Chapter 18
The market opened wide and busy, with voices overlapping and merchants calling prices.
Erica watched as fabrics moved in clean sheets while the wind pulled at the corners. Children ran between stalls and came back when their mothers called, and pigeons picked at grain near the well and lifted only when a boot or a cane or even the wheel of a cart came too close.
Erica walked gently beside Alex and the girls, her hands tucked behind her back. It made space for him and the girls. Most eyes went to Alex or to the twins first. That suited her. She could watch without being watched in return.
He stopped at a ribbon stall. The woman behind it had a pin between her teeth and two spools in her hand. Bettie leaned over the table with both palms flat. Katie bounced on her toes and tried to touch everything at once.
“I want the blue one,” Bettie said, certain.
“Red one,” Katie said, louder.
“Ye can both be heard,” Alex said. “One at a time.”
They fell quiet at once, and for a peaceful moment, none of them spoke. Then, Bettie tried again. “Blue for me.”
“Red for me,” Katie said, softer.
Alex looked at the woman. “Ye heard the wee rascals. Can we get what they asked for?”
The woman nodded with a bright smile, then slid a pair free and set them down where small hands could not steal them. “These will last,” she said. “A good weave. I have them in multiples if ye like.”
“Nae today,” Alex said. “These two only.”
Bettie and Katie looked at each other as if a secret plan had failed, and Erica bit back a smile.
Alex crouched to their height so he could see their faces. “One rule,” he said. “If ye speak at the same time, I hear neither. I willnae split me ear in two.”
“Aye,” they chorused.
“Good,” he said, then rose.
That was what unsettled Erica the most. Not the noise or the eyes. Not the way vendors bowed, or the way old men measured him as he passed. It was the trust. The quick, deep trust that sat in the girls like a fixed star.
He knew how to speak to them, and they knew that to them, he was just their father. It did not matter how renowned or revered he was. All they saw was their father. Not Alex Murray or Laird MacMillan. They saw Da.
Alex checked the knot at the back of Bettie’s head and straightened the ribbon tail with a careful hand. He then brushed dirt from Katie’s knee with the pads of his fingers. Erica watched as he did it without ceremony. He did it because it was what came next. A father’s habit, not a trick.
Soon, the girls were two ribbons full as they walked across the square once again.
The normalcy stirred an ache deep inside her. She could only imagine what these people thought, seeing them all together. The fact alone slipped past the hard shell she had built and sat where it could do damage.
As they passed by a fruit stall, a boy with a crate tripped and caught himself on the edge. Alex reached out and steadied the load with one palm.
“Mind the floor,” he said, not sharp, only clear.
The boy nodded fast and tried again.
They moved on. A woman with herbs tucked thyme into Erica’s hand before Erica could pay. “For the lassies,” she said.
Erica paid anyway and thanked the woman, after which she asked for her name.
The woman’s face lit up at the display of familiarity. “Bless ye,” she said, and turned to the next buyer with better cheer.
Erica watched Alex navigate the market with nothing but ease.
He stopped to talk to people at almost every stall, and at some point, it became utterly tiring.
She could see, even in the girls’ eyes, that the enjoyment they had envisioned for this outing was beginning to dry up because their father wouldn’t stop talking to every person he knew. Which was almost everyone.
Katie tried to slip away, and Erica watched as he caught her wrist with two fingers.
“Close,” he said, and she did as instructed.
Erica was amazed by the ease of it. He did not press his size into the square. He did not need to. People opened a path because it felt natural to open it.
She reached for a basket she had bought on one of their stops and folded the thyme inside. It felt like she was holding proof of something simple. Something she was clearly never going to get.
She hated that she needed proof.
They passed a stall with bolts of cloth.
Bettie ran a hand across a strip of blue as if it were water, and Katie found a thin cord tied to a bell and tugged it once, making the bell sing.
Alex looked over, and Katie pocketed her hands like a sinner at church.
He said nothing. She put the cord down without being told.
Erica kept walking, one step behind, and let herself think a thought she had worked hard to ignore.
What would it be like to see this every day? Not the market or the noise or the crowd from all sides of the square. But him. The small acts. The steady care. The way he bent to listen, because he did not think he had to be tall to be obeyed.
