Chapter 2

By the third morning after the mare's panic, Mairi had learned three things: Alasdair Grant disliked mud on women, her uncle disliked women with opinions, and Cormac Ó Raghallaigh disliked being watched while praying. Naturally, the third discovery was the one that would not leave her alone. She found him in the old tack room because Dunbrae House had too many corridors for secrets and too few for sanity. The tack room stood behind the stable, half-forgotten since Lachlan decided new leather looked better in the front room where visitors might admire his prosperity. It smelled of dust, saddle soap, mice, and damp wood. Mairi had gone there to hide, which was reasonable. Cormac had gone there to bleed, which seemed excessive even for him. She opened the door without knocking because no one knocked on abandoned rooms. He stood shirtless in the grey light, one hand braced on a beam, the other pressed to his ribs where the mare had struck him. A strip of linen lay on the workbench. Beside it sat a needle, a small bottle, and a flask he had not yet uncorked. Blood had slipped down his side in a thin dark line. His head snapped up. For a heartbeat neither of them spoke. Mairi's first thought was not modest. This annoyed her later, so she tried very hard not to remember it, which of course made memory industrious. He was broad through the shoulder, lean at the waist, scarred in more places than a peaceful life would allow. Not handsome in Alasdair's polished way. Handsome like a stone wall standing after fire. There was grey at his temples, dark hair curling slightly from damp, and an ugly scar crossing the left side of his ribs under the fresh wound. His skin bore old weather, old violence, old endurance. Her second thought was worse. No one had tended him. "Get out," he said. "Yes, that does seem to be the general mood of the house." "Mairi." She shut the door behind her. His eyes darkened. "That was not an invitation." "I gathered. Your invitations must be dreadful if they resemble your threats." He reached for his shirt. "Don't," she said. The word left her too quickly. Too intimate. Colour rose to her face, and she hated that because blushing felt like surrendering evidence. "I mean," she added, "you'll foul it with blood." "I've fouled shirts before." "Another jewel in your glittering crown of accomplishments." A muscle moved in his cheek. Pain, amusement, or the effort not to throw her bodily from the room. Possibly all three. "You should not be here." "So I'm told. Daily. By people with limited imagination." "This is not a game." "No. It is a wound." She crossed the room and took up the linen. "And a badly managed one." Cormac caught her wrist before she touched him. Not hard. Never hard. But the restraint was immediate, warm, and shocking. His hand closed around her as though the body had spoken before the mind granted permission. The room narrowed. Rain tapped once against the small window. A horse shifted beyond the wall. Mairi felt his pulse where his fingers touched her skin. Or perhaps it was her own. She could no longer tell. "Do not," he said softly, "confuse kindness with permission to stand too close to danger." Her breath caught. "Are you danger?" "Aye." "At least you're honest about one thing." His gaze dropped to her mouth for less than a second. It was enough to tilt the floor. He released her and stepped back, then winced because stepping back had pulled the wound. "There," she said. "Honour has injured you. Again." "Mairi." "Sit down." "No." "Sit down, or I'll call for Alasdair and tell him I found you half-naked in a dark room. He'll be so delighted by the scandal that he may forget to be tedious for an entire hour." Cormac stared at her. Then, very slowly, he sat on the bench. "Saints preserve any man foolish enough to marry you," he muttered. "Too late. One is already queueing." The humour fell, and with it something in her chest. She uncorked the bottle. Whisky. Of course. Men would pour spirits on a wound and call it medicine, then nearly faint if asked to discuss feelings. The species was ambitious in its absurdity. "This will sting," she said. "I've survived worse." "So have I." Their eyes met. She poured the whisky onto the cloth. He did not make a sound when she pressed it to the cut, but his hand closed hard on the edge of the bench. The old scar beneath the new wound tugged when he breathed. She worked carefully, cleaning mud from the torn skin, her anger sharpening into focus. "Who taught you?" he asked. "To clean wounds?" "To do it without flinching." "My mother died when I was young. Fever came through the house. After that, one learns what blood, vomit, sweat, and grief look like, or one spends life being decorative while useful people work." "I'm sorry." She did not want those words from him. They made the room too soft. "You say that easily." "No." "No?" "I say little easily." That was true enough to silence her for a moment. She set the cloth aside and threaded the needle. "This needs two