Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ruaridh left Isobel in the yard with the taste of her still upon his mouth and danger already closing around the edges of it.
He did not look back. If he did, he feared he would see the hurt confusion in her face, or worse, the softness that had been there a moment before Torin spoke. He could not afford either, now that Ewen’s name had returned to Duart like a blade slipped beneath a door.
Torin fell into step beside him as they crossed the yard. Brodie waited near the lower stair, grim-faced and with all trace of supper’s foolishness gone. That alone told Ruaridh enough.
“Where?” Ruaridh asked.
“Old store path beyond the lower wall,” Torin instructed. “One of the lads saw movement near the rocks. He tried tae run.”
“Armed?”
“A knife. Nay more.”
“Alone?”
“So far as we ken.”
Ruaridh’s jaw tightened. Men rarely came alone unless they meant to be seen, caught, or killed. None of those possibilities pleased him.
The dungeon beneath Duart was not large, but it was deep enough that the air changed before they reached the last turn of the stair.
Warmth vanished first, then sound. The ordinary life of the castle disappeared above them, replaced by damp stone, old iron, and the slow drip of water somewhere in the dark.
The prisoner was in the second cell. He was not old, thirty perhaps.
He was weather-bitten, lean, and bloodied along one side of his mouth where someone had struck him before deciding their laird would want words before bruises.
His wrists were bound before him, and he was sitting with his back against the wall as if he had chosen the place rather than been thrown into it.
Ruaridh stopped outside the bars. The man lifted his head.
“MacLean,” the man spoke.
Ruaridh took the key from Brodie and opened the cell door himself. Torin shifted slightly at his back, but did not object. Brodie remained beyond the threshold, with one hand resting loosely near his sword.
Ruaridh stepped inside. The prisoner’s eyes flickered to the space behind him, counting men, measuring chances. There were none, and he knew it.
“Name,” Ruaridh demanded.
The man smiled with bloody teeth. “Daes it matter?”
“It daes tae whoever will bury ye.”
The smile faded a little. For a moment, the only sound was the drip of water.
“Seumas,” the man said at last.
“Seumas what?”
“Seumas who has naething useful tae say.”
Brodie made a low sound behind him.
Ruaridh didn’t move. “Who sent ye?”
The prisoner leaned his head back against the wall. “Nay one.”
“Ye crossed MacLean land in the dark with a knife and nay purpose?”
“I was lost.”
“Then ye are also stupid.”
A flicker of anger crossed the man’s face.
Ruaridh crouched before him, bringing them eye to eye. “Try again.”
The man looked at him for a long moment. “I came because men speak. Men watch. Men wonder how long the Wolf of the Isles will keep what isnae his.”
The words settled coldly in the cell. Torin shifted behind him.
Ruaridh’s voice remained even. “And what isnae mine?”
Seumas’s smile returned, small and spiteful. “Ye ken.”
Ruaridh did not strike him. He wanted to. The urge moved through him with such sudden force that his hand flexed once at his side before he mastered it. Violence would satisfy him and give the man nothing but proof that he had struck true.
“Say it,” Ruaridh growled.
The prisoner’s eyes brightened.
“Ewen is furious,” he revealed. “Furious that ye took his bride so shamelessly before the Crown and every man in that hall, furious that ye parade her here as though a MacDonald woman could ever belong in a MacLean bed.”
Ruaridh went very still. Behind him, Brodie muttered a curse. Seumas saw it. Even worse, he enjoyed it.
“He says that ye stole what was promised by right of blood and bargain and that ye have put yer hands upon what should have been his.”
Ruaridh’s fingers closed slowly.
“What else?” he asked.
The man laughed once. “Is that nae enough?”
“Nay.”
“Then hear this.” Seumas leaned forward as far as the bindings allowed. “He willnae leave ye unpunished. He willnae leave her here. Whatever peace ye think yer walls can buy, it willnae hold. Ewen MacDonald daesnae forget insult.”
“Ewen MacDonald mistakes wanting a thing fer owning it,” Ruaridh corrected.
“And ye dinnae?”
The question struck harder than it should have.
Perhaps because only minutes ago, Isobel had stepped into his hand of her own will.
Perhaps because he had tasted her answer in a kiss and then left her standing in the cold.
Or perhaps because the whole damned world, from Inveraray to Sleat, kept speaking of her as something transferred between men.
Ruaridh rose. Seumas watched him, still smiling.
“Where is Ewen?” Ruaridh asked.
No answer was given.
“How many men has he sent?”
Silence followed again.
“What daes he plan?”
The prisoner looked down at his bound hands, then back up. “Ask yer lady. Perhaps she misses him enough tae guess.”
Brodie moved before Ruaridh did. Ruaridh lifted one hand, stopping him without turning. The dungeon seemed to narrow to stone, iron, breath and rage. Ruaridh looked at Seumas and allowed the silence to stretch until the man’s smile grew less certain.
“If ye speak of me wife again,” Ruaridh said quietly, “ye will dae it with respect.”
The prisoner swallowed. There it was, fear at last. But fear did not loosen his tongue.
They questioned him for another quarter hour, and he gave them nothing worth keeping: no names, no numbers, no path beyond the one by which he had been caught.
Each answer circled back to Ewen’s fury, Ewen’s grievance, and Ewen’s certainty that Ruaridh had stolen what belonged to him.
By the end of it, Ruaridh knew less than he wished and more than enough to trouble him.
He stepped out of the cell and handed the key back to Brodie.
“Lock him away,” he ordered. “Nay one speaks tae him alone. Nay one goes near him without two men present. Double the watch on the lower path and send word tae the shore posts. I want every boat questioned before it comes near Duart.”
