Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Mairi was waiting when Nandag pushed through the door, already up from the stool by the fire, a fresh roll of linen tucked under one arm.
"Me lady," Mairi said, by way of greeting, eyes dropping straight to the hem of Nandag's skirt.
Mairi walked up to her and steered her toward the low chair by the hearth without waiting for permission, dropping to her knees to unwind the bandage with quick, practiced fingers. "Sit before ye fall and tell me why ye look like ye've swallowed a wasp."
Nandag sat, mostly because her leg had started to ache in earnest the moment the corridor's torchlight was behind her, and let her head fall back against the chair. "I’m worried sick about Mórag, I hope Robert isnae bein’ cruel tae her. And… me faither wants me tae marry Fearchar Chisholm."
Mairi's hands didn't stop moving, unwinding the linen, checking the wound beneath, but her eyebrows climbed halfway to her hairline. "Regardin’ yer sister, I’m certain that Sir Robert is treatin’ her fine, if nae fer affection, fer his concern that she help him get what he wants, if I may say so.
And regarding Laird Chisholm, that's nae exactly news, is it.
Half the castle's been saying it since he walked in with his sword still wet. "
"I have heard it confirmed by me own faither though. That part's news."
"Ah." Mairi dipped a fresh cloth in the basin and pressed it gently to the wound, testing for heat, for the redness that would mean trouble. "And how does the leg feel about all this political upheaval?"
"The leg feels fine. It's the rest of me that's causing the trouble."
"Ye'll have tae be more specific, lass. I've a great deal of ye tae choose from taenight."
Nandag huffed something that was nearly a laugh and let her eyes drop to Mairi's hands, quick and sure against her calf, the same hands that had braided her hair since they were both girls too small to reach the top shelf of the pantry.
"I cannae stop thinking about him, Mairi. That's the trouble."
"About marrying him, or about him himself?"
"Both. Neither. I dinnae ken." She pressed her palms flat against her own knees, steadying something that didn't want steadying.
"Every time I close me eyes I see him standing in that garden seven years ago, and then I see him standing in the council hall today arguing his claim on me like I was a parcel of land worth fighting fer, and I cannae work out if those are the same man or two entirely different ones wearing the same face. "
Mairi’s hands paused over the linen, her eyes snapping up.
"Garden?" Mairi smoothed the binding down her calf, her lips twitching with sudden interest. "What garden seven years ago?"
Nandag bit her lip, realizing too late what she’d let slip.
"Never mind the garden," Nandag muttered.
"Oh, I am certainly minding it," Mairi said, securing the bandage. "And which of these two men dae ye think is waiting outside yer door right now?"
"That's the part that frightens me." Nandag's fingers found the edge of the chair and gripped it.
"What if it's neither. What if the man in the garden was a lucky accident, and the man in the council hall is what's underneath, and he only wants Strathglass and the land that comes with it, and I'm just the easiest way through the door. "
"He carried ye up two flights of stairs with his own blood still wet on his tunic."
"That's what a man daes when he wants something."
"He cleaned yer wound himself instead of sending fer the healer."
"Duty," Nandag said, though it came out with less certainty than she'd meant it to. "A man can play the part of gentle and careful when the whole clan's watching tae see if he's fit tae lead it."
Mairi sat back on her heels and looked up at her properly, tying off the last of the linen with a firm, final knot.
"And has he ever spoken cruel tae ye? Even once?
Because I've heard the way some lairds talk tae the women they're arranging tae marry, like they're haggling over a horse, and that man daesnae speak tae ye that way.
I was in the hall when he told Malcolm ye werenae a child. I was standing right there."
"He also stood in front of the whole Council and named me. Like a line of inheritance."
"He named ye because Malcolm was about tae hand yer sister's stolen marriage off as proof enough, and if he hadnae spoken plain, the Council might've believed it. Ye'd rather he'd stayed quiet and let Robert win the argument by default?"
Nandag opened her mouth to answer and found, for the second time that night, that she didn't have a ready one.
She looked instead at the fire, at the way it caught gold in the edges of the room, and thought of torchlight instead, of a corridor and a man who hadn't reached for her even once, not really, only stood there and told her the truth plainly when it would've been easier for him to say something softer.
