Noor’s smile remained in place as though she had offered Iona a courtesy rather than a threat.
Iona kept her face still with an effort that made her jaw ache. Inside, everything had sharpened. Fear, yes. But beneath it, something harder now, something cold and purposeful that hadnot been there the last time she had stood before this woman. Then, she had been running. Then, she had only been trying to survive.
Now she knew exactly what she wanted.
“When?” Iona asked.
Noor’s eyes narrowed with faint pleasure, as though the question confirmed precisely what she had hoped to hear.
“Tonight,” she said. “After the household settles. Alone.”
Iona let the word hang between them.
“Alone,” she repeated.
“Aye,” Noor said softly. “If ye have any wit left at all, ye will come without fuss and without heroics. Nay husband. Nay rescue. If ye mean to spare the bairn, ye will be wise for once.”
Iona lowered her gaze just enough to suggest submission without fully giving it. “And if I come?”
“Then I will ken ye have finally learned the cost of crossing me.”
Iona gave the smallest of nods. “Find, but first ye will tell me why ye have done all of this. Why ye have tormented me.”
“Why? But surely, by now, ye must knowwhy.”
“Humor me,” Iona said cautiously.
“A man’s sins are never his to carry,” Noor said, almost gently. “They fall to his wife. To mend. To silence. And to ensure they never rise to shame him again.”
“I do not understand?—”
“He wasmine!,” Noor hissed sharply, quickly, before she reigned her anger back in. “Whatever he did or whoever he touched, it me duty to see it corrected. It is a wife’s duty— it wasmeduty— to never allow her husband to be remembered for weakness.”
“So, that is why ye have spent yer years, hunting and almost killing off women and bairns who yebelievedhad been yer husband’s past lovers?”
“I did what had to be done!” Noor said with a raised voice.
Iona’s anger nearly boiled over as well, “Ye had nay proof!”
“I had proof enough.”
“But I never lay with him. Jamie is Frederick’s daughter.”
“I was never worried aboutye, ye werenae his… typical whore. Nay, ye were my fixation because ye let them all go. Ye ruined everything. But now, I will have justice.”
“There is nay justice in this,” Iona said softly, her head slightly bowing.
Noor’s breathing had increased quite rapidly, her teeth were showing savagely, her fingers bent in an almost claw-like shape, and Iona knew she had her right where she needed her. Emotional.
“I will come.”
The answer pleased Noor almost too much. Iona could hear it in her voice. She had not merely taken the bait. She had swallowed it whole and now thought the line invisible.
The angry redness in Noor’s face paled to a more neutral shade, and her features softened with concerning immediacy into something close to satisfaction. “Good,” she said, almost shakingly.
For one terrible instant, the woman’s hand lifted as though she meant to touch Iona’s cheek. The gesture was so familiar, so falsely gentle, that Iona had to keep every muscle in her body from recoiling. Noor seemed to notice the effort and enjoy it.
“There now,” she murmured. “That was nae so difficult.”