Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ruaridh went from the healing chamber to Council with Isobel’s touch still burning more keenly than the wound she had bound.
It annoyed him. It also steadied him, which annoyed him even more.
The Council room was already full when he entered. Brodie stood near the hearth, Torin by the maps, both turning at once toward the blood-dark bandage visible beneath the loosened collar of his shirt. The others followed their gaze.
“It is a graze,” Ruaridh explained before anyone could ask.
Brodie’s mouth tightened. “Arrows near yer head are nae grazes.”
“Nay,” Ruaridh replied, and the room went quiet at the coldness in his voice. “They are declarations of war.”
He told them what had happened on the cliffs, where the arrow struck, where the shooter vanished, how the path narrowed, how the ridge gave cover, and how the man had known precisely where to wait.
By the time he finished, there was no muttering. No one argued. All he heard was the hard silence of men who understood that danger had crossed from possibility into insult.
“Scouts again,” Ruaridh ordered. “I want them on every ridge path, every hollow, and every croft within sight of the cliffs is tae be questioned, but quietly. If anyone saw a stranger, I want his height, his hair, his boots, and whether he favored one leg over the other.”
Torin nodded. “I’ll take the northern side.”
“Brodie, the shore.”
“Aye.”
“And nay man goes alone.”
The orders spread outward like struck steel. Men rose and their chairs scraped stone. Within minutes the room emptied, carrying his will with it. Only when the last man had gone did Ruaridh allow himself one slow breath.
His shoulder throbbed. He ignored it.
By the time he reached the hall for dinner, the household had already gathered. Torin and Brodie walked with him, both still armed, both still pretending not to watch him too closely.
Then Ruaridh saw Isobel. She was already seated at the table, eating as though she had not nearly been killed that morning and had not, shortly after, tied his shoulder. Her posture was composed, and the firelight caught the edge of the MacDonald brooch at her breast.
Men looked at her and women looked away from her, while Isobel lifted a spoon to her mouth with queenly indifference. Before Ruaridh could go to the table, the cook intercepted him near the passage.
“Me laird.”
“Morag.”
She glanced toward Isobel, then back at him. “Ye have got yerself a good wife.”
The words were so unexpected that Ruaridh merely looked at her.
Morag sniffed. “Aye, stare if ye like. Folk may grumble because she is a MacDonald, but that lass heard we lacked rosemary and came back with enough tae scent the kitchens fer a month. Didnae make a fuss of it either. Just saw what was needed and did it.”
Ruaridh’s gaze moved, unwillingly, toward Isobel. She was speaking now to Sorcha, who sat a little below her, and though her face remained guarded, there was something softer in the tilt of her head.
Something warm moved through him, quiet and dangerous.
“She did that?” he asked, though he knew the answer.
Morag gave him a look fit for a child too slow over lessons. “That is what I said.”
Behind him, Brodie made a low sound suspiciously like a cough.
Torin, curse him, was worse. “Careful, Brodie. The laird has been struck.”
Ruaridh did not turn. “I was struck hours ago.”
“Aye,” Brodie teased. “But this wound looks fresher.”
Torin leaned slightly closer, studying him with solemn concern. “May be fatal.”
Ruaridh looked at both of them. Neither man appeared sufficiently afraid. Morag huffed and went back toward the kitchens, muttering something about men being useless unless bleeding. Ruaridh started toward the table.
Brodie fell in beside him. “A good wife, she said.”
“I heard.”
“Did ye?”
Torin nodded gravely. “He may need it repeated. The injury has reached his ears.”
Ruaridh kept walking. “Both of ye are too fond of yer tongues.”
“And ye are too fond of pretending ye werenae pleased,” Brodie pointed out.
Ruaridh glanced toward Isobel again. At that same moment, she looked up.
Their eyes met across the hall. She smiled, only a little.