"Duty can make a man pretend anything, Mairi. I've watched me faither pretend contentment at Council for thirty years. Pretending is what lairds dae."
"Aye, it is." Mairi rose, wiping her hands on her apron, and settled onto the stool across from her.
"But ye're nae asking me whether lairds can pretend.
Ye're asking whether this laird is pretending, and that's a question I cannae answer fer ye, because I havenae spent seven years thinking about the shape of his face. "
"I never did that."
"Ye dinnae have tae say it. Ye've spoken of him since ye sat down, and each time yer hand goes tae yer own jaw, right where he touched it when he bandaged ye, unless I'm mistaken."
Nandag's hand, which had indeed drifted to her jaw without her noticing, dropped fast into her lap. "That means naething."
"It means ye should stop asking me what kind of man he is and go find out fer yerself.
Watch him when he daesnae ken ye're watching.
See how he speaks tae the stable boys, tae the old women in the kitchens, tae men who cannae dae a single thing fer his claim on Strathglass.
That'll tell ye more than any speech he gives in a council hall, and more than any rumor either of us has heard secondhand from someone who's never sat across a table from him. "
Nandag was quiet a moment, thinking about what she said, and found she had nothing to say about it, which was starting to feel like the theme of her whole evening. "When did ye get so wise about men, Mairi Fraser? Ye've never once kept a suitor past a fortnight."
"Because I havenae found one worth keeping. Daesnae mean I cannae recognize the shape of one when I see him carrying a bleeding woman up two flights of stairs like she weighed naething at all."
Mairi reached over and tugged, gently, at a loose strand of Nandag's hair, tucking it back the way she'd done a thousand times before.
"Now. Enough of Fearchar Chisholm fer one night, before ye wear a hole clean through the subject. Did ye hear Old Beitris fell asleep during the ceremony and snored right through Faither Thomas’s opening blessing? "
Nandag blinked, caught off guard by the turn, and felt something in her chest loosen for the first time since the council hall. "She did nae."
"She did. Cook says she slept straight through the vows, and when the tables were knocked over in the chaos, her first words upon waking were tae ask whether the venison was ever going tae be served."
"That woman could sleep through the end of the world."
"She very nearly did taenight." Mairi grinned, reaching for the hairbrush on the table beside them, working it gently through the tangles Nandag hadn't noticed collecting all evening.
"Speaking of which. Cook's furious about the venison.
Says three hours of roasting wasted on a wedding that dinnae even make it tae the toasts. "
"I'll have someone send the venison tae the wounded. God kens they've earned a decent meal after today."
"There. That's the laird's daughter talking, worrying over roast venison in the middle of a war." Mairi's hands paused in her hair, and her voice gentled, just slightly. "Ye'll manage this, Nandag. Whatever shape it takes. Ye always have."
Nandag closed her eyes, let the brush move slow and steady through her hair, and said nothing at all, which felt, for once, like the truest answer she had.
Nandag told herself she'd only come up to the gallery to look for Mairi and told herself that a second time when she found the training yard instead, empty of everyone but a dozen warriors and the man leading them.
Fearchar moved among the younger men without the bark she'd expected from a laird training his own guard, no shouting, no dressing-down of the boy who'd dropped his shield twice in as many passes.
He crossed to him instead, took the shield himself, and showed him the angle of his wrist, patient as any tutor, before handing it back and stepping away to let the boy try again.
"Better," Fearchar said, when the third pass held. "Again. Same angle."
The boy grinned like he'd been handed a title.
Nandag leaned her forearms on the stone rail, telling herself she was simply passing the time until Mairi appeared.
She watched him move down the line, correcting a grip here, praising a footwork shift there, never once raising his voice above what the yard needed to carry across it.
He fought beside his men rather than above them, took a blunted blade from Duncan Macrae and squared off against him in the center of the yard like any two soldiers settling a wager, not a laird deigning to spar with his general.
He was laughing at something Duncan said when he stripped his shirt over his head and tossed it toward the fence, and Nandag's hands went very still against the stone rail.
