Chapter 19
Alex kept half his attention on the square as the noise rose and fell in waves. The sun remained bright as ever, and the air smelled of yeast and crushed thyme. He tracked the lanes that opened and closed, the places a body could stand too long, the faces that did not look where they walked.
Erica, who walked just a few inches ahead of him, drifted to the right and stopped so suddenly that he nearly walked into her.
“Oh,” she said softly. “Those are beautiful.”
He followed her gaze. A low table held small panels and three larger portraits on a shelf behind. The work was better than he had expected. Hills set in thick strokes. A sky with light caught clean. Two faces, one old and proud, one young and watchful, both true enough to breathe.
Erica stepped closer, with her hands clasped tight in front of her like she meant to stop herself from touching anything.
“Would ye like to look closer?” he asked.
She did not answer at once. Pride and habit sat in her mouth. “I daenae want to trouble him.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “Come.”
He called out to the stall owner. The man did not turn. He had a thick red beard and a cap pulled low. He stared past Alex’s shoulder, eyes fixed on nothing. Alex called again.
The man flinched hard, as if woken. “I beg yer pardon, me Laird,” he said, rubbing his hands together.
Alex turned to see what the man was looking at, but he found nothing. Then he looked back at him with a furrowed brow. “Is anything the matter?”
“Aye, me Laird. I was watching for that man.”
“What man?” Alex asked, resisting the urge to turn around once again.
“There’s one roaming around in a cloak,” the man explained. “Been circling the square for nearly half an hour. Folks think he’s a thief.”
Alex let his gaze sweep across the press behind the man’s stall. Cloaks were common enough in a crowd. He did not like the way the man said circling. Not here. Not with the girls on their way home and Erica beside him.
He forced ease into his voice. “A market full of grown men ought to handle one thief.”
He didn’t know if that was meant to make him feel better or worse.
“Aye,” the man said, soothed.
Alex turned back to Erica. “Which one caught yer eye?”
She pointed without thinking. A small portrait at the back, a woman in a simple dress, staring at the viewer with confidence. The mouth was set strong, and the eyes had a look he knew. He glanced at Erica and saw the match.
“Oh, that,” the stallkeeper started, his voice clear. “That is such a wonderful option.”
“Really?” Erica asked.
“Ye see, ‘tis by Morag Keane of Glenfinnan,” the man said, brightening. “She paints in winter when there are nay fields to tend, and she grinds her own pigment with a wee stone mortar her da carved. The green there, she makes from nettles dried and baked to ash, then mixed with linseed.”
Alex blinked back his amusement, watching as the stallkeeper leaned closer to the portrait, tapping the air just off the jawline.
“The woman’s Màiri Donnachie, midwife for three parishes.
See the mouth, set firm, but the corners are lifted, as if she’s hearing a bairn cry and kens it’s a good cry.
Keane uses a hog-bristle brush for the broad passes, but for the line here…
aye, right there… she cuts a single badger hair and ties it to a reed.
That’s commitment right there, I tell ye. ”
Alex let him run until Erica’s curiosity settled, then cut in before the tale circled back.
“We’ll take it,” he said.
“‘Tis fifty shillings.”
Erica started. “Alex—”
“Done,” he said mildly, already drawing coins from his pocket.
The man wrapped the portrait in linen. Erica asked if he would keep it safe till they left the square. He agreed at once and tucked it behind his stall.
They walked on, and Alex wondered what the twins were up to at this point. He needed to distract himself from the sinking feeling that continued to crowd his chest ever since he became aware of a cloaked man roaming the market.
“Tell me about yer braither,” he said, surprising himself as he turned to look at her.
She glanced over, wary, then gave in. “Why?”
“I find it a bit relieving when ye talk about these things.”
She spoke of Evander, and her mouth softened, then tightened. He listened to her talk about how he couldn’t sit still. How he climbed where he should have used stairs. Alex listened and held the small details.
“We will find him,” he promised, firm as iron.
“That is what frightens me,” she admitted. “If they do, he willnae be safe. I need his name cleared first. Or else finding him brings the knife with it.”
“The truth resurfaces,” he said. “Always.”
She gave a short laugh, and he frowned.
“What?”
“Ye’re just surprising, is all.”
The frown on his face turned into an amused expression. “Surprising how?”