But in her eyes lay the cliff, the blood, the rosemary, the quiet room where she had told him what grief had done to her, and the softer truth that neither of them yet dared touch. Then, she looked away first.
Ruaridh sat at the table with his shoulder aching and his men smirking like fools beside him. He should have been thinking of scouts. He should have been thinking of Ewen.
Instead, he found himself thinking that the scent of rosemary had followed her into his hall, and that Morag, that unbearable woman, might have been right.
The hall was still full of MacLean eyes, and Isobel felt them in the spaces between each movement: when she reached for her cup, when she broke bread, when she answered Sorcha in a low voice.
Yet the hostility seemed less eager than before.
It had grown cautious, as though the household no longer knew precisely what shape to make of her.
Ruaridh entered with Torin and Brodie at his side.
His wounded shoulder was bound beneath his shirt, but he moved as if pain were a private matter he had no intention of sharing with the room.
Isobel watched him despite herself. She looked for stiffness in his step, some sign the wound troubled him.
Unfortunately, he caught her looking. His gaze held hers across the hall.
For a moment, she was back in the small healing chamber, with her fingers against his bare shoulder and his breath changing beneath her touch. Heat rose to her face before she could prevent it. She had to look down, otherwise she felt as if her inner turmoil would be written all over her face.
Ruaridh came to the table.
“Sit with us,” he suddenly said.
Isobel looked up, uncertain whether he spoke to her, but his gaze had moved beyond her.
Sorcha froze where she stood a little behind Isobel’s chair. “Me laird?”
“Sit,” he repeated.
A faint stir passed through the hall.
Sorcha glanced at Isobel, then at the long table where servants usually took their meal farther below. “I dinnae usually?—”
“I ken where ye usually sit.”
Brodie, already lowering himself into place, muttered. “Best obey him when he grows that charming.”
Torin shot him a warning look, though his own mouth twitched. Sorcha’s cheeks colored, but she sat beside Isobel. The effect upon Isobel was immediate and unwelcome in its tenderness. Her shoulders, which she had not realized were held so tightly, eased by the smallest degree.
The meal was served then, consisting of venison, oat bread, broth, stewed leeks, and mutton scented unmistakably with rosemary. The smell rose through the hall, sharp and green beneath the richness of meat. Isobel did not look toward Ruaridh, but she knew, somehow, that he noticed.
“Morag is pleased with ye,” he said.
“With me?”
“Aye. That is nae small thing. She has disliked men fer less than breathing too loudly near her ovens.”
Sorcha laughed softly. “That is true.”
“I merely brought rosemary,” Isobel spoke softly.
Ruaridh tore a piece of bread. “In this castle, remembering what is needed is often more useful than making grand declarations.”
The words settled between them more gently than praise, and perhaps that was why they touched her.
She busied herself with her cup. “Then ye must be grateful I am nae fond of grand declarations.”
Brodie coughed. Torin looked into his drink.
Ruaridh’s eyes narrowed slightly. “I have heard ye make several.”
“Only when provoked.”
“A dangerous habit, being so easily provoked.”
“Then perhaps men should try harder nae tae be provoking.”
Sorcha’s mouth pressed tight as if holding back a smile. Even Brodie looked amused now, which Isobel counted as a small victory, since the man often regarded her as though she were a lit candle set beside dry straw.
The meal continued more easily after that and the conversation began to find its footing.
Brodie told Sorcha that Torin had nearly fallen into a burn during the search that afternoon, which Torin denied with excessive dignity.
Ruaridh claimed he had seen Torin fall into worse places and survive with less grace.
Sorcha laughed outright then, and Torin’s ears reddened in a manner so telling that Isobel had to lower her eyes to keep from smiling too broadly.
After a while, Ruaridh leaned back slightly, his cup in hand. “I will send letters tomorrow.”
“To whom?” Isobel asked.
“To Colin MacKenzie, Niall MacKinnon, and Domhnall MacAulay.”
