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He swung up behind her, and gathered the reins, and if his arm settled a fraction more familiarly across her middle than it had the night before, she chose, for the moment, not to remark on it.

CHAPTER NINE

The first thing she noticed on MacKinnon land was trees opening and the ground rising, the smell of salt coming in beneath the pine as they drew closer to the sea. Neilina felt something in her chest tighten with every mile, because this was somehow more real now than the ride from MacRath’s had been. This was arrival. This was the end of the road for her, whatever she still meant to do about it.

The keep came into view at the top of a long rise with grey stone against grey cliffs, the sea beyond it vast, endless, and the color of iron. Gulls wheeled over walls that looked built to withstand a great deal more than they were currently being asked to.

This is it, she thought. This is where he means tae keep me.

She had spent the last hour of the ride completely avoiding him, which was its own kind of exhausting given that his arm was still around her waist and his chest was still at her back. Neither one had said a single word about the night before, or the morning, or Lachlan MacRae's face when he'd finally, mercifully, ridden ahead to announce them.

Marcas dismounted first in the courtyard, and there was no ceremony to it. Men simply appeared and took the horses. A woman in a clean apron came forward at a pace just short of a run and Neilina found herself lifted down and immediately, efficiently, absorbed into a current of household activity that had clearly been assembled in anticipation of this arrival.

"See her tae the east chamber," Marcas said, to no one in particular and everyone at once. "Whatever she requires."

He didn't look at her when he said it and a little part of her ached. She gave herself a mental smack and frowned in response.

"This way, my lady." The woman in the apron had a voice like warm bread, and eyes that went over Neilina's travel-worn state with the frank, unbothered assessment of someone who had clearly seen worse arrive at this door. "I'm Elspeth. I'll be seeing tae ye."

Seeing tae me. Or seeing tae it I dinnae leave.

She said nothing of that thought aloud, only nodded, and followed Elspeth through a heavy door, and up a stair, and into a corridor that was considerably warmer and better lit than she'd expected.

The chamber, when they reached it, was not what she'd prepared herself for either.

She'd expected a room like the one she’d found at MacRath's. A room with a bolt, a barred window, and the chill of a space built to hold rather than to welcome. What she found instead was a wide hearth already lit, a bed heaped with furs, a washstand with actual hot water steaming faintly in the basin, and a large, unbarred window with a view of the sea, and a cushioned seat built into its ledge.

She stood in the doorway a long moment, simply looking at it.

This isnae a cell.

"The laird's orders," Elspeth said, moving past her to set down a folded stack of linen, "were verra particular. Whatever ye need tae make yerself comfortable, ye're tae have it. He said it twice, which he disnae generally do." A faint, private smile. "Once is usually enough for the household tae hear him."

"How thoughtful of him," Neilina said, and heard the flatness in her own voice, and didn't try to soften it.

Elspeth glanced at her, the same frank look she'd given the road dirt on Neilina's hem, now turned on whatever was showing on her face instead.

"Ye dinnae trust it," Elspeth said. More fact than question.

"Should I?"

"That's nae mine tae answer, my lady." Elspeth crossed to the basin, tested the water's heat with two fingers, satisfied. "But I've been in this household eleven years, since before he was laird, and I've never known him tae order a room done up soft for someone he meant tae treat cruel. Whatever else he is." A pause, careful. "And he is a great many things."

That's nae the same as saying he's kind.

"There were men at the gate," Neilina said. "And I noticed two more in the corridor on the way up. Standing where they'd nae reason tae stand unless someone told them tae."

Elspeth's hands stilled on the linen for the briefest moment.

"Aye," she said. "There are."

"For my protection." Neilina said it the way she'd said it to Cailleach, testing the shape of the phrase in this new household, to see if it fit any better here than it had there. "That's what I'll be told, I expect."

"It's what's true," Elspeth said, "for what that's worth tae ye right now. Which I ken mightnae be verra much."

"It isnae. Nae from a woman I met mere minutes ago, with all respect tae ye personally."

"None taken." Elspeth smiled at that, small and real. "I'd think less of ye if ye took my word for it after the two days I hear ye've had." She nodded at the window, the unbarred glass, the long fall of grey sea beyond it. "But he had the bars taken out of that window three days past, my lady. Before he'd even laid eyes on ye. I dinnae know what tae make of that, and I willnae tell ye what tae make of it either. I'll only tell ye it happened."