Chapter 13
Alex paced the library with his hands folded behind his back, his good eye trailing over spines of books he had known since he was a boy.
The titles sat in tidy lines. He pulled one at random and opened to the middle without seeing a word.
He closed it and put it on the table, watching the pages glint in the firelight.
The fireplace still held that same thin red seam under ash. Late light poured in through the narrow window and thinned across the table. He checked the window latch, frowned, and turned to the door.
Maybe this was nothing. Maybe Bettie had run him in a circle to steal a sweet from the pantry.
He walked to the door, let out a breath, and reached for the handle.
The door opened first, and Erica stepped inside. The light caught her shoulder, then fell away as the door swung shut behind her. Metal slid in the lock. Laughter, small and quick, carried through the wood, then hurried off down the passageway.
They stood there for a heartbeat, both adjusting to the shape of the room with the other inside it.
“What is going on?” Erica asked, taking another step forward.
Alex stared at her. “What are ye doing here?”
“What do ye mean?” she said. “Katie said ye were asking for me.”
Alex shook his head once. “Nay. Bettie brought me here to read to them. Why would they—”
The laughter faded, and the answer arrived for both at once.
Erica let out a short laugh, the sound quick in her throat.
Alex did not. He looked at the door as if the wood had failed a duty and went to it in three strides. The handle held firm in his hand. He tried it again, harder. It did not move.
“Great,” he said flatly. “They locked us in.”
She leaned a little to see the handle, then looked back at him, almost smiling. “They are children,” she said. “Mischief is their duty.”
“I am glad one of us finds it amusi—” he began, then stopped, jaw tight.
He lifted his hand from the handle and looked past her to the window, as if measuring how much trouble breaking a pane might cause.
The room took their quiet and held it. He let his shoulders relax a notch and moved to the table. The book he had checked earlier lay there, half open to a page that meant nothing to him. He closed it, but still did not sit.
“So,” he said after a moment, voice lowering a fraction. “What do we do now?”
Erica crossed to the nearest chair, then seemed to change her mind and stayed standing a few feet from the table. “Ye could break the door,” she suggested.
He gave her a look. “And if I do, they will try this again. Next time, we might end up at the bottom of a well instead of a locked room.”
She laughed, the sound small and real. “Ye enjoy their games, do ye nae?”
“I daenae ken what ye are talking about,” he said, stiff on purpose.
“Oh, please,” she said. “It is written all over yer face.”
He exhaled through his nose, not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. He glanced at the door again and rested his hand on the table to stop himself from crossing back to it.
“I am only glad they can still play like this,” he said.
The tension in him eased a notch. For a breath, he sounded more like the man who checked the girls’ copybooks than the laird who signed orders.
Erica tilted her head. “Why would they nae?”
He looked down at the grain of the wood and moved a book that did not need moving. “I worried they would never reach this level of whimsy because…”
“Because what?” she prompted.
He shook his head once, thinking of changing the subject. Then he let it go.
“Oh, ye ken,” he said quietly. “Because they never met their maither.”
The room seemed to tighten at the words, and for a minute, neither of them spoke.
He kept his hand on the table, fingers spread, as if he could hold the line there.
Erica stood with both hands at her sides, loose, then curled, then loose again. The shelves watched, while the late light thinned by another shade. The handle did not move.
“So,” Alex said, softer, as if he could undo the weight by smoothing it. “We wait.”
Erica nodded. “Aye.”
They did not sit.
Alex cleared his throat once and failed to find a new topic that did not circle back to the last one. Erica looked at the stacks nearest her and read nothing.
Silence gathered for a count of five, then ten. Alex broke it with work.
“I hear there’s a candle count later,” he said, too practical, almost an apology.
“I will bring it,” she said.
He nodded.
The small movement felt strange after the words that had come before it. He went to the window and checked the latch again. It would give if he wanted it to. He did not want it to.
He came back and set a chair a polite distance from the table, then put it back where it had been.
“Ye could shout,” she said lightly. “Call for Calum. He would come with a grin and a key.”
“And the household would hear,” he said. “They would love it too much.”
“Aye,” she said. “They would.”