She had seen men without shirts before. Farmhands in summer, stable boys hauling water, her father's guard on hot training days.
She told herself that quite firmly, twice, and found it did absolutely nothing to explain why her mouth had gone dry, or why her mind had gone straight past the training yard entirely and landed her back in a corridor with torchlight flickering gold across his jaw, his hand cupping her face, his mouth warm and certain against hers.
Fearchar rolled his shoulder, settling into a fighter's stance, and the scar that ran from his ribs disappeared beneath the flex of muscle as he lifted his blade to meet Duncan's first strike.
Nandag's fingers curled against the stone rail, and she was aware, distantly, that she'd stopped breathing at some point and ought to start again.
He caught Duncan's blade, turned it aside, and in the half second his opponent stumbled to recover his footing, Fearchar's gaze lifted. Straight to the gallery. Straight to her.
Their eyes held for one long, unbearable beat, his mouth curving into something that wasn't quite a smile, more the promise of one, and heat crawled up Nandag's throat so fast she felt it reach her ears before her mind caught up to what her face must be doing.
"Watch yer left, Chisholm!" Duncan barked, and Fearchar's attention snapped back to the fight a half second too late to catch the blunted blade that clipped his ribs.
Nandag was already moving, skirts gathered in both fists, down the gallery stairs and into the corridor.
She didn't get far.
She was still fumbling the latch on her own chamber door, breath coming quicker than the short distance warranted, when a hand closed over hers on the wood and a second arm came up against the frame beside her head, and she found herself very suddenly not alone.
"Ye left before I could say hello," Fearchar said, close behind her, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him at her back, close enough that she hadn't heard him behind her at all until it was too late to pretend otherwise.
"I was looking fer Mairi."
"In the training yard."
"Mairi goes many places."
"Daes she?" His voice had gone low, edged with something that wasn't quite laughter, and the door gave under her hand as he pushed it open and steered her through it without ever quite touching her, only the width of his arm guiding the air around her until her back met the wood on the other side.
The door swung shut behind them with a soft click.
He hadn't put his shirt back on.
Nandag's eyes dropped, betrayed her completely, and snapped back up to his face a half second too late for either of them to pretend she hadn't looked.
"Ye're a hard woman tae catch," Fearchar said, one hand braced against the door beside her head, the other resting loose at his side, giving her every chance to duck under his arm and go if she wanted it. She didn't take it. "First a garden. Now a gallery. "
"I've nae idea what ye mean."
"Ye have nae idea." He leaned in, slow, unhurried, close enough now that she could feel the warmth coming off his bare skin, could smell rain and iron and something warmer underneath both.
"Ye stood in that gallery just now and went the color of a MacDonald tartan the moment I looked at ye, and ye expect me to believe ye dinnae ken what I mean? Edinburgh?"
"I remember plenty of things in Edinburgh."
"How about a fountain and a caterpillar.
" His mouth curved, that same crooked ghost of a smile she'd been trying not to think about since the night before.
"Or a lass with wooden pins slipping out her braid who told me no names, and then we kissed like the bells ringing behind us were the only other thing that was real. "
"I dinnae recall kissing anyone."
"Nay?" His hand left the door and found the curve of her jaw instead, exactly as it had that first time, his thumb resting light against her cheek, and Nandag's breath caught somewhere in her chest and refused to come loose.
"Because I recall it very well. I recall it every time ye go quiet and stubborn like ye're daeing right now, refusing ta e admit ye're thinking about it too. "
"I'm nae thinking about anything."
"Yer heart says otherwise." His voice dropped lower still, and he tilted his head. "I can feel it from here, lass. Ye ken exactly what I'm talking about."
"Fearchar."
"Say ye dinnae want tae be reminded then," he murmured, "and I'll step back. I'll nae touch ye again unless ye ask it of me."
Nandag's hands, which had been pressed flat and useless against the door, found the front of his bare chest instead, not to push him away, though she'd have sworn on her mother's grave that had been the intention when she lifted them.
She didn't say it.
A sharp knock cracked against the door at her back, hard enough that she felt it against her spine.