Erica shrugged. “‘Tis nothing. I just thought ye were a beast when I met ye.”
“Really?”
“Aye.”
“Well, daenae let that perception change. I am,” he said without thinking. He stepped closer, felt the line between caution and heat, and walked to it anyway. “Just in another way.”
Her face flushed. Her lips parted as if to answer, then pressed together. For a second, the market faded, and there was only that look.
Alex heard himself say, too low, too sure, “Do ye want to see what kind of beast I am, Erica?”
For a beat, there was nothing but silence and lowered inhibitions. The flush on Erica’s face, the way she swallowed as he moved even closer. Everything felt too close. Too tight.
Sense returned, and he stepped back at once. The line held.
He cleared his throat. “Shall we keep moving?”
“Aye,” she said, too quickly.
They passed a cheese stall, and for a minute, Alex let himself bask in the scent of cream. In another world, perhaps a perfect one, this would have been a great trip to take with the lady of the castle.
Would that not be something?
The square felt narrower. He could not give a reason for it. He recalled the stallkeeper’s words and laid them over the press of bodies. He couldn’t get the cloaked intruder out of his mind ever since he had heard about him.
He lifted his eye to the high places, like the balcony or the nearest stall to the woods, which was usually empty. Nothing there.
“I am guessing yer braither wasnae exactly the type of man who liked to do what he was told.”
“Oh, ye daenae ken half of it. He doesnae ken how to sit still.”
Alex shifted his stance so he was slightly between Erica and the thickest part of the crowd. He kept his tone mild, so she would not stiffen. “What did he do when someone tried to tell him to sit still?”
“Climbed higher,” she replied. “Made a show of it. Then came down when he was done.”
He nodded. “Sounds like a man ye will need a rope for.”
“Aye,” she said, and tried to smile. “I would settle for a letter.”
“Ye will have one,” he said.
She folded the small paper cone and tapped a sugared nut into his palm. “Taste.”
He did. Too sweet. He did not say so. “Nae bad.”
“Liar,” she scoffed.
He let himself grin a little. “Aye. Nae good either.”
She laughed, honest and quick. It hit him harder than he meant to let it.
He wanted to keep it going. He wanted to give her more small things she could set between her teeth and call a day well-lived. He kept his mouth shut instead and watched the flow.
Bodies pressed from all sides. Heat rose from the stone floors, and voices tangled till words lost their edges. Erica kept her hand on the apple she had bought from the stall a few steps back, Alex’s arm wrapped around her waist so he would not lose her in the swell.
Then it happened.
Someone hit her hard.
Her shoulder jolted, and the apple flew out of her hand. Shock crossed her face, but before she could even gasp or scream for help, a hand caught her wrist. Fingers pressed something into her palm and closed tight for a heartbeat. A breath brushed her ear.
“‘Tis for ye, me Lady.”
The low whisper sent chills down her spine, but the voice disappeared the minute it came.
She spun, her heart leaping. There was nothing to see, only the backs of people and baskets and a brown cloak sliding into noise and vanishing like water into stone.
She looked down. A small square of folded parchment lay damp against her skin. Her hands shook as she opened it in the shelter of her body.
No greeting. No name. No politeness.
You are being watched.
You have made yerself dangerous.
Leave, or others will pay.
The letters were sharp as cuts. Her breath shuddered out of her at once. It left her chest hollow.
“Erica.”
Alex was beside her in an instant. He had moved without her seeing him move. She did not trust her voice, so she held out the parchment, feeling a shudder rack her body as he grabbed it.
He read it once, head bent, face unreadable. He read it again, slower. The air around him hardened, and the line of his jaw set like a stone that had seen winter after winter.
“Who gave ye this?” he asked, the urgency in his voice clearer than anything, despite the muffled sounds in the market.
Erica remained quiet, unable to speak for the most part. Noise kept swelling around them, but this time, it sounded far. She could not feel her fingers.
She imagined the words on the parchment blur and steady and blur again. A goat bleated near a pen, and a boy laughed at it. The way everything seemed to go on terrified her for some reason. The world did not know it had changed.
“This is me fault,” she whispered. “I shouldnae be here. I have doomed everyone.”
“Erica,” he said.
