He reached across the table and brushed the smear from her cheek with the side of his thumb. Slowly. She went very still under it, and he kept his hand where it was a moment longer than he'd intended, his thumb at the edge of her jaw, and she looked up at him and did not pull back.
He had a rule about this. He'd made it in the storage room the first night and he'd kept it every day since: he did not reach for her. He waited. He let her come to whatever conclusion she was going to come to in her own time, and he did not push it.
He dropped his hand.
"The dough's ready," he said.
She looked at the table. "Ye just said it wasnae.”
"It is now."
She said nothing. She was watching him with something in her expression he had to figure out and left before he did something that wasn't waiting
In the corridor, he stopped.
The cold air helped. Somewhat.
He had told her two weeks and he had meant it and he was going to keep it and what was left were not very many days at all, and she had laughed in his kitchen at four in the morning with flour in her hair, and he was going to need to find something useful to do with himself before he saw her again.
Once he turned the corridor away from the kitchen, he paused for a moment. The cold air was a mercy against his heated skin.
He had intended, when he took the Pact and agreed to this marriage, to be fair to her. To be decent. To give her time and space and not make her afraid. But he felt the weight of his own desire like an anchor.
He had not intended that.
He needed to put his mind to something useful.
"Get me Torvald."
He watched the guard hurry away. His jaw remained set, his focus narrowing back to the keep.
Torvald's report came that evening after supper. The steward’s face was grave in the torchlight.
"Offshore," he said, from the study doorway. "Small vessel. Single sail. Betha's lad saw it from the north cliffs an hour past. By the time Erikson got up there it was gone." Torvald’s hands were behind his back, his posture alert.
Ivar set down the map. He felt a cold, familiar spark of anger. "Running without lights?"
"Aye."
"That's nae a fisherman." He stood. His shoulders squared, the Laird of Duart back in command. "I'll take the north cliffs meself. Double the watch on the south. And put two more men on the corridor outside our chamber."
"Already done," Torvald said, and handed him his cloak. The exchange was quick, practiced.
The north cliffs were black and cold, the wind off the sound sharp and purposeful. He walked the full length of them with Torvald two steps behind, checking the coves, the angles, the places a small vessel could sit dark and watch the keep without being seen from the dock. The dark was absolute, the sea a restless, hidden monster below.
Nothing.
The water was empty. Whatever had been there was gone. He stared into the void, his mind cataloging every approach.
He stood at the cliff edge and looked out at the dark sound. The wind whipped his cloak around his legs, a restless, biting thing.
"MacDougall," he said. The name was a curse in the cold air.
"Aye. Probably." Torvald stood beside him, hands behind his back, eyes on the water. "Countin’ guards. Looking for gaps."
"Then we give him none." Ivar’s jaw was a hard line against the dark.
He looked down at the keep below them. The torches along the wall burning steady. The window of their chamber, amber and lit, the candles behind the glass burning steady. The sight of that light made a strange, protective heat rise in his chest.