The thought slid to a place that heated her face. Moonlight on his back. The quiet lift of his shoulders in the lake and water tracking every line down to where the surface hid him. Her pulse stuttered.
“Erica?”
His voice came almost out of nowhere, and it felt like a cold, wet blanket all over her body. She swallowed and turned to look at him.
“Ye havenae spoken in a while. Is everything all right?”
She nodded, her voice tight. “Aye. I am fine.”
“Daenae tell me ye have pushed the duty of handling these children to me alone.”
Erica laughed, perhaps for the first time since she had arrived at the market. “Ye seem to be doing a good job of that all by yerself.”
For a hot minute, she couldn’t see anything except his figure in the lake. She wasn’t sure that image would vanish anytime soon. Or ever.
He gave her a brief, almost reassuring smile before turning around to keep his focus on the children.
Erica decided to focus on the things happening around them. It was the only way to keep her thoughts in one place.
A musician near a well pulled a tune from a small whistle, and two children spun in a clumsy circle.
The square made room for all of it despite Alex in their midst. No one hurried them or tried to sell what they did not need.
The village did not strain to impress its Laird, and that, to her, said more than any speech ever could.
Alex bartered for a twist of licorice rope and broke it even. One piece for each twin. He kept none for himself. Katie offered him a bite from her piece. He shook his head and sent her to share with Bettie instead.
Erica forced her attention to the nearest stall. She asked for the cost of eggs and nodded at the answer, though she did not need eggs. The seller tried to press a bundle into her hands. She paid and kept the bundle small.
A shout rose from the far edge, where a pony skittered at a dropped pan. Alex turned his head and then back again when he saw a stable boy already soothing the animal. Erica noticed that he didn’t jump forward to take control. She noticed all of it.
They paused at the fountain when the girls spotted a tray of sugared twists. Bettie tugged Katie toward the stall with a look that promised trouble. Erica let them go three steps and no more.
“Stay where I can see ye,” she called.
“Aye,” they sang, already haggling with the seller.
Erica turned slightly toward Alex. “Ye let us win.”
Alex frowned, and the confusion on his face grew more evident. “What?”
“At the tug of war earlier. I ken ye lost on purpose.”
He scoffed. “I didnae.”
“Ye absolutely did.” She raised a brow.
“Coincidence,” he said, mouth almost curving.
“Me braither used to do that, ye ken,” she said, softer. “Pretend he lost so I wouldnae sulk.”
Something shifted across his face, a twitch of his eye. It was not pity, and Erica was immensely grateful for that. It was more of a recognition. Like he knew what she was going through.
They both reached for the fountain’s edge in the same breath, perhaps to look composed, perhaps to have something to do with their hands. Then their fingers brushed.
Neither of them pulled away, and for a minute, Erica wondered who would be the first to do that.
She felt the steadiness of his hand, the roughness at the base of his thumb, a mark earned from a blade or a rope.
Her pulse ran ahead of her senses, and she curled her fingers around the stone and made herself breathe evenly.
For a brief moment, the silence between them was heavier than the Highland rocks. Erica wondered what could possibly happen in that brief moment, but she swallowed and opened her mouth to speak.
However, voices rose near the bread stall, breaking into her thoughts and speech. They both turned at the same time and watched the scene.
Two men stood nose to nose, and a woman stood between them with her arms crossed and her jaw set. Erica could see it on her face before she even spoke. She looked tired to the bone.
“What in the world—” Alex muttered before rising to his feet. He stepped forward without a hurry and without raising his voice. “What is the issue?”
The first man launched into a speech about promises and fairs and who had spoken first. The second man swore the other was a liar. Names followed. The woman held her tongue.
Alex listened, hands easy at his sides. He asked the first man to say his piece again with fewer words. He asked the second to stop swearing. A while later, he turned to the woman.
Erica could hear every single word from the two men. She understood how it felt when a man believed he had a right to a woman just because. It was what she had to run away from in the first place.
She watched Alex listen attentively and heard her own thoughts before he spoke.
Let the woman decide.
Alex nodded once, as if she had said it out loud. “Seems to me the only person who should choose is the lass.”
The woman looked at him, then at the men. “I am going with neither,” she declared. “I am going home. I am done listenin’ to ye fight over me.”