Say it. Now. Tell her ye’d burn the clan and the glen and yerself to ash before ye’d let her go. Say it, ye coward. Say the truth for once in yer life, before it’s too late and she is gone.
But he had spent so long learning not to say it that the words wouldn’t come, and the silence stretched between them, through which he felt the fragile hope slipping right through his fingers.
CHAPTER 26
He did not arguewith her. That was the cruelest part of it.
She had prepared herself for it, lying awake through that dark night in his bed, her shoulder throbbing and his warmth just a careful foot away. She had gathered all her arguments, sharpened each one, ready for him to forbid it, to command her, to give her the honest, clean fight she could lose herself in.
And in the gray morning, he had only looked at her with his unreadable dark eyes and said, “If it’s what ye want, I willnae keep ye against yer will. I will send word to yer braither and an escort to see ye safe. Ye will go when ye are healed enough to ride.”
And that was that. He had let her go without a single word of a fight, and it hurt worse than any blow he could have dealt her.
It took four days for the wound to close enough for travel.
Ragnall was unfailingly courteous, and he was never once there.
He was in the low fields. He was in the villages. He was riding out to the river with Alastair before the light came and back after it went, and if she came into a room he was leaving it, and if they passed in a passage he inclined his head and saidme Ladyand kept walking. He asked after her shoulder through a maid. He had her food sent up.
He was, in every way, a model of care, and she could not have gotten within ten feet of him with a battering ram.
It was Maisie who found her on the second day, sitting in the window of the south tower with a shawl round her shoulders and nothing in her hands.
The old woman did not ask if she might come in. She sat down heavily, propped her stick against the sill, and looked out at the same grey glen Olivia had been looking at for two hours.
“So ye’re away, then.”
“Aye.”
“Mm.” A long pause. “And has he asked ye to stay?”
“Nay.”
“Nay,” Maisie agreed comfortably. “He’ll nae. He’d sooner take a blade through the belly than do that. It’d hurt him less, and he’d ken what to do about it.” She turned her old bright eyes on Olivia. “Have ye asked him to ask ye?”
Olivia opened her mouth and closed it again.
“Aye,” said Maisie. “There ye are. The pair of ye. Two of the most stubborn creatures God has ever set on this earth, sittin’ in separate rooms of the same castle, each waitin’ for the other to be brave first.” She thumped her stick once on the floor. “I’ll be dead before ye manage it.”
“It isnae like that.”
“It’sexactlylike that, and ye ken it fine, and ye’ll be halfway down the glen before ye admit it to yerself.” The old woman heaved herself up. At the door, she stopped. “I’ve buried a husband and a daughter and a son-in-law, lass. I’ll tell ye the one thing I’ve learned out of the whole miserable business, and then I’ll leave ye be.”
Olivia did not turn around.
“Ye’ll get over the things that were done to ye,” Maisie continued. “In time. Ye’ll get over grief, and ye’ll get over hate, and ye’ll even get over bein’ wronged, which is the hardest of the three.” The stick tapped once. “It’s the things ye didnae say that’ll keep ye company till they put ye in the ground. Ask me how I ken.”
With that, she stepped out and closed the door behind her.
Olivia sat in the window until the light went out, and did not manage to be brave that day, nor the next.
Kate did not come to her until the last night. She stood in the doorway with Rosie on her hip and did not come in, and her face was set in a way Olivia had never seen it before.
“Ye’re really goin’.”
“Kate—”
“Ye said ye’d help me with her.” Her voice was quite steady, which made it a great deal worse. “Ye said it in the garden. Ye said, ‘We’ll do it together, and if ye cannae bear her one day, I’ll take her, and I’ll bring her back when ye can.’Ye said that to me.” Rosie reached out toward Olivia and made a small enquiring sound, and Kate’s arms tightened. “And now ye’re away home, and I’m to manage.”