stitches." "It needs leaving alone." "You may continue being wrong while I sew." His mouth twitched. The needle went in. This time he drew breath through his teeth. "Pray, if you like," she said. "I was not praying." "You were. In Irish. Before I opened the door." His whole body stilled. Mairi kept her eyes on the stitch, though she felt the change in him as surely as weather. "I did not understand all of it." "You should forget what you heard." "I'm poor at obedience and worse at forgetting." "Mairi." The warning in his voice had changed. Not anger. Fear. She tied the first stitch and looked up. "Who was Tadhg?" The name struck him like a blow. For a moment she thought he would leave despite the needle hanging from his skin. His face went empty in the way a battlefield might look empty after the bodies had been taken and the earth still knew. He turned his gaze to the wall. "No one you need carry." "That is not what I asked." "It is the answer." She should have let it rest. Good women let things rest. Good women did not press fingers into bruises. Good women were married in three weeks to men like Alasdair Grant because everyone had agreed goodness looked well in chains. Mairi made the second stitch. "My mother used to say names are a kind of fire," she said. "Neglect them, and they go out. Feed them wrongly, and they burn the house down." Cormac closed his eyes. "He was my cousin," he said. The words were flat. Too flat. A door opened only a finger's width. "At Culloden?" His eyes opened. Now she had it. Not all. Enough. The forbidden word sat between them colder than the room. Culloden. Even two years later, people lowered their voices around it as if the dead might be listening from the heather. Mairi had not been there. She had seen what came after: men missing, women waiting, soldiers passing, songs swallowed, tartan hidden, knives buried, houses searching themselves for evidence. Her uncle spoke of prudence. Moira spoke of survival. The young men who had returned did not speak at all. Cormac's scarred body suddenly made a different kind of sense. "I should not have asked," she said. "No." "I'm sorry." He let out a humourless breath. "There. You say it easily too." "No," she said. "I say it badly but mean it." He looked at her then. Truly looked. His eyes were older than thirty-six in that moment, older than the hills, older than any cause men had ever used to convince the young that dying could be tidy. "He was seventeen," Cormac said. "Tadhg. Thought war would make him a man quicker than harvest would. I told his mother I'd keep him close." Mairi's fingers tightened around the needle. "I did keep him close," he said. "Until I couldn't." Rain filled the silence. She wanted, absurdly, to put her hand against his face. To tell him no promise made in war survived unchanged. To say that seventeen-year-old boys should have been at harvest, not on moors with smoke in their lungs. But comfort could become theft if it arrived too quickly, taking grief from the person who had earned it. So she finished the stitch. "You remember him," she said. Cormac looked away. "Remembering is poor compensation." "It is not compensation. It is witness." His throat moved. The word had found him. She saw it and looked down quickly, giving him cover. When the wound was bound, she tied the linen firmly and stepped back. Her hands shook only after she had finished. Irritating. Bodies often had terrible timing. Cormac noticed. Of course. "Are you afraid of blood?" he asked. "No." "Of me?" "No." That answer came too swiftly, too truly. His gaze sharpened. Mairi wiped her hands on a rag. "I'm afraid of rooms where everyone agrees before I enter them. I'm afraid of men who never raise their voices because they dinna need to. I'm afraid of waking one day and finding I have become reasonable in all the ways that kill a woman slowly." Cormac stood. The room became smaller. "You should be afraid of running too," he said. "I'm." That stopped him. She laughed once, without humour. "Do you think me too foolish to fear it? I know what waits outside these walls. Roads. Money. Names. Ships full of sickness. Men with questions. Men with worse than questions. I know a woman alone is meat to many. I know I may fail before I reach the first town. But fear is not a commandment." "No. It is sometimes instruction." "And sometimes a leash." His jaw tightened. "If you run, he will come after you." "Alasdair?" "Aye." "He believes I'm property. Men chase stolen goods." "You are not goods." "No. Which is why I intend to stop standing politely on his shelf." Cormac turned away with a sound that might have been a curse. He dragged his shirt on carefully, movements stiff, and began fastening it with fingers that did not quite obey. She should have helped. She did not trust herself to touch him again. "You need a plan," he said. "I have one." He looked at her. "I have part of one," she amended. His expression said many things about women, plans, and the Lord's patience. "I have a cloak," she