“The girls.” The words came fast, tumbling over each other. “Me maither. Ye. They will come for ye. For the children. I shouldnae have come. I shouldnae have approached ye at the festival. I should have been more—”
“Erica!” His voice was firmer this time.
Her throat burned, and her mind ran wild.
She imagined a rider at the gate with a dangerous message to deliver.
One that cannot be stopped. She imagined a hand on Bettie’s shoulder that should never be there.
She saw Katie’s ribbon trailing in the dirt.
She saw her mother alone at a window that would just refuse to open.
Guilt blew up through her like cold wind from a stairwell.
She turned on her heel. She did not know where she meant to go. Away. Back. Any path that took danger out of a square full of lives that were not hers to ruin.
Alex’s hand closed around her arm. Firm. Grounding. No give.
“Enough.”
The word cut clean through her panic. It took the top off the boil inside her. She stopped and looked up into his face, finding no gentleness there. Only steadiness. Only the thing that had made men listen when he did not raise his voice.
“Breathe,” he said. “I need ye to calm down. Panic willnae solve anything.”
She obeyed because she could not think of anything else to do.
Air went in slowly. It came out slowly. It did not stop the tremors in her fingers, but it kept the ground where it was.
The market came back into focus as a pot clanged at a stall and a wheel rolled.
The sun stood where it had been a moment ago.
Alex kept his hold till her breathing steadied. He did not look away.
“Nay one will touch ye,” he said. “Nay one.”
There was no heat in his words. No promise that needed swelling. It was a fact laid in stone.
He turned his head a fraction and scanned the square again. The edges. A knot of men near the well that had grown without buying a thing. A space that opened where there had been none a heartbeat ago. He shifted so his body covered her more.
“Where are the girls?” she asked. The fear still shook her voice. “I daenae see them.”
“They are fine,” he assured her. “They are on their way back to the castle, remember? Look at me.”
She did. The noise died down again. He was the only steady point.
“I should have left,” she said. “I should have gone back when we heard the warning from the stallkeeper. I am making this worse by standing here.”
“Ye arenae the cause of this,” he said. “Ye were only a victim of circumstance. That is all.”
“That is nae better,” she huffed.
Alex did not argue, but he did not soften the edges of his words either. He shifted the parchment into his other hand, folded it once, then again, small as a coin.
“It is a message sent in a crowd, so the sender can feel large,” he said. “So he can think himself a shadow with teeth. He is a boy with a mask. He is nay more than that if we treat him right.”
“What if he isnae a boy?” she asked.
“Then he will learn how I handle men,” he said.
Erica did not move. He still had her arm. His palm was warm where it held her. It steadied her and reminded her of her situation in the same beat.
She hated that she needed it, but she was relieved that it was there. The two truths fought and neither won.
“Listen to me,” he said. “This isnae a square filled with folks who want to see ye fall. It is a square filled with folks who heard ye laugh, and saw ye buy bread, and watched ye talk to the twins. If it comes down to it, they will go to war for ye.”
“They have barely ken me for more than two weeks. I doubt that sentiment,” she said.
“Well, they ken me,” he said. “Ye daenae have to worry about any of this for now. For all we ken, this was just someone trying to scare ye.”
Her hand rose to his fingers and stopped. “What if this is about ye?” she said. “What if MacGee sent it? What if he wants folks to see me as the path to ye?”
“Then he will find the path lined with every kind of steel he can imagine,” he said. “Getting to me isnae easy, even with people I love.”
She closed her eyes and opened them again. “Aye.”
“Good.”
Alex released her arm and took her hand instead. He did it like a man checking a knot. He did it out in the open, where everyone could see.
“Ye walk with me,” he said. “Daenae worry about anything else. That isnae yer job, do ye understand me?”
“What about the portrait?” she asked. “We still need to collect it.”
“And we will,” he said, his voice light. “Then we will go home.”
She huffed a breath that might have been a laugh if the air were not so tight.
The parchment sat small in his fist. He slid it into his belt as if it were a thing he would keep for fire and nothing more.
Erica looked back once. The market kept moving. The stall of paintings held its light. The bread seller cut another loaf. Nothing pointed at her, yet the skin between her shoulders prickled like a mark had been set. Her throat felt raw.
“I am sorry,” she croaked.
“Daenae be,” he said. He tightened his grip a fraction. “Come with me.”