He glanced at her mouth and away, caught himself, and picked up the book he had already straightened. He then set it down again. She looked at his hands and found they were steady. He looked at hers and found the same.
“Bettie led ye?” she asked, her tone easy.
“Aye,” he said. “With Calum as me witness and nay help at all.”
“Katie fetched me,” she said. “She said it was urgent.”
“That sounds right,” he said. The corner of his mouth moved, then set.
Could anything be more awkward about this situation?
“Do ye think they will come back soon?” she asked.
“When they have decided we have learned our lesson,” he said.
“And what is the lesson?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “That I shouldnae try to outflank two wee generals.”
She smiled. “A wise rule.”
He looked at her smile as if he had not meant to, then looked away as if he had meant to do that all along. He opened his mouth, then closed it. His jaw worked and relaxed. He rested his fingertips on the back of the chair nearest him and did not pull it out.
“They mean well,” she said.
“Aye,” he answered. “They always do.”
They remained silent for a few more minutes, and Alex could tell just from the tension between them that this was going to be a long hour.
Great. Just great.
The silence held for more than an hour. Dust hung in the late light and settled again.
Erica shifted her weight and let the silence continue to test her. If Alex wasn’t angry about this little stunt, then she could express patience as well. Hopefully, they would run out of things to say, and he would find a way to unlock the door.
There was nothing they needed to say to each other, and that was the worst part. Erica didn’t know the limit of what they could say based on the situation. Could she ask him for certain parts of his history? Would he respond without acting strange?
“What happened to their maither?” she asked carefully.
Alex looked up at her, almost surprised that she had asked in the first place.
She lifted a hand at once. “Ye daenae have to answer that.”
A short laugh left him, but it was not bitter. It was the kind of laugh that said he had resigned himself to his fate. “Something tells me ye will find out one way or another.”
She shrugged. “I have a curious mind.”
He exhaled and leaned his hip against the table. “Somehow, I daenae doubt that.”
“So,” Erica pressed, her voice gentle. “What happened?”
He watched the window for a beat, then turned back to her. “We got married a year before I went to war,” he said. “Isabella was gentle then. Quiet. The kind that made a house feel easy. I came home, and the twins followed soon after. For a while, everything seemed fine.”
Erica fidgeted, unsure if speaking would make him retreat into his shell or if being silent would encourage him to speak more. She continued to listen anyway, watching sorrow flicker across his face once in a while.
His jaw set, and he did not look away. “Ye see, she wasnae well.”
Erica stayed still. The door behind her stayed locked. The line of light on the floor had crept toward his boot.
“At first, it was small,” he said. “Forgetting names she had said the night before. Laughing at the wrong moments. Mood swings. Accusations that had nay root. I thought it was only the strain. Childbirth takes more than folks say. Grief for the moment she had lost. I told meself it would get better if we were kind and patient.”
“But it didnae?” she asked, her voice soft.
His lips thinned. “Nay. It grew even sharper. Isabella would scream at the maids for breathing wrong. She would throw stones at the guards from the window and try to make them play a game. Once, she stripped a footman in the yard and laughed while he fled. Servants began to leave, and the castle learned to brace itself.”
Erica swallowed. She sat down and tried to lean back against her chair. She didn’t move too much because she didn’t want to risk upsetting this moment of vulnerability. So she remained as still as she could.
Alex rubbed his thumb along the edge of the table.
“I was patient, ye see. Always patient. I let her roam where I could keep an eye on her. I took the blows when she struck me. I told meself she was ill, and illness deserved mercy.” He lifted his hand and gestured to the blind side of his face.
“What I didnae ken was that she was being deliberate.”
Erica’s fingers curled into her skirt. The room held its breath.
“Deliberate,” she said quietly.
“Aye,” he said. “One night, she came to the study. She meant to provoke me. She wanted anger from me. I wouldnae give it. She had a knife. I thought she would never use it.” He tapped his scarred brow with two fingers, then let his hand fall. “She did.”
Erica felt a breath escape her. She watched as Alex took another breath and squared his shoulders.
“Calum burst in before she could strike again. As he was trying to restrain her, she lost her footing and fell from the window.” He looked at the grain of the wood as if it could answer for him. “It ended there.”