said. "Bread. A little coin. A key. And a willingness to improvise." "Improvising is what people call dying when they wish to sound optimistic." "That cannae be true. I improvise daily and remain a burden to all." Despite himself, his mouth moved. Then he shook his head. "Where would you go?" "Away." "That is a direction, not a destination." "It is the only one that matters first." He stepped close enough that she could see the pulse at his throat. "Listen to me. There are soldiers still willing to take coin for questions. There are ships' masters who will sell a desperate woman's passage twice and honour neither bargain. There are men on the road who will smile while deciding how much your shoes are worth. There are informers, thieves, fever, hunger. There is no romance in flight." "I did not ask for romance." "No," he said softly. "You ask for freedom as if freedom were not fond of taking payment in blood." "And what should I buy with obedience?" He closed his mouth. The tack room door rattled under a gust. Somewhere in the stable, a horse nickered. Mairi looked at Cormac's bound side, at the place where fresh linen covered old violence, and understood with sudden clarity that he was not trying to frighten her because he thought her weak. He was trying because he knew exactly how strong she would have to be and feared the cost. That was almost worse. "You think the honourable thing is to stay alone," she said. His face went blank. The words had not been planned. They had risen from the same place as no, clean and terrible. "You think if no one stands near you, no one can be harmed by what follows you. You think refusing help is kindness. You think wanting anything is a debt the dead will come to collect." "Enough." "No." His eyes flashed. Good, she thought wildly. There he was. Not the silent hired man. Not the ghost. The man. "No?" he repeated. "No," she said. "You dinna get to bind my wound one day and refuse yours the next because yours has better manners." "That is not what this is." "It is exactly what this is." "You know nothing of me." "I know you stepped between Alasdair and me without making a performance of it. I know you gave me leather for a bundle and pretended not to. I know you pray for the dead when you think no one hears. I know you are frightened of your own decency because it may ask something of you." He stared at her as if she had struck him. She had. Not with a hand. With truth. Shame arrived half a breath later. "I should not have said that." "No," he said. "You should not." But he did not deny it. Mairi stepped back, suddenly aware of the room, the closed door, the smell of his skin and whisky and old leather, the dangerous intimacy of knowing one another's fear. "Thank you for the leather." "I dinna know what you mean." "Of course not. Your generosity is very discreet. One might mistake it for furniture." He almost smiled again. Almost. The restraint hurt to watch. "Mairi," he said. She paused at the door. "If you run," he said, each word pulled from him like wire, "dinna run without telling someone where to look if you vanish." Her hand closed on the latch. "Who would look?" He said nothing. The answer was in the silence. Her breath left slowly. "Would you?" His eyes held hers. "Aye," he said. Not a promise. Not yet. But the first stone of one. She opened the door before she could ask him to build the rest. The passage outside was empty. Cold air touched her face. She walked towards the kitchen with her hands steady and her heart behaving like a trapped bird. Halfway there, she heard Alasdair's voice in the front hall, smooth as cream poured over poison. "Three weeks is too generous," he was saying. "The girl grows bolder by the hour. I will not have my wife made ridiculous before she is even mine." Mairi stopped behind the linen press. Her uncle answered, low and weary. "The banns—" "Can be managed. A licence can be managed. Men manage what matters to them." Moira's voice, quiet: "And women endure what men manage." Alasdair laughed. "Until marriage teaches them gratitude." Mairi's hand found the key in her pocket. Metal teeth pressed into her palm. Not three weeks, then. Less. She stood in the corridor smelling dust, linen, and fear, and felt the old house closing around her with the patience of a fist. Behind her, in the tack room, Cormac began to sing under his breath in Irish. Not loudly. Not for anyone. A lament, perhaps. Or a prayer. Mairi did not know the words. But she understood the shape of it. It was a song for someone leaving. Or someone already gone. That night, she took the green cloak from the linen press. She did not yet pack the trunk. A trunk was too large. A trunk announced intention. She chose instead what could be hidden beneath skirts, sewn into hems, tucked into pockets, tied under a shawl. Bread. Cheese. Coin. Her mother's thimble. The ribbon. The dried rowan berries. A small knife from the kitchen whose handle fit badly in her hand but whose blade was sharp enough to make her feel less