Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
She came back from the glens with mud on her boots and her arms full.
Yarrow, dried thistle, a bundle of something dark and sharp smelling that Jane would know the name of, and she had taken on trust from the woman in the village who had pressed it into her hands with a firm nod.
The morning had been cold and clear, and she had walked further than she intended, which was becoming a habit here, and her cheeks were wind-burned, and her fingers were numb at the tips.
The kitchen garden gate was unlatched, and she pushed through it with her elbow and nearly walked into him.
Alasdair was standing at the far end of the path near the rowan tree with no coat on, which struck her as both deliberate and impractical, his sleeves rolled to the elbow and his arms folded, looking at the garden with the expression of a man who had come outside for reasons he had not fully explained to himself.
“The gate was open,” she said.
“I ken. I left it open.”
She looked at him. He looked back at her with his arms still folded and the particular expression he wore when he had done something he was not entirely prepared to explain. She decided, charitably, not to point this out.
“You’ve been in the garden a while,” she said.
“I was passin’.”
“You have no coat.”
“It’s nae cold.”
“It is freezing.” She shifted the bundle in her arms.
“How is Sarah?”
“Better. The fever broke properly this morning. She ate breakfast, which she tried to do standing up until Jane made her sit down. She’ll be on her feet by tomorrow, whether anyone permits it or not.”
Something crossed his face that was not quite a smile and not quite relief but was interestingly enough both of those things. “Aye,” he said. “She will.”
Her eyes dropped to his mouth before she could stop them. She looked away and shifted her stance. Suddenly, the cold was no longer the thing she noticed most.
When she glanced back, his eyes were on her mouth.
“The yarrow is for the last of it. And whatever this is.” She held up the dark bundle. “The woman in the village said it was for a lingering in the chest. She seemed very certain about it.”
“Morag,” he said. “She’s been treatin’ half the glen since before I was born. If she gave it to ye, it works.”
“Good. I’ll take it up to Sarah.” She moved to pass him on the path, and he shifted slightly, not enough to block her, just enough that she stopped. She looked at him.
“Stay,” he said quietly.
She hesitated.
“Unless ye wish to leave,” he said.
She looked at him briefly. The wind blew through the garden, swaying the bare rowan branches overhead, while he stood in it with his sleeves rolled up and his eyes fixed on hers. She thought, not for the first time, that he was an incredibly difficult man to make a sensible decision in front of.
She set the bundle down on the garden bench.
“My hands are freezing,” she said.
He crossed the gap between them and took her hands in both of his before she finished the sentence. She immediately felt the warmth of his palms around her fingers, and she sensed her pulse in every spot where his skin touched hers.
“Yer hands are cold,” he said.
“I just said that.”
“I’m confirmin’ it.” He turned her hands over and looked at them. His thumbs moved over her knuckles in a slow pass that she was fairly certain was not strictly necessary for the purpose of warming them.
“That is quite the tender caress, Me Laird,” she whispered. “What ever happened to the warrior clansmen who ruled his land with an iron fist?”
His eyes came up to hers. “I have me moments.”
“Do you?”
“Occasionally.” His thumbs made another slow pass. “When I choose to.”
“And what made you choose to, today?”
He looked at her for a long moment. The wind moved through the garden, and she waited, and she could see him deciding something, turning it over, and when he answered, he looked at their joined hands rather than her face.
“Ye went to the glen,” he said. “Alone. At first light. For Sarah.”
“Yes.”
His hands tightened slightly around hers. “Ye didnae have to do that.”
“I know I didn’t have to.” She looked up at him. “She needed the yarrow. I knew where to get it. It was not complicated.”
“It is complicated,” he said. “She’s nae yer family.”
“She’s going to be,” Isobel said.
“Yes,” he said softly as he continued to massage her hands. “That she is.”
There was a long pause. Isobel tried to decide what to say next, but her thoughts escaped her. She felt as if there was something Alasdair wished to say, some notion he felt it necessary to impart, so she held her tongue and waited.
“Ye are a great many things,” he said eventually. “Ye are stubborn. Ye are reckless. Ye walk into glens alone at dawn and come back with yer hands half frozen and act as though it’s unremarkable.”
“It is unremarkable.”
“Isobel.” Her name in his mouth had a quality she had no defense for. “It is nae unremarkable.”
She looked up at him. He was very close, and his eyes were fixed on her face with the same intense focus he brought to everything. She realized then that the cold had been gone for some time. She was not sure when it had left, but she had an inkling that his body heat had warmed her thoroughly.
“Then say that,” she said quietly. “Say what you mean. Once. Just once.”
His jaw tightened. The thumb at her pulse stopped moving.
“I cannae,” he said.
“Why?”
He looked at her for a long moment. “Because I daenae ken what happens after,” he said.
She held his gaze and felt the truth of that land between them, the honesty of it unexpected and disarming, and she softened slightly.
“Neither do I,” she said.
He leaned in then, and she held her ground, feeling his warmth and the breathless tension of the moment. Then he stopped, close enough, and stayed there, his breath at her mouth.
Neither of them moved.
“Ye’ll nae let me,” he said. Not quite a question.
“You will not take more than I allow.”
He barked a gruff laugh. “Go inside, me Lady. Take Sarah those herbs. I’ll test yer limits soon enough.”