The instinct that had never once failed to rise when a man stood too close, sat too near, reached without warning.
It didn't come.
She didn't know what to do with that. This man's chest was warm against her back, and certain things were stirring up inside her without her permission.
"Comfortable?" he said, very close to her ear.
"Perfectly," she said, very crisply. "Yet I dinnae ken ye," she added, because it felt important to establish.
"Ye ken me name. Ye ken me isle." She felt rather than saw the shift at the corner of his mouth. "Ye'll ken the rest soon enough. I willnae bite, Matilda MacInnes. Unless asked."
Her face went warm. She was furious about it.
"That is completely absurd," she said.
"Is it?" he asked.
Against her back, she felt the slight shift that meant he was trying not to laugh, and she stared straight ahead into the dark and told herself very firmly that she felt absolutely nothing about any of this.
The gates opened and the cold night air hit them both like a wall. She didn't look back at the castle.
His chest was warm against her back. She was intensely aware of it and intensely annoyed at being aware of it.
"Comfortable?" he said, very close to her ear.
"Perfectly," she said, very crisply.
He said nothing else. But she felt, against her back, the slight shift that meant he was trying not to laugh.
She stared straight ahead into the dark and felt absolutely nothing about any of it.
The horse moved at a steady pace through the dark, with Ivar's men positioned ahead and behind them.
His arms bracketed her on either side, loose on the reins, and the specific geometry of it, how little space existed between his chest and her back, and how easily the cold outside stopped mattering, was a problem she had not anticipated.
She had anticipated fear. She had anticipated the locked-jaw endurance of proximity to a stranger. She had not anticipated this.
Infuriating. It was infuriating.
"Ye're very tense," he said.
"I'm perfectly relaxed."
"Aye, that's why yer spine looks like a sword."
She made a conscious effort to drop her shoulders. Immediately regretted it because it brought her half an inch closer to him. She straightened again.
She heard him exhale, not quite a laugh. Almost one.
"Something funny?" she said.
"Nay. Nae at all."
The castle disappeared behind them.
And somewhere in the hills to the south, Callum MacDougall was still out there. Waiting, watching, counting on the fact that fear had always been enough to hold her.
He didn't know her anymore.