like prey. At midnight, Moira came to her room without a candle. "They have moved it," Moira whispered. "I know." "Four days." For a moment, even Mairi's thoughts went silent. Four days. A life could be ended in four days while everyone still called it a wedding. Moira gripped her arms. "You must not do anything foolish." Mairi looked at the woman who had raised her, loved her, feared for her, and quietly placed bread where thieves might find it. "No," she said. "I'm finished with foolishness." Moira closed her eyes, and a tear slipped down one cheek. "Then God forgive me," she whispered. "For what?" "For hoping you are braver than I was." Mairi's own tears came then, sudden and hot. She pressed her face into Moira's shoulder like a child for one stolen breath. Moira smelled of lavender, starch, and smoke. Home, before home betrayed her. Mairi wanted to keep that smell forever. She wanted to run from it. Both truths tore at her. When Moira left, Mairi opened the window and let the cold air dry her face. Across the yard, a lantern burned low in the stable. Cormac's shadow moved once behind the boards. She should not involve him. He had danger enough in his own name. He had told her what roads could do to a woman alone, and every word had been true. But there was another truth, one neither of them had spoken plainly. He would look. If she vanished, he would look. Mairi touched the rowan berries sewn into her hem and made the choice before dawn. Not to be rescued. Never that. To choose who would know where to look. And if Cormac Ó Raghallaigh mistook that for permission to command her, she would correct him so thoroughly the saints would take notes. By morning, the rain had stopped. The hills shone dark under a sky the colour of pewter. Servants hurried. Lachlan sent riders. Alasdair's carriage stood in the drive by noon, polished and waiting, a black beetle of a thing. Mairi watched it from the upper window and felt fear settle inside her, not as a leash now, but as instruction. Four days. No. Less than that. Because a woman who waited until the door was locked had already surrendered too much. At dusk, she went down to the kitchen, stood beneath the rowan branch, and waited until Cormac came in for firewood. He paused when he saw her. She held out the strip of leather he had left beside the bread. "I need more than this," she said. His face changed. Only a little. Enough. "No," he said. Mairi smiled without humour. "There's that word again. It sounds different when it belongs to you." "Mairi." "They have moved the wedding to four days from now." The fire cracked between them. Smoke curled. The rowan berries above the lintel threw small red shadows on the wall. Cormac looked at her for a long time. Then he set the firewood down carefully, as if the whole world might explode if he made one careless sound. "No," he said again, but this time it did not sound like refusal. It sounded like a man realising the door had already opened. The kitchen was empty except for the banked fire and the old cat who slept beneath the settle with the indifference of royalty. Outside, Dunbrae House arranged itself for evening: dishes clattered in the scullery, a maid laughed too brightly, Lachlan's boots crossed the front hall, and somewhere Alasdair's carriage horses stamped as if even they objected to waiting on him. Cormac stood with his hands at his sides. He looked larger indoors, or perhaps the kitchen felt smaller because Mairi had spoken aloud the thing that had been growing between them since the rowan cut her thumb. "I cannae help you run," he said. "You can." "I will not." "There. Honesty. We are improving." His eyes sharpened. "Do not make sport of this." "If I dinna make sport, I may scream, and then we shall both be inconvenienced." The cat opened one eye, judged the drama insufficiently edible, and slept again. Cormac stepped closer, lowering his voice. "You think because I know roads, because I have slept in ditches and lied to soldiers, that makes me fit to guide you. It does not. It makes me proof of what the road takes." "I did not ask for fit. I asked for help." "And I'm telling you the best help is to keep you from romanticising ruin." Mairi's temper rose so fast it almost lifted her off the floor. "Do you think I have embroidered flowers around this in my mind? I know it will be ugly. I know I will be cold and hungry and frightened. I know I may hate you by the second mile if you say one more solemn thing about my own danger as if I have misplaced it in a drawer." "I'm not speaking down to you." "You are doing it from a great moral height for a man standing in my kitchen." His nostrils flared. Good. Anger was better than pity. Anger met her on the ground. "You have coin enough for two days if you are clever," he said. "Less if cheated. Your uncle will send riders by morning. Grant may send men tonight if he suspects. You cannae use your own name. You cannae travel dressed like that. You cannae buy passage alone without drawing notice. You