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“She’s me wife, Callum. She’ll stay as long as I do.”

“Fair enough.” Callum glanced up at the battlements. “Then we’d better see to the north wall before the frost sets in. Two of the stones shifted again after last night’s rain.”

“How bad?”

“Bad enough that I wouldnae let the bairns play beneath it.”

Evander frowned. “Have the masons look at it in the morning. And the roof over the east stores?”

“Still leaking. Mrs. Fraser says if one more sack of oats gets moldy, she’ll take it up with ye personally.”

“She already has. Twice.”

“Then ye ken she means it,” Callum muttered. “There’s also the matter of the well. The rope’s frayed through.”

“Replace it.”

“I did. Jack cut it down this morning.”

Evander turned slowly. “He did what?”

“Said he needed it. For what, he wouldnae say.”

He dragged a hand down his face. “Of course he wouldnae. Where is he now, anyway? I daenae ken where he went off to after he was cruel to me wife.”

“Last I saw, he was in the stables.”

Evander had no interest in knowing what Jack was doing in the stables. Let him stay there. Let them keep their distance from one another.

.

24

The first thing Evander noticed at dinner was that his wife was not there.

Every night since Freya came to live with him, she had played the part of his wife without fail. But tonight, her chair was empty.

Evander noticed it the moment he sat down. The hall was half full. MacArthur men sat at the lower tables with his own men wedged between them, still eyeing one another like strange dogs, and conversation was low and wary.

Jack sat at the far end of the high table and had not once looked in Evander’s direction. Callum sat to his right, eating as though nothing in the world had ever troubled him. He opened his mouth to say something, and Evander shot him a quelling look.

He ate a mouthful of venison without tasting it. Then another. Then he set down his knife.

“Where’s me wife?” he asked.

Callum shrugged. “With the bairns, I’d wager. It was what I was trying to tell ye, me Laird.”

Evander caught the sleeve of a passing maid, a round-faced lass with flour on her apron whom he thought was called Isabel, and she nearly dropped her jug.

She almost looked afraid to stand face to face with the Wolf. She didn’t hide it very well. He saw only the faintest tremor at the tips of her fingers.

“Me Laird?” Isabel asked, barely a hitch in her voice.

“Has Lady MacArthur eaten?”

Isabel’s eyes darted toward the stairs and back. “Nay, me Laird. Nae since breakfast. Brigid brought her a tray at midday and another at supper, and she hasnae touched either. She hasnae left the nursery all day, me Laird. Nae once.”

Evander muttered something under his breath that made her go pink to the ears. It was exactly as he had expected: Freya was punishing herself.