“Of course,” Olivia said to a rose.
He left.
She watched him go, which was a mistake, and Anne watched her watch him go, which was a far worse one.
Anne watched him go the whole way across the courtyard, her spectacles halfway down her nose.
“Well,” she drawled.
“Daenae.”
“I’ve said nae one word.”
“Ye’re sayin’ a great many of them very loudly, Anne, and ye’ve nae opened yer mouth once.”
Ragnall was, in point of fact, very much underfoot over the days that followed, though he took the greatest of care that no one should ever quite catch him at it.
He discovered, somewhat to his own disgust, that a man could attend to the grain accounts, and the disputed boundary stones, and the endless petty squabbles of his tenants, and the whole vexed question of the river all at once, and still always know precisely where in his castle Olivia of Blythe happened to be standing at any hour of the day.
He observed details about her that were none of his concern, but he could not help himself. He noticed she sang softly and imperfectly to the baby when she thought no one was listening. He saw her allow the dog to take food from her plate and then dramatically act indignant about the theft for others to see.
He noticed that her true laugh, the rare and unguarded one, was nothing like the brittle, bright sound she armed herself with whenever he came into a room. He was beginning to suspect, with some alarm, that he would do many deeply unwise things to hear that laugh again.
She is a wall I keep findin’ doors in. And every door opens onto somethin’ I have nay right to want.
“And how are the weddin’ preparations goin’, then?” he asked his grandmother one evening, with what he genuinely believed to be a great and convincing casualness.
“Why are ye askin’ me?” Maisie did not lift her eyes from her mending. “Have ye nay tongue in yer head? Ask yer bride. She is the one overseein’ them.”
“I willnae go pesterin’ her with idle questions when she still thinks so little of me.”
“Mm.” Maisie bit off her thread with a sharp little snap of her old teeth. “And how precisely do ye reckon she is to come round to thinkin’ any more of ye, ye great stubborn lump of a man, when ye spend every day creepin’ about yer own castle, spyin’ on herfrom behind the pillars like a lad of fifteen, and refusin’ to say so much as a civil good mornin’ to her face?”
He did not have a response ready, which was a common problem with his grandmother. She was almost always correct, and even more, she took obvious pleasure in being right, leaving little room for him to regain his dignity afterward.
He went to the window of his study to escape the knowing look on her face, and what he saw down below did nothing whatsoever to ease his trouble.
Down in the kitchen yard, in the long golden light of the late afternoon, Olivia sat on the worn well step with Rosie bouncing in her lap, the baby fisting both hands in that bright hair, and the two of them were laughing together at the dog as he chased his own daft tail round and round in the dust until he fell over from dizziness.
It was, Ragnall thought, the finest thing he had seen in a long and weary while, and that was the whole of its danger.
And there, half in the cool shadow of the brewhouse wall, stood Brigid, with her basket on her arm, watching the very same scene.
She was not laughing. She was not gathering her herbs nor going about any errand at all. She stood perfectly still in the shadow and looked at his bride and his niece laughing together in the sun, with an expression Ragnall had never once seen on her facein all the years he had known her. It was something cold, patient, and devoid of any warmth.
The hair on the back of his neck prickled as it always did before a fierce storm swept down from the high hills.
She then turned calmly and entered through the brewhouse door, leaving the kitchen yard behind, now just a space filled with slanting sunlight and a baby’s shrieks of laughter.
Ragnall, however, remained at his high window for a long time afterward, feeling cold all the way to his bones.
He had just watched a decision take root in Brigid, who was calm and confident, and knowing her as he did, he was certain she would not abandon it.
CHAPTER 8
The daybefore the wedding was the longest of Olivia’s life, but it was also the strangest because it was very nearly a happy one.
They took over the solar. Maisie ruled it from the good chair by the fire like a general in a campaign tent, Elspeth sat by the window with her needle, Anne perched on the sill with a list she had made and was refusing to let anyone else read, and Rosie held court on a folded plaid in the middle of the floor with the dog stretched out beside her as her personal fortification.