Torin nodded. “Aye.”
“And the lady?” Brodie asked.
Ruaridh looked at him.
Brodie did not flinch. “She should ken there is danger.”
Ruaridh’s temper sharpened because Brodie was right, and because Ruaridh had no intention of obeying reason.
“She already kens Ewen is dangerous,” he said.
“That isnae the same.”
“Nay,” Ruaridh replied. “It isnae.”
Torin studied him in the torchlight. “She will ask.”
“I ken.”
“And ye will tell her?”
Ruaridh looked back toward the cell, where Seumas sat in the shadows with his head lowered and his silence intact.
He thought of Isobel’s face outside, the way she had asked if wanting his kiss made her shameless and the way she had leaned into his hand as if trust were a thing she had decided to build with trembling fingers despite everything ever done to her.
Then he thought of Ewen saying bride.
A cold promise moved through him.
“Nay” Ruaridh said. “Nay taenight.”
Neither Torin nor Brodie liked it. Neither argued. That was one of the burdens of being laird. Men obeyed even when they knew he was wrong.
By the time Ruaridh climbed back toward the upper floors, the castle had quieted. Supper was over. Fires had burned lower. Voices had thinned to murmurs behind doors and along distant passages. He paused outside his chamber–– their chamber––longer than he should have.
He opened the door softly. Isobel was still awake. He found her sitting near the hearth in her night shift and robe, a book open in her lap though it was obvious she was not reading. She looked up the instant he entered.
The sight of her struck him with such force that he nearly forgot the dungeon altogether. Firelight softened the proud line of her face and caught in the dark fall of her hair. Her mouth, kissed by him only a short while before, parted slightly as if she had meant to speak and thought better of it.
Then she saw his expression. The softness vanished.
“What happened?” she asked.
Ruaridh closed the door behind him. “Naething ye need trouble over.”
Her shoulders stiffened. He saw it at once. He hated himself for it at once.
“That isnae an answer,” she told him.
He gave her the response she liked least of all. “It is the only one I have.”
“Nay,” she replied quietly. “It is the only one ye mean tae give me.”
He moved to the table and unfastened his sword belt, because he needed something to do with his hands. “A man was caught near the lower path.”
“Torin told us that much.”
“Then ye ken enough.”
The silence that followed was not empty. It filled the room inch by inch. Ruaridh set the belt down too carefully.
“Was he Ewen’s man?” she asked.
He did not answer quickly enough. Isobel rose from the chair.
“Ruaridh.”
The sound of his name in her voice nearly broke him. Only, she wasn’t angry. Anger he could withstand. He had been built for anger, trained in it, sharpened by it. But this was not only anger. This was a hand reaching toward a door and finding it barred from the other side.
“Aye,” he said at last. “Likely.”
Her face paled. “What did he say?”
“Naething useful.”
“That isnae the same as naething.”
He turned then, sharper than he meant to. “And what would ye have me say? That Ewen is angry? Ye ken that already. That he is a threat? Ye ken that, too.”
She flinched. It was small enough that another man might have missed it. Ruaridh did not. Regret struck him immediately, but pride and fear held his mouth shut.
Isobel drew herself straighter. “I wasnae asking because I am a fool.”
“I didnae say ye were.”
“Ye didnae need tae.”
The words landed between them harder than accusation.
He looked away. If he told her, she would hear the worst of it. She would hear that Ewen spoke of her as if she were unfinished business. She would hear that the man had come close enough to Duart’s walls to send warning. She would hear ‘bride’ and ‘punishment’ and ‘what should have been his’.
She would fear or she would do something braver and more foolish than fear. He could not bear either. So, he chose the lie that was not quite a lie.
“It is being handled,” he assured her.
She became still. The warmth from before, the fragile thing that had stood between them outside after the kiss, withdrew from her face as though someone had closed a shutter.
“I see,” she answered.
Ruaridh’s chest tightened. “Isobel?—”
“Nay. I understand.” She turned back toward the chair and closed the book with care. “Men decide. Women are spared the trouble of kenning. I have had much practice with that arrangement.”
The blow was clean because she had not meant it as one. She had only spoken from the wound he had stepped on: her father, the auction and the silence before betrayal. The whole shape of her life was made again r because he had thought protection meant withholding the truth.
Ruaridh took one step toward her. “That isnae what this is.”
She looked at him then, and the hurt in her eyes stopped him. “Is it nae?”
He had no answer that would not sound like the same answer dressed in softer clothes.
“I am trying tae keep ye safe,” he urged.
Her mouth trembled once before she controlled it. “Me faither always said he kent what was best fer me, too.”
Ruaridh felt that like a blade between the ribs.
She moved to the bed and pulled back the coverlet in a motion that was precise, composed, and terrible. “Ye need nae explain further. I wouldnae wish tae trouble ye with me ignorance.”
“Isobel.”
“Good night, Ruaridh.”
It was not a dismissal shouted in fury. It was worse. It was surrender offered coldly because she had expected too much and learned better.
Ruaridh was standing where he was while she climbed into bed and turned her back to him. The space between them had never looked so wide.
For a long moment, he did nothing. Then he crossed the room, banked the fire, and undressed in silence. He lay down above the covers, which felt cowardly.
Beside him, Isobel did not move. He listened to her breathing and knew she was not asleep.
He had kept the danger from her. He had also kept himself from her.
And in the dark, with Ewen’s threat below his feet and Isobel’s silence beside him, Ruaridh understood that sometimes a man could guard a door so fiercely he failed to notice he had locked the wrong person out.