Archer accepted the seat with graceful ease, crossing one leg over the other as though he had every right to take his time once he had arrived. “Courtesy still has its uses. Particularly between neighboring clans.”
“Are ye preparing to ask us something?”
Archer gave a low chuckle at that. The sound should have been warm. It was not.
“I might say instead,” he replied, “that I have come to ensure relations remain as they ought. Your presence at our ceilidh would go some way toward that. Two clans seen under the same roof, in ease and good company, will always quiet half the muttering done by men with too much time and too little work.”
Iona glanced at Frederick. She saw it then, the shift in him. Not dramatic. Not enough that a casual eye would have marked it. But she knew him well enough now to see when his mind stopped indulging talk and began cutting toward what mattered.
Her husband sat at last, though there was nothing of relaxation in the motion.
“There is nay way,” he said evenly, “that ye rode here in person simply to invite us to a ceilidh.”
Archer looked at him for a long moment, smiling all the while. Only this time, the smile reached even less of him than before.
“Aye,” he said. “There is the Frederick I expected. Get to the point.”
The air in the hall changed.
Iona felt it in her stomach before she could have named it. The warmth of the room seemed to pull tighter, the sounds at the far end of the hall growing dimmer, as though everything beyond the three of them had stepped back to make room for whatever this truly was.
Archer folded his hands loosely over one knee. “Two women are missing from me lands. And three bairns.”
The words fell quietly.
They struck with the force of stones.
Iona felt the blood leave her face. Her fingers tightened in her lap beneath the tablecloth before she could stop them.Two women. Three children.The numbers alone were enough to make something cold move through her, though she fought to keep it from showing in her expression.
Frederick did not move at all.
Archer continued, his tone still maddeningly calm. “Taken within the last month, none to return. One from near the southern edge, another from farther east. The bairns disappeared separately, though I dislike coincidence more with each passing day. Me men have found little beyond confusion, fear, and trails that seem determined to become useless just when they ought nae.”
Iona’s throat tightened.
This is spreading.
The thought came hard and fast. Not merely a fear now. Not a handful of incidents that might still be forced into some shape less terrible if one looked at them from the right angle. It was widening. Reaching.
Archer’s gaze remained on Frederick when he asked, “Are ye involved?”
Iona’s heart lurched so sharply it hurt.
For a single, horrified instant, she thought she had misheard him. That surely no man, no matter how calm, would walk into another laird’s hall and place such a question between them as though it were merely the next point in a civil discussion.
Her legs trembled beneath her skirts. She pressed her heels more firmly to the floor, willing stillness back into them. She looked at Frederick and found his face unreadable in a way she had seen only rarely. There was no visible anger there. That frightened her more than anger might have.
Then Frederick spoke. “Is that why Lady Noor was in me lands?”
Iona’s breath caught.
Archer blinked.
It was the first unguarded thing she had seen from him since he entered the hall. Not much. Only the smallest widening of his eyes, the briefest break in that polished ease. Yet it was enough to tell her Frederick’s question had struck true or near enough to it that surprise had no time to hide.
Frederick did not let the moment pass.
“Is she mining me whereabouts for ye?” he asked, his voice still maddeningly level, “or do ye make a habit of letting your kin wander across clan lines without explanation.”