cannae trust every Highland voice you hear simply because it sounds like home. You cannae—" "I cannae marry him." The words stopped him. Simple words. No wit left on them. No ribbon. No blade. Only truth. "I cannae," she said again. "Cormac, I cannae." His name. His true name, properly shaped. She had never used it before. Not to his face. Something broke open behind his eyes and closed again just as quickly. He looked towards the rowan above the door, as if asking a branch for counsel was now the most sensible option available to him. "You would need to leave before dawn," he said. Mairi's heart struck once, hard. He hated himself for saying it. She could see that. He went to the table and pulled one of the kitchen stools out, not to sit but to occupy his hands. "Not by the main road. The lower path behind the ash burial ground. There's a ford two miles east if the rain has not swollen it past use. From there, the drovers' track." She did not move. She hardly breathed. "You know this because you planned your own leaving," she said. "Aye." "When?" "Soon." The word hurt. Absurdly. She had no claim on his staying. She had known him less than a month. He owed her nothing but the care one decent person might offer another at the edge of harm. Still, the thought of Dunbrae after him felt darker. He continued, practical now because practicality was the bridge he could cross without drowning. "There is a town south where a factor sometimes arranges servants' passages, though indenture is another chain if you choose poorly. There are ships out of Glasgow, Greenock, sometimes smaller ports if you can pay or work. Virginia is not a magic door. Land costs. Tools cost. Food costs. Names cost most of all." "Virginia," she repeated. His gaze returned to her. "You asked for away. I'm giving you a destination." The word opened in her mind like a map she had never seen. Virginia. Heat. Forest. Mountains not yet known to her. Roads where no one called her Lachlan's niece or Alasdair's intended. A world that would be dangerous, yes. Unkind, yes. Built on violences she could not yet imagine, yes. But wide. The thought of width made her dizzy. "Why Virginia?" "Because men who have nothing may still become useful there if they live long enough. Because Highland and Irish names are not rare enough to be curiosities. Because land can be had by those willing to bleed into it. Because an ocean confuses pursuit." "And because you were going there." His silence answered. Mairi took one step closer. "Then take me with you." "No." The old word again, but weaker. "Why?" "Because if I take you, there is no returning your reputation neatly wrapped." "My reputation is a cage with lace on it." "Because I'm fifteen years older than you." "That is unfortunate. I had hoped you would improve with age." His mouth tightened. "Because I'm poor." "So am I, apparently, if my dowry can be spent buying a husband I despise." "Because I'm hunted by old names and old mistakes." "I'm being hunted by a new husband and a very current mistake." "Mairi." "Because you want me?" He went still. The fire made a soft collapse in the grate. There. The forbidden country. Not road, not coin, not ships. Want. Mairi had not meant to say it. Or perhaps she had meant to from the first moment he spoke her name in the stable and her bones answered. Her face burned, but she did not look away. Let him see. Let someone, once, meet her desire without translating it into shame. Cormac's voice came low. "Wanting is not taking." "No," she said. "It is not. That is why I asked." His eyes closed briefly. When he opened them, he looked like a man at the edge of battle who had finally understood the enemy was himself. "I will not decide your life for you," he said. "Good." "And I will not let you mistake me for safety." "I have never mistaken you for safe." The corner of his mouth moved despite the pain in him. "Sensible lass." "I did not say I was sensible." "No. God forbid." There, absurdly, was laughter. Small, breathless, threaded with terror. It changed the kitchen more than any vow could have. For one moment, they were not doomed or noble or tragic. They were two people beneath a rowan branch in a smoky room, finding humour because fear had become greedy and needed denying supper. Cormac sobered first. "If I help you leave, it must be because you choose the road, not because you choose me." Mairi swallowed. That distinction mattered to him. Therefore it would matter to her. "I choose not to marry Alasdair," she said. He nodded once. "I choose not to let my uncle's fear become my law." Another nod. "I choose the road because the road is the only door not locked from the outside." His face softened, barely. "And you?" she asked. His gaze lifted. "Do you choose the road," she said, "or only guilt?" The question landed harder than she intended. He looked away towards the fire. In the orange light, the side of his face was all bone and restraint, a man carved by losses that had not finished speaking. "I dinna know