Chapter 15: The Gate

Rosalind woke to the smell of bacon and a child's voice arguing on the stairs.

For a moment she did not know where she was.

Then the quilt slid off her shoulder, the blue one with the sewn-in stars, and she remembered all of it.

Hamish was already up.

He stood at the window in his jeans with a mug in his hand, looking down at the drive.

"You have a visitor," he said.

She came to stand beside him.

A man stood at the end of the gravel, outside the Ironridge gate, with his arm in a sling and his shirt torn at the shoulder.

Two Ironridge guards stood across the road from him with their arms folded.

He wasn't doing anything.

He was only standing there.

"They'd have sent him off," Hamish said. "I told them to wait."

"Thank you."

"Your call, Rosalind. I'll walk down with you or I'll stay in this room. Either way it's yours."

She looked at him.

He did not move and he did not argue.

He had said he would not ask her for a thing, and apparently he had meant that for the daylight too.

"Stay," she said. "I'd like to say it alone."

"Then I'll be right here."

She went down in his flannel shirt and her own boots.

The guards stepped aside without being told.

Dalton heard her on the gravel and turned around.

Up close, the damage was worse.

One eye had swollen almost shut, there was dried blood in his hair, and he smelled of whiskey and cold stone.

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