Page 1 of The Merciless Laird
CHAPTER ONE
Autumn, 1232. Kinlochaline Castle…
"Did ye hear? He arrives at first light."
Matilda stopped walking.
The words echoed in the hollow of her chest, marking the precise moment her girlhood would be traded for a Viking’s shadow.
The two maids stood just beyond the stone archway, half-hidden by the climbing ivy, their voices dropped low the way voices dropped when speaking of things they shouldn’t have.
A candle between them threw their shadows long across the garden path.
"The last one," the second maid whispered. "The Raven of Mull. Me cousin saw him once at a gather in Oban. Said he walkedinto the hall and every man in it went quiet without him sayin' a word."
"Aye, that's what they say about all of them." The first maid didn't sound convinced. "They said the same about the Serpent of Barra and look how that turned out. Married a healer and gone soft as bread."
"This one's different. Me cousin said his eyes," the second maid dropped her voice further. "Black. Like there's naethin' kind livin' behind them."
"God help Lady Matilda is all I'll say."
"Aye. Poor lass. She's been through enough without bein' handed tae a Viking."
The air turned to ice in Matilda’s lungs, as the weight of the maids' whispers settled in her marrow.
The pity was the worst part. Not the words themselves, but the ease of them, and the way her suffering had become something other people carried lightly, a thing to be murmured over a candle and set down again.
She turned away before either of them could look up.
She moved deeper into the garden, following the gravel path by memory. The moon gave almost nothing to see by.
The candle she'd carried from the keep she kept burning, cupped in her palm against the wind, its small light enough to see by without being seen. Her feet knew every loose stone, every place where the hedge grew thick enough to swallow sound.
First light.
She pressed her fingers against the cold stone of the low wall at the garden's edge and looked out toward the loch. Black and still beyond the outer wall. The wind off it smelled of rain that hadn't come yet.
She had carried the knowledge like a heavy stone in her pocket for weeks, ever since her father had delivered the news with that measured brand of Highland caution.
He had said it as though bad news required careful handling before it reached her.
The last of the Pact, Matilda.
She'd been sitting by the fire in his study, embroidering something she had no interest in finishing, when he'd settled into the chair across from her with the heaviness that meant he had something difficult to say.
A good match. A strong alliance.
She'd kept her eyes on her stitching.
Ye'll be safe on Mull, mo chridhe. Safe and well-provided fer and far from anyone who might wish ye harm.
During the conversation, he'd saidsafefour times. She'd noticed.
And Ivar Gunnarsson?
She'd asked, pulling a thread through linen with more care than the embroidery deserved.
Has he been told about me? About what happened?
