Archer looked from one face to the next and said, “Tell me all of it.”
Frederick did. He did not dress any of it in gentler words than necessary. He told Archer what Iona had revealed the night before. Her place in MacFarlane Castle. The women hiddenbelow. Noor’s knowledge of it. The escape. The years of pursuit that had followed.
As he spoke, his gaze returned again and again to Iona, not because he doubted his own telling, but because he could still feel the weight of her voice from the night before, the rawness of it, and the fury it had left in him.
Archer listened without interruption, though the stillness in him sharpened with every detail. By the time Frederick finished, the man had gone entirely cold about the eyes.
“Aye,” Archer said at last. “That sounds like her.”
Frederick’s brow furrowed. “Ye daenae sound surprised.”
“I am nae surprised by cruelty,” Archer replied. “Only by the lengths some people go to dress it as virtue.”
He began to pace then, not with nervous energy, but with the focused motion of a man fitting moving pieces together in his head.
“We cannae accuse Lady Noor openly without proof strong enough to hold the room,” he said. “Nae if we mean to avoid setting half the Highlands on fire. MacFarlane may be diminished, but wounded pride still gathers swords quickly enough. If we move badly, her son will be forced to choose blood over sense, whether he likes it or not.”
Lennox grunted. “And if we move well?”
Archer glanced toward him. “Then we reveal what she is while giving him room to cut her loose without taking the insult as his own.”
Frederick’s mouth flattened. “That is a narrow road.”
“Aye,” Archer said. “But a passable one.”
He stopped pacing and looked at Frederick directly. “Ye, me, and a small number of men leave tomorrow for O’Douglas Castle.”
Iona lifted her head. “Tomorrow?”
Archer nodded. “Me household has already seen enough odd movement these past weeks that another guarded arrival will draw less notice than elsewhere. We bring the right men, say little, and wait for her to reveal where impatience has made her careless.”
Frederick saw the change in Iona before she spoke. It was slight at first. A tightening through the shoulders.
“Nay,” she said.
Both men looked at her.
Iona rose from her chair. “This willnae end unless I end it.”
Frederick felt the warning before the words were fully out of her mouth.
“I will come with ye,” she said. “If she thinks she can finally lay hands on me, she will make a mistake.”
“Nay,” Frederick said at once.
She turned toward him fully, her eyes bright now not with panic, but with resolve so sharp it nearly unsettled him. “She has hunted me for seven years.Seven. If word reaches her that I am within reach, she willnae sit quietly and wait for wiser heads to advise restraint.”
“I said nay.”
Archer, curse him, did not interrupt. He only watched.
Iona stepped closer to the desk. “If I am there, she will move. If she moves, she will expose herself. Ye both know that.”
Frederick pushed away from the desk and came around it, his voice low and controlled in a way that took effort now. “And ye think I would willingly put ye in her path after all she has done.”
“I think ye may have nay choice if ye truly mean to stop her.”
His jaw tightened. “There is always a choice.”