The names were not entirely unknown to her. Men’s names travelled through Highland halls like weather: attached to alliances, battles, debts, marriages, insults. Still, she knew only the shapes of them.
“Friends of yers?” she asked.
Brodie snorted. “If he admits tae having any.”
Ruaridh ignored him. “Aye. The closest I have.”
There was something in the way he said it, plainly and without embarrassment, that made her listen more carefully.
“Colin was at Inveraray,” he continued. “Ye may remember him.”
“I remember little of Inveraray that I wish tae keep,” she retorted, then wished at once she had not sounded so cold.
Ruaridh’s gaze softened only a fraction. “Understandable.”
The word didn’t demand forgiveness of her. It only made room for her anger. That was, she thought, becoming his most disarming habit.
“Naill laughs more than is wise,” Brodie said.
“And speaks more than is useful,” Torin added.
“He is cleverer than both of ye,” Ruaridh said.
“That is a low friendship ye offer us,” Brodie replied.
Isobel looked between them, surprised by the ease beneath the insults. There was loyalty there, rough and unpolished, but unmistakable.
“And Colin?” she asked.
Ruaridh’s expression shifted. “Quieter. He sees more than he says, which is why Niall finds him unnatural.”
“That sounds sensible.”
“I thought ye might think so.”
She glanced at him. “Why?”
“Because ye also see more than ye say.”
The comment was too perceptive, and therefore unwelcome. She looked down at her plate. “And Domhnall?”
At that, something like warmth entered his face. “Domhnall will come if I ask. And he will bring Margaret.”
“His wife?”
“Aye.”
Isobel’s hand stilled on her cup. Another woman who was not Sorcha, not a servant, not one of the MacLean women who looked at her brooch before her face would be there, another wife brought into this world of men, clans, old bargains, and dangerous expectations.
“What is she like?” Isobel asked, more softly than she intended.
Ruaridh seemed to hear the change in her voice. “Kind. Stronger than she first appears. Domhnall would say she saved him from himself, and for once he wouldnae be wrong.”
“That must be a rare event.”
“Aye. We try nae tae encourage him.”
Isobel smiled despite herself. Ruaridh watched it happen, and she looked away too late.
The hall had grown louder around them, though not unpleasantly so.
Cups struck wood. Someone laughed near the lower tables.
The rosemary mutton was praised twice, once grudgingly and once by a man who stopped speaking the moment he realized Isobel had heard him.
It was not belonging. She was not foolish enough to mistake it for that.
But with Sorcha beside her, Torin and Brodie bickering across the table, and Ruaridh speaking of friends who would come to meet her properly rather than inspect her like a problem, Isobel felt the smallest loosening of the knot beneath her ribs.
“Why are ye sending fer them?” she inquired further.
Ruaridh’s gaze met hers. “Because matters with Ewen will worsen before they settle.”
The reminder chilled the warmth between them.
Then he added more quietly, as if he were able to read the most intimate parts of her mind. “And because I would have them ken ye.”
She did not know what to do with that. It was not a declaration.
It was not even tenderness, exactly. But it placed her somewhere she had not expected to be placed, not merely inside his castle, or beside him at table, but within the circle of people whose opinion mattered to him.
For a woman who had been sold without being consulted, it was a strange thing to be considered at all.
Isobel lifted her cup to hide what the thought had done to her. “Then I shall endeavor nae tae terrify them too badly.”
Brodie looked at Ruaridh. “Too late, I think. He’ll write honestly.”
Torin nodded. “Niall will come armed with jokes. Colin with silence. Domhnall with caution.”
“And Margaret?” Isobel asked.
Ruaridh answered before either man could. “Margaret will come with sense. God kens someone must.”
Sorcha laughed again, and this time Isobel joined her. It was not loud. It was not unguarded enough to be called happiness. But Ruaridh heard it.
And when Isobel looked across the table, she found him watching her as though that small sound had been worth more than victory in council.