yet," he said. It was the most honest thing he had given her. Mairi nodded because she could not trust her voice. A sound came from the passage. Both of them turned. Moira stood in the doorway, pale and dry-eyed, holding a folded bundle. The old green cloak lay over one arm. In her other hand was a small purse. "I have lived in this house long enough," she said, "to know when two fools are planning badly." Mairi pressed both hands to her mouth. Cormac bowed his head, not theatrical, but with such respect that Moira's chin trembled. "Mrs MacLeod," he said. "Do not Mrs MacLeod me as if manners will save any of us." She crossed to the table and set the bundle down. "There is bread, cheese, stockings, a shift, a comb, dried apples, and every coin I could remove without Lachlan noticing before morning." Mairi could not move. Moira looked at Cormac. "Can you get her out?" He did not answer quickly. Mairi loved him for that too, though it was becoming inconvenient how many things she loved him for. "I can get her beyond the first search," he said. "After that, it becomes weather, luck, money, and whether God is in a generous mood." Moira gave a sharp nod. "God has been in a mood for years. We shall try bread." Mairi laughed and cried at once, a humiliating sound. Moira pulled her close. "You listen to me," Moira whispered into her hair. "Freedom is not a song. It is work. It is hunger. It is people doubting you. It is waking in strange rooms and missing the very walls that held you. Do not make it pretty in your mind." "I won't." "Make it yours instead." Mairi held on harder. When Moira released her, she turned to Cormac with a fierceness that made him straighten. "And you. If you help her, you dinna own her gratitude." "No." "You dinna become her keeper because you know roads." "No." "You dinna decide later that she would be safer miserable." Cormac's eyes flicked to Mairi. "No." Moira studied him. "You love her yet?" Mairi made a strangled sound. "Moira." Cormac did not flinch, which was rude of him under the circumstances. "No," he said. The word struck Mairi in the ribs before sense could remind her it was probably mercy. Moira narrowed her eyes. "Liar." For the first time since Mairi had known him, Cormac looked entirely outmatched. Moira pushed the bundle towards him. "Good. Liars are useful on roads." A bell rang from the front hall. All three froze. Alasdair's voice carried faintly, speaking to Lachlan. Too near. Moira moved first. "Go," she whispered. "Not dawn. Now. The house is full of supper and self-importance. No one watches the back door when men are congratulating themselves in front rooms." Mairi stared. "Now?" "Did you think freedom would make an appointment?" Cormac grabbed the bundle. "Cloak." The word turned him from man to action. Mairi swung the green cloak around her shoulders, fingers fumbling at the clasp. Moira fastened it for her, then took Mairi's face in both hands. "You were loved here," she said. "Badly at times. Fearfully. But loved." Mairi's tears slipped free. "I know." "Then go be loved better." Footsteps sounded in the passage. Cormac opened the kitchen door. Cold rushed in, carrying the smell of wet earth and night. Mairi looked once at the room: the hearth, the settle, the cat, the rowan above the lintel, Moira's white face, the table where bread had risen and bargains had been made over her head. She reached up and snapped a small cluster of rowan berries from the branch. Moira nodded as if this, of all things, mattered most. Cormac stepped outside first, checking the yard. Mairi followed. Behind her, Moira shut the door without a sound. The night took them. They crossed the yard in shadow, past the pump, past the stable where the mare lifted her head and huffed softly as if offering judgement. Cormac moved like a man who had practised disappearing until it became a language. Mairi tried to match him and failed when her skirt caught on a nail. He turned, freed the cloth with one swift tug, and whispered, "Optimistic squirrel." "This is not the time to flirt." "I was insulting you." "I know the difference. Barely." For half a second, in the middle of danger, his smile flashed. Then voices rose behind them. The kitchen door opened. Light spilled across the yard. "Mairi?" Lachlan called. Cormac caught her hand. Not to pull her where she had not chosen to go. To run with her. They ran. Past the byre, through the wet grass, over the low wall by the ash trees where her mother lay buried. Mairi stumbled once near the graves, and Cormac steadied her without stopping. The rowan berries in her fist crushed warm and red against her palm. Behind them, the house erupted. Men shouted. A dog barked. Alasdair's voice cut through the night, no longer smooth. "Mairi!" She did not look back. The lower path opened before them, black beneath the trees. Cormac's hand tightened around hers. "Still choosing?" he asked, breath rough. Mairi ran harder. "Yes," she said. And the old life vanished behind them like a door thrown into fire.