She began rewinding the fresh linen, her hands steady and certain against his skin.
The ache in his side was a constant reminder that his body was betraying him, but it was the quiet that threatened to break him. The silence stretched, heavy with things unsaid.
Matilda, too, had become quiet, her gaze soft, almost unreadable. She had never been one to rush into words, but today, there was something more to her silence. Something that felt like waiting, like she was holding something back, a truth unspoken.
He finally turned to her, his throat tight as if the words had to break through something thick, something stubborn. And when he spoke, it was with a kind of low, reluctant honesty that felt foreign to him.
"I had a brither."
Her eyes widened slightly, but she said nothing, just letting him continue. She knew that silence was often the most patient answer.
Her hands went still.
He looked at the far wall. The words were there, in the order they'd always been, the words he'd been carrying for eleven years in the room he didn't open for anyone. He wasn't sure what had unlocked the door. The fever, perhaps. Four days lying on atable in a room that smelled of blood and tallow, listening to her breathe while she kept watch.
"His name was Raud," he said. "He was three years older than me. Better with a sword. Better with most things."
He paused, the memory surfacing like a wreck at low tide.
"We raided a village on the mainland when I was twenty-one. A routine thing, naethin' it wasnae supposed tae be. But the Highlanders had more men than we'd counted. They cut us off from the boats and took six of us." He took a slow breath. "They held us fer three weeks."
She didn't say anything. She sat with the used linen in her hands and waited, which was exactly what he needed.
"On the twenty-third day, there was a moment. A guard changed rotation at the wrong time. A window, maybe two minutes, maybe less. Raud saw it before I did." He looked down at his scarred hands. "He made a sound that pulled the guards toward him. All of them. All at once." The words were flat, specific. "I ran. He'd left me just enough room tae run, and I ran. I got tae the boats and I got out, and I never stopped."
He stopped. "He was alive when I left. I told meself that fer a long time. "
The fire crackled. A log shifted in the hearth.
"I’ve been laird of Mull fer eleven years," he said. "I’ve been good at it. I’ve kept the clan, I’ve kept the Pact, I’ve kept everything that needed keeping. And every morning I wake up in a chamber that he would have had, if he’d been the one who ran." He paused. "I stopped lettin' things matter after that. It seemed like the correct solution."
He heard her set the linen down. He felt the mattress shift as she moved, and then her hand came around his jaw, turning his face toward hers.
He let her.
He looked at her, and she looked back at him, her hazel eyes bright in the firelight. She didn't say it wasn't his fault, or that he did what he had to. She didn't offer any of the empty things people said when they were afraid of the truth. She simply looked at him for a long, heavy moment.
Then she kissed him.
It was slow and certain, her hand firm at his jaw. He felt that familiar pull, the specific effort of staying exactly where he was, except that this time there was no gathering outside, no Henry with his prying quill, and no reason to be measured.
The effort lasted only as long as it took for her to exhale against his mouth and lean in.
He kissed her back. Her hand slid from his jaw to the back of his neck, and he let himself follow, careful only of the wound at his side.
She pulled back just far enough to look at him, her breath hitching. Then she stood.
He watched her cross to the far wall where two of the candles burned in their brackets. She cupped her hand around one flame and blew it out, then did the same to the second. The room went amber and soft, the fire and the remaining candles casting long, dancing shadows.
He understood what she was doing. He knew what the candles meant to her, what extinguishing them cost her. She was showing him, without being asked, that she was no longer in the dark when he was there.
She came back to the bed and reached for his hand, placing it at her waist. She kept her fingers over his, guiding the placement. He felt the heat of her through the wool. His hand closed of its own accord.
"Matilda," he growled.
It wasn't a warning. Just her name, and the question inside it.
She met his eyes. "The two weeks have passed," she said, her voice steady even as her pulse hammered at her throat. "Even if ye were unconscious fer part of them."