Chapter 5: A Father's Cruelty
The memory of Lachlan’s skin under her finger, the map of his scars, was a fragile warmth Isabel carried with her into the cold yard. She sought the familiar, the scent of hay and animal, anything to settle the unnamable tremor in her hands. Her mare, a gentle dapple grey, whickered softly as Isabel entered the stall.
The rhythmic stroke of the brush was a prayer. In, out. The curl of dust in the shaft of thin light. In, out. For a few minutes, there was only the sound of bristles on coat and her own measured breath. The beast’s solid warmth was a comfort. It asked no questions, demanded no performance.
“There you are.”
The voice was a flint strike in the quiet. It severed the peace cleanly. She didn’t need to turn. The English accent, clipped and cold as the North Sea, was branded into her bones.
Geoffrey Percy stood at the stall gate, his expensive riding leathers dark against the rough-hewn wood. He didn’t enter. He observed, as if she were a mismanaged asset in a poorly kept paddock. Mist wreathed his steel-grey hair.
“Father,” she said, her voice smaller than she wished. She kept brushing.
“Spare me the rustic simplicities,” he said, stepping inside. The space shrank. The horse shifted, ears flattening. “We’ve had dispatches. Your uncle is... curious. About the progress of this little experiment.”
Isabel’s hand stilled on the mare’s flank. The wood of the brush handle bit into her palm.
“Progress,” she echoed.
“Do not play the dullard with me, girl. It never suited you.” He took another step, circling her slowly. His eyes, the colour of old slate, scraped over her plain wool dress, her unbound hair. “Has he bedded you yet? Or does the mighty Wolf of the Highlands find the offering too meagre?”
The words were precisely aimed, an arrow finding the old, bruised spot where her self-worth resided. She felt her face heat, a cocktail of shame and a new, flickering anger. She thought of the dawn, the shared warmth, the terrifying tenderness. That was hers. It was not for him.
“The marriage is binding,” she said, trying to sound firm. “The peace holds.”
Geoffrey stopped in front of her. He smelled of cold metal and expensive wine. “The peace,” he hissed, “is a thread. And you are the needle meant to snap it. Your purpose is to be his wife. In every sense. To tie him to England. To soften him. Or to give him such a disgust of you that he casts you aside and gives us our casus belli. Either serves the Crown. But this... this virginal shadow-skulking?” He leaned in. His breath was sour. “Tell me you have at least let him lift your skirts. Tell me you have done your duty.”
The vulgarity, the reduction of everything—her body, the fragile bridge between two kingdoms—to a transaction, broke something loose in her chest. “No,” she whispered, then louder, defiant. “No, he has not.”
For a second, there was only the drip of water from the eaves. Then his face contorted, a mask of pure, incredulous fury. It was the look he’d get before the back of his hand found her, a look that always made her stomach liquid with dread.
“Useless,” he spat. The word was a slap. “I presented you, draped in silk, to a barbarian king, and you cannot even accomplish this? What is wrong with you? Is your shape so repellent? Your manner so frigid?” His gaze raked her again, and she instinctively hunched her shoulders, trying to disappear. “Christ, girl. Even a Scot, starved for a woman, finds you lacking.”
Tears burned, but she forced them back. She would not cry in front of him. Not here.
He scanned the muddy floor of the stall. His boot kicked aside a clot of straw. He bent, picked up a stone about the size of a man’s fist, worn smooth by some ancient river. He hefted it.
Isabel’s breath caught. This was new.
“You are a failure,” he said, his voice low and dead calm. “A political and a biological failure. Your mother wept when you were born. Did you know that? Not tears of joy. Tears of disappointment. She saw the weakness in you even then.”
He drew his arm back. Not a wild throw. A deliberate, underhand pitch.
The stone hit her high on the left shoulder, just above her collarbone. A blunt, sickening thud of impact that punched the air from her lungs. Pain, bright and shocking, erupted. She cried out, stumbling back into the horse, which snorted in alarm.
She clutched her shoulder, gasping. The pain was a white-hot star, radiating down her arm.
Geoffrey didn’t move. He watched her crumple, his expression one of detached assessment. “Perhaps a bruise will inspire you. A reminder of what happens when you fail your king and your family. Do not write to your mother. Do not speak of this to anyone. It is beneath our station.” He brushed a fleck of mud from his sleeve. “Get the job done, Isabel. Or the next stone will not be thrown in a stable.”
He turned and walked out, his boots making soft, sucking sounds in the mud.
The world narrowed to the throbbing in her shoulder, the smell of her own fear, the warm, concerned nuzzle of the mare against her hair. She slid down the wooden wall of the stall, the rough planks catching on her dress, until she was sitting in the damp straw and dirt. She trembled, a full-body shake that started in her bones.
Useless. Repellent. A disappointment.
The old litany chanted in her head, his voice its permanent curator. She pulled her knees up, folding in on herself around the core of pain. The warm memory of the dawn was ash now, buried under the cold mud of his words. How could she have thought, even for a moment, that she was anything else? Lachlan’s hesitation, his lack of urgency… her father had simply named the truth everyone saw.
A hot tear finally escaped, carving a path through the grime on her cheek. It was followed by another. She let them fall silently into the straw. The horse lowered its head, blowing softly onto her hair.
After a long time, the shaking subsided. The pain settled into a deep, brutal ache. Using her good arm, she pushed herself up. Her legs felt unsteady. She leaned her forehead against the mare’s neck, drawing a shuddering breath that smelled of horse and earth.
In the quiet, broken only by the animal’s steady heartbeat, a new thought, small and hard as a pebble, formed beneath the hurt.
He had asked her not to tell anyone.
It was, she realized, the first thing her father had ever said to her that felt like fear.