“I daenae want yer pity,” she said.
“It isnae pity. It’s breakfast. There’s a difference between the two, though I grant ye it’s a hard one to make out on an empty stomach.” He nodded toward the cold gray morning beyond the window. “But before ye eat, lassie, there are a few matters we ought to set straight, ye and I. Plain words, while there’s nay one about to hear us perform for an audience.”
She crossed her arms over her aching middle. Here it came. “Go on, then. Say yer piece.”
“We marry in six days. After that, ye’ll be Lady Cairn, with everything that comes with the name. Me protection, before all else. Me name on ye, which in these hills is a wall around a body.The respect of every soul under this roof, whether or nae they care for yer Blythe eyes.”
His voice was even, almost gentle, the voice of a man laying out terms he had thought through in the dark, and that was worse than if he had shouted them.
“In return, I will ask of ye only what the Council asks. Peace between us, before the world at least. And, in the fullness of time, an heir.”
There it was. The demand she had been waiting for.
“Let me set somethin’ straight,” Olivia said, and was glad to hear her voice come out steady and cold. “Ye may have me name on a paper sealed by old men. Ye may have me sittin’ at yer table and smilin’ for yer people like a tame thing. But ye willnever, nae once, nae in this life, lay a hand on me. Ye will get nay heir from me, me Laird. Find another woman to give ye one. The Highlands are full of them, I am told.”
Danger moved through his stillness, a current sliding under flat water. “I will need an heir eventually, lassie.”
“And I willnae be the one to give him to ye.”
He came another step closer, and she made herself hold her ground, which meant they were close enough now that she could see clearly the place where the scar caught at his lip, closeenough to feel the heat radiating from the breadth of him like a banked fire on a cold hearth.
“Have a care,” he said, his voice low. “I’ve been kinder to ye than ye’ve the first notion of. I willnae be disrespected under me own roof, by me own wife, before me own people.”
“Kind!” The word came out like a drawn blade. “Ye’ve been kind to me? Truly? Should I thank ye for it, then, me Laird? Shall I sink down on me knees here on yer floor in gratitude for yer great kindness?”
He crossed his arms as he watched her.
“Or should I just wait, wait quietly and patiently like a good wee biddable bride, for the day ye grow yer beard back and become once again the madman I ken ye to be? The one I watched cut down me faither in his own yard. The one who killed me braither and rode out the broken gate whistlin’?”
She was breathing hard, and so was he. They stood close enough to share the same warm air. It was full of all those months of her grief, but now it held something else as well, hot and unwelcome. She could not for the life of her understand how fury and that nameless wanting could live so close together in one body without one of them killing the other.
For a long moment, he said nothing at all. His dark eyes moved over her face like a man reading a letter in a hand he half remembered and could not quite place.
Step back. Step back from him. Whatever this is, it is more dangerous than his anger ever was.
“Nay,” he said at last, very quietly. “Ye’re right. Ye shouldnae have to wait for it.”
He stepped back. The cold air came rushing in to fill the space where he had been.
“Ye can stay here until the weddin’,” he added. All the heat had gone out of him now, leaving his face flat and shuttered. “I will send a maid up to take yer measurements. Ye willnae have to suffer me at yer table, nor anywhere else ye can help it.”
He turned around. She thought he would simply go, and was appalled to find that some small traitorous part of her did not want him to.
But then, he paused, one hand on the doorframe, his broad back to her.
“Ye think ye ken what I am,” he said. “Ye watched the one terrible hour of me life and built a whole man out of it, and ye’ve been livin’ alongside that man in yer head ever since, feedin’ him.”
He glanced back over his shoulder, and for just one heartbeat, the tiredness on his face cracked clean across, and she glimpsed what lay under it. She had no name for it and was almost afraid to learn.
“There’s more to that day than ye ken, lassie. More about this keep and who lives in it and why. When ye are ready to hear it, ye ken well enough where to find me.”
Then he was gone, and the door slammed shut behind him, loud and final.
Olivia stood alone in the middle of the room, her heart pounding against her ribs like a creature trying to break free, furious and frightened at the same time, no longer sure which emotion ran deeper.
The dog whined and pressed his big head into her open hand.
“Daenae look at me like that,” she whispered into his warm fur. “I called him a monster to his face, and I meant it, and I’d say it again.”
