The moment it left him, he knew it for a mistake.
Iona’s lashes lowered. Her hands folded more neatly over the blanket in her lap.
“Whatever me husband requires of me,” she whispered.
It was the tone more than the words that undid what remained of his control. Frederick stared at her for a long beat, disbelief and frustration colliding so sharply that he could scarcely separate one from the other.
“This is impossible,” he said.
She did not answer.
He took one step toward the bed, then stopped himself. Whatever he might say next would not mend anything tonight. Not in this temper. Not with her looking at him as though she had already withdrawn to some place inside herself he could not reach.
“Ye’re impossible,” he growled, though there was more despair than anger in it by the end.
Then, because remaining would only make him say something worse, he turned and left the room.
The corridor outside felt colder than it should have.
28
Their departure began before the sun had fully cleared the hills.
The courtyard was still touched with early chill, the flagstones damp where the night had lingered longest, and the air carried that thin, sharp quiet that came just before a household properly woke. Horses stood saddled and waiting. Men moved in low, efficient patterns, tightening straps, checking packs, speaking only when necessary. It should have felt like any other journey Frederick had made from his own gate.
Jamie stood between Caitlin and Erin with a small furrow between her brows, wrapped in a cloak too large for her shoulders because Caitlin had insisted the morning was colder than it looked. Her hair had been tied back, though several strands had already escaped and were shifting lightly across her cheeks in the breeze. She looked from Iona to Frederick and back again with the particular alertness of a child who did not understand what was wrong, only that something was.
“Do ye have to go?” she asked.
Frederick crouched before her, though the motion felt heavier than it should have. “Aye, lass. Only for a little while.”
Jamie’s gaze dropped to the ground and then returned to his face. “Where?”
“To O’Douglas.”
That seemed to mean little to her beyond distance.
“Why?”
Frederick had expected the question. He still found himself reaching for the answer more carefully than he liked.
“Because the laird has asked it of us,” he said. “And because there is work to be done.”
Jamie accepted this with visible reluctance. Her eyes shifted then toward Iona, and the look she gave her mother was so full of quiet concern that Frederick felt it like a stone under the ribs.
“Ye and Ma are strange,” she said.
Caitlin made a soft sound that might have been warning, but Jamie continued before anyone could stop her.
“Ye are both talking proper,” the child said. “And when people talk proper, it is because they are cross.”
Frederick glanced at Iona.
She stood only a few steps away, her hands folded too neatly before her, her face composed in that infuriating, distant calm she had worn since the night before. She had not refused to come. She had not argued again. She had simply become careful. Polite. Unreachable. It had unsettled him far more than another round of anger would have.
Iona knelt then, bringing herself level with Jamie. “We are nae cross with ye, lamb.”
“That is nae what I said.”