain unimpressed.”
She sent him a sharp look, but the path was narrow enough that she took his warning seriously. The land dropped steeply to one side, where waves broke white against black rock far below. The sound rose upward in deep, hollow bursts, like the breathing of some enormous creature.
At the top, the view opened and Isobel forgot, for a moment, to be guarded.
The morning light had turned clear and pale, washing over the village, the shore, and the restless sea beyond.
Duart stood in the distance upon its stone height, severe and ancient, its walls catching the light as if carved from the same rock as the cliffs.
Wind pressed her skirts against her legs and loosened strands of hair from their pins.
It was beautiful… wildly, sternly beautiful.
“I didnae ken it looked so from here,” she said before she could stop herself.
Ruaridh looked not at the view, but at her.
She felt it and turned. “What?”
“Naething.”
“Ye are very poor at naething.”
“Then I shall practice.”
The faint warmth between them was still there when the arrow struck. It hit the rock beside her head with a sound like bone breaking. Isobel didn’t even have time to scream.
Ruaridh moved before thought could form.
One instant she was standing in the wind, and the next, his body slammed into hers, driving her down behind a jut of stone.
The ground tore at her palms. Her shoulder struck earth.
His weight covered her for one breath, hard and shielding, while another arrow hissed above them and vanished over the cliff.
“Stay down,” he ordered.
Her ears rang. Her heart seemed to have become a wild animal inside her chest.
“Ruaridh—”
“Stay down.”
He rose enough to look over the rock, and she saw the moment his shoulder jerked. A dark line opened across his sleeve. He had been hit.
“Ye are hurt,” she said, horrified by the thinness of her own voice.
“It is naething.”
“It is blood.”
“Aye. Blood is fond of drama.”
He shifted, placing himself between her and the open path, his gaze fixed on the slope beyond. His sword was in his hand though she had not seen him draw it. The rosemary bundles lay scattered in the grass, mere green sprigs trembling in the wind.
Another movement flashed near the ridge. Ruaridh surged to his feet. For one terrible moment, Isobel thought he would leave her. Instead, he stopped.
She saw the war in him: the need to pursue, the fury of a laird whose land had been breached, the instinct to hunt the man who had dared aim at his wife. His body leaned toward violence.
Then his eyes cut back to her. He stayed. The choice struck her with more force than the arrow.
A distant figure vanished over the far side of the rise.
Ruaridh cursed in a voice that was low and vicious, and dropped back beside her. “Can ye stand?”
“I think so.”
That steadied her more than softness would have done. She pushed herself upright, and he caught her by the arm as if the earth itself had become untrustworthy. His shoulder was bleeding through his sleeve.
“Ye should have gone after him,” she told him.
His gaze snapped to hers. “And left ye on a cliff after arrows were loosed at ye?”
“He will escape.”
“Aye.” The answer was hard, bitter, and immediate. “But ye willnae be dead when he daes.”
She had no reply. Below them, the sea struck the rocks again and again, indifferent to danger, blood, and whatever fragile thing had shifted between them.
Ruaridh looked toward the ridge once more, his rage held so tightly it seemed to carve his face from stone.
Then he gathered the fallen rosemary with his uninjured hand and thrust as much as he could into his pockets.
It was absurd. It was also tender.
“Come,” he said. “We return tae Duart.”
Isobel walked beside him down the narrow path, while blood was darkening his sleeve. Her heart had not yet slowed. Her knees had not yet forgiven her for standing.
But beneath the terror, beneath the shock, one thought moved with frightening clarity. When the arrow came, Ruaridh had not thought first of pursuit, pride, or vengeance.
He had thought of her.