“Then they’ll be here shortly,” she said. “I’ll wait.”
He said nothing.
“Or Alasdair will come,” she said. “Since you say he sent you to find me.” She looked at Malcolm steadily. “I’ll wait for whichever arrives first.”
Malcolm looked at her for a long moment. His jaw moved once, a small, tight shift, and then he said, “Get out of the bath.” The patience was entirely gone from his voice.
Jane stepped fully between Isobel and Malcolm, her back to the bath, her arms slightly out at her sides. “She’s nae dressed. Ye’ll wait in the corridor…”
Malcolm hit her.
The back of his hand struck Jane across the cheekbone, causing her to stumble sideways into the table. The basin tipped over and hit the floor, splashing water everywhere. Jane fell with it, hitting the stone hard.
“Jane!” Isobel was out of the bath before she had finished saying her lady’s maid’s name. She dropped to her knees beside Jane and got her hand on Jane’s shoulder. “Jane, look at me?—”
“Get up.” Malcolm’s hand closed around Isobel’s arm and hauled her to her feet.
“Get your hands off me.” She wrenched sideways and turned to face him. “What is wrong with you? She was doing nothing. She was defending me, and you hit her… you hit her like…”
Malcolm grasped Isobel’s robe off the back of a nearby chair and slung it at her. The material landed softly against her chest. “I said get up and walk.”
Isobel looked at Jane, then back at Malcolm, and felt the fury move through her, like something with heat in it. She hastily slung the robe around her body and tied the sash. Now that she felt less exposed, Isobel was prepared to confront Malcolm. “She was frightened. She stepped between us because she was frightened and you…” She stopped. “What kind of man does that? What kind of man hits a girl who is frightened?”
Malcolm’s face did not change. “Walk,” he said, “or I leave ye both down there.”
Jane’s eyes were open, her hand pressed to her cheek, and she said, “Go.”
Isobel stood and drove her elbow into Malcolm’s ribs as hard as she could. She ran for the door.
He caught her before she reached it. She fought him all the way across the room—elbow, nails, knee, heel—and he was stronger. She had no footing on the wet stone. When he slammed her face-first into the wall and pinned her there with his forearm across her shoulders, she was breathing hard and furious and said, “Alasdair will kill you for this.”
“Alasdair is nae here,” Malcolm said against her ear.
“He will be. And when he gets here…”
“Enough.” He pulled her back from the wall, turned her, and reached past the tapestry on the back wall. Malcolm pressed on the stone behind it. A section of the stone shifted inward with a low grinding sound, and the darkness behind the wall smelled of cold earth and old air. A small lantern hung just inside the passageway on a hook. It was already lit.
She stared at it. He had lit the lantern before he knocked at her door. He had come to her room with this already done, already waiting.
“Walk,” he said.
“No.”
He moved her toward the passage anyway, and she dragged her feet on the stone floor and said, “Tell me where we are going. Tell me what this is. You owe me that much, Malcolm.”
Nothing.
“Alasdair will come after me. You know that. Whatever you are planning, you know he will come.”
“Walk,” he ordered again.
She obeyed because her feet had no grip. Plus, with her arms twisted behind her back, she had nothing left to fight him with in that room, except for her words. So, she kept talking.
The passage was low, black, and narrow, and the cold came up through the floor into her bare feet. The lantern threw long shadows on the walls.
“You’ve done this before,” she said. “Used this passage. You’ve prepared it. That lantern was lit before you came to my room.” She counted her steps as she spoke. Left, then left again. Long right curve. “How long have you been planning this?”
He said nothing.