“Nay.”
“Then I’ll nae insult ye with it.” The music shifted, and so did he. “They hate ye, lassie. They’ll hate ye for a good while. And ye’ll stand in me hall with yer chin up, and ye’ll outlast every one of them, because that is what ye are, and I’ve ken it since ye came down yer faither’s steps and looked me in the eye with yer heartin pieces.” His hand tightened slightly on her waist. “I’d nae have wagered a bent penny on meself in yer place.”
Olivia could not think of one single thing to say to that.
The music ended. He held her a beat longer than the dance required, and then he let her go, walked her back through the parting crowd to her mother and her friend, and bowed over her hand in front of all of them like a man laying down a marker.
Then he was called away to settle some matter of precedence among the tacksmen, and the fiddles struck up again, and the ale did its slow work.
It was past the second hour that the trouble came and found her.
She did not see them gather. One moment, she stood alone by the great hearth, catching her breath; the next, three of them were ringed around her, large, flushed, and swaying, with the bright, particular ugliness in their faces that drink brought out in men who were cruel enough sober.
“The Blythe wench,” the biggest of them said, not bothering to lower his voice. “Stood in Cairn’s hall in a Cairn weddin’ gown, bold as brass. Yer faither killed me braither at the ford, lass. Did ye ken that? Smiled while he did it.”
“I didnae ken it,” Olivia said evenly enough, though her heart had begun to slam against her ribs. “And I am sorry for it, truly. But I am nae me faither.”
“The Council,” he said. “Aye. The Council said he was to wed ye. The Council didnae say he was to ride to Blythe and fetch ye like a lad courtin’. The Council didnae say he was to seat ye at his right hand and pour ye wine with his own hand and dance ye around this hall for the whole clan to see.” His grip closed hard around her bare arm, hard enough to bruise, and yanked her closer. “Yon’s nae a man obeyin’ an edict, lass. Yon’s a man well pleased with his bargain. And me son’s still in the ground by that river.”
“That was the Elders’ doing.” Olivia made herself say it steadily, though her arm was going numb in his fist. “Every part of it. I didnae ask for this. I didnae want it. I stood in me own hall, and I told a dozen men I’d sooner take a knife to me own wrist than take yer Laird’s name.”
“And yet here ye stand in his colors, wearin’ it,” said the man. He had a fistful of her loch-blue bodice gathered in his other hand now, the fine fabric straining at the seams. “Let’s have a proper look, then, at what the great Laird’s payin’ such a price for. Let’s see his bonnie prize.”
Olivia heard the seam of her wedding gown begin to give. And then a great deal happened all at once.
She heard her own voice go sharp and furious. “Take yer hand off me!”
She heard a woman scream somewhere across the hall. She heard the music die in a single screech of tortured strings.
And over the whole din, cutting clean through the smoke and the noise like a blade drawn through silk, she heard Ragnall’s voice, and never in her life had she heard anything so angry.
“Take. Yer hands. Off me wife.”
CHAPTER 14
Ragnall crossedthe Great Hall before he had decided to move.
He did not remember the crossing, the shoving of bodies, the overturned bench, or the cup that shattered into splinters under his foot. He only recalled that one moment he was at the far end of the hall with a tacksman jabbering in his ear about precedence, and the next he had a fistful of Dougal Ross’s collar and was hauling the man bodily off his wife.
“I said,” he told him, very quietly, into the sudden ringing silence, “take yer hands off me wife. Ye were slow about it.”
Dougal Ross was a big man, and drunk, and stupid with it, and he made the last mistake of his life. He laughed.
“She isnae yer wife, Cairn. She is yer leash. Yer faither would spit to see ye lick the boots of the clan that?—”
Ragnall killed him. He did it clean, just like his father had taught him, the dirk up and in under the ribs and the whole grim business done before the laughter had finished leaving the man’s mouth.
He lowered the body to the rushes almost gently, because a laird did not make a butcher’s mess of his own hall on his own wedding day. Then he straightened and looked out at the silent, staring faces of his clan.
“Listen to me, and listen well.” He did not raise his voice. He had never once needed to. “This woman is me wife. She is yer Lady. The cord’s been tied, and the word’s been said, and there is nay undoin’ it in this world, and I will tell ye plain what it means.”
He let his gaze sweep across the hall and watched men who had stood at his shoulder in three battles drop their eyes to the floor.
“Whatever hand is laid on her in malice, I will consider laid on me. Whatever harm is wished on her, I will answer. She is mine to keep, and I protect what is mine, and the next fool who forgets it will leave this hall the same way Dougal Ross is leavin’ it. Feet first.”
Nobody spoke. Somewhere, a woman was weeping into her apron. Tattie, under a trestle, whined low in his throat.
“Get him out,” Ragnall said to Alastair casually, as if he had asked for more ale. “His kin can bury him. They’ll get nay quarrel from me over it.” Then, to the white-faced musicians frozen inthe gallery: “Play. It’s a weddin’. We’ll nae let one fool’s funeral spoil it.”
