Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
She woke up with a plan.
It was not a complicated plan. It did not need to be complicated.
The essential architecture of it was this: two weeks was fourteen days, and fourteen days was a finite number, and finite numbers had ends.
At the end of this particular finite number, Katherine would come for the handfasting.
Elspeth would find a quiet moment and a private corner and explain, calmly and with full detail, exactly what Katherine had delivered her into.
Katherine would help her. Her friend owed her a debt of considerable magnitude, and she knew it.
Two weeks. I can endure anything for two weeks.
She had endured her father’s house for twenty-one years.
She had endured seven years of managing accounts nobody thanked her for, a kitchen staff that argued about everything, and a wool merchant who lied about weights and smiled while he did it.
She had endured an auction in a pale blue silk dress and a horse with no carriage.
Two weeks was nothing.
She felt considerably better for having decided this.
She reached for the pitcher on the washstand. The water inside was ice-cold. It was the first test of her resolve. She passed it by washing quickly, forcing her mind to think about Katherine’s warm solar, the terrible novel she had left behind, and a hearth fire that asked nothing of anyone.
Then she sat at the small mirror. Her fingers were stiff as she began pinning her hair. The room remained quiet, pale with the creeping early light. She was not content, but she was organized.
The door opened, and Becky walked in carrying a heavy shawl.
Elspeth sat up too quickly, and for one unguarded moment, something in her chest loosened at the sight of her maid, who had brushed her hair since she was a girl. There was one person in this cold stone castle who did not look at her like a ledger entry.
“Good morning,” she greeted, her voice tight despite herself.
“The Laird’s already up, me Lady.” Becky did not meet her gaze as she crossed the room, and she kept the shawl folded over her arm instead of offering it to her.
Elspeth looked at the window. The light was barely there, thin, sharp, and grey. “It isnae dawn yet.”
“Aye.” Becky set the shawl on the bed and smoothed the wool with her palm. “Mrs. McAulay says he’s always up before dawn. Does the doors first, then the grounds, then the animals.” She paused, her eyes glinting. “The goat gets done before the doors, apparently. Special arrangement.”
“Of course she does.”
“He says ye’re expected downstairs.” Another heavy pause. “For the inspection.”
Elspeth met her eyes in the glass.
Becky picked up a bone hairpin Elspeth had set down and pressed it back into her hand. “The brown dress is warmest. And I found boots.”
Elspeth looked at the boots. They were sturdy, dark leather, plain, and slightly too large. She chose not to inquire whose they had been. She laced them up herself, pulling the leather cords until her knuckles ached.
She stood and looked at her reflection.
Two weeks.
Then she went downstairs.
The castle in the early morning was a different creature than the castle at night.
The Great Hall was dim, thick with woodsmoke-warmed air.
The fires were banked low. The hounds occupied their various territories on the stone floor.
Morag the goat was at the hearth, as she had always been.
One amber eye was half-open, tracking Elspeth’s passage through the hall.
Mrs. McAulay stood in the kitchen doorway with a damp cloth. She looked like she had been awake for hours. “There’s porridge,” she said, her voice a warm murmur. “And bread from last night. The Laird doesnae eat before the grounds.”
“The porridge,” Elspeth said gratefully.
She ate at the kitchen table. The kitchen was warm; the hall was not. Not yet.
There was something about the kitchen at this hour—the scent of the banked fire, the yeast of the bread, and the dried herbs hanging in thick rows from the rafters—that made it feel like the only honest room in the castle.
She ate quickly, her spoon clinking against the bowl. Mrs. McAulay talked about the week’s provisioning and whether the barley merchant could be expected by Thursday. Elspeth listened closely. Then she went out.
The courtyard air hit her instantly. It was cold. The wind brushed against her skin. Her breath came out in sharp white plumes. The cobblestones were damp and dark underfoot, and above the high stone walls, the sky was a pale grey.
Magnus was already there.
He stood beside the horse, the same enormous dark stallion, which seemed to have no other mode than patient and vast. His back was partially turned to her. He was checking the saddle girth, fully coated against the frost.
He was clearly several tasks into his day. It made arriving after eating porridge feel almost decadent by comparison.
The sound of her boots on the cobblestones made him turn.
He looked at her. It was a brief but thorough survey, taking in the heavy shawl, the borrowed boots, and the white plumes of her breath in the cold air. Then his eyes flicked to the horse and back to the iron gate.
“Ye ate?” he asked. His voice was rough from the morning air.
“Aye.”
“Good.” He moved to the horse’s left side, his massive frame shifting easily. “Come.”
No preamble. No inquiry about whether she had slept, or whether the room had been warm enough, or whether she had any preference regarding the direction of travel. Simply a dry command: “Come.”
She crossed the damp courtyard, her boots clicking against the stone.
He turned to her. Without a word or any ceremony, he placed his large hands firmly on her waist and lifted her straight into the saddle.
She had known it was coming. He had done it at the auction, and he clearly intended to do it every time there was a horse involved, which in this part of the Highlands seemed to always be the case, because there was no carriage. She had already decided not to comment on it.
She did not make a sound. But her fingers found the cold iron pommel and gripped it harder than the situation required.
He had lifted her without apparent effort, without any adjustment of his posture.
Then the leather saddle was beneath her.
The morning air felt colder up here, and she let out a breath.
He mounted behind her.
This was the part she had not planned sufficiently for. At the auction, it had been dark. She had been startled, and there had been too much happening for any single element to receive her full attention. Now, it was dead quiet. She was painfully present.
He settled into the saddle behind her. His arm wound around her waist to gather the thick leather reins, suddenly rendering her rigid.
Not visibly so; she managed that much. She kept her shoulders squared, her hands firm where they were, and her chin at a reasonable angle. She was rigid on the inside, where it was her own business.
He smelled of rain, cured leather, and cold air. The same earthly notes he had left a trail of on his way out of her room the other night. Up close, it was not subtle. It monopolized the air.
She breathed in carefully, her ribs expanding against his arm.
His forearm rested heavily across her waist. It was not tight. It was not restrictive, but its presence was more than acknowledged by her body. The inside of his sleeve brushed against her middle, where his arms held the reins on either side of her.
That light touch sent warmth through her body. Her back was barely two inches from his chest. She could feel the heat of him radiating through the morning cold.
She registered this with great reluctance.
The horse began to move. They passed through the heavy iron gate and down the rocky track, heading straight into the grey morning mist.
The hills rose steeply on either side of the track, a low shroud of fog clinging to their peaks. The loch across the low ground below engulfed dark, still waters. The world was silent. The horse’s hooves struck the mud with a rhythmic, heavy thud. The cold air bit at her cheeks.
Behind her, she felt the steady, even sound of his breathing. She could not hear it, but she could feel the constant rise and fall of his chest against her back, his warm breath tickling the hair on the nape of her neck.
Her gaze fixated on the hills. The horse walked on into the mist, Magnus not giving a different command. She had not expected him to.
* * *
The first shepherd they met was approximately eighty years old.
He was mending a split-rail gate latch at the edge of the upper pasture when they came over the ridge. He looked up at the great horse.
“Me Laird.” His milky eyes flicked to her. “Me Lady.”
Magnus cleared his throat. “This is Lady Elspeth. She’ll be… staying.”
Dougal’s eyebrows rose slowly toward his cap. He looked at Elspeth, then back at Magnus, then at Elspeth again, clearly recalculating several things at once. “Staying,” he repeated.
“Aye.”
“Well.” Dougal touched the brim of his hat, a smile spreading across his weathered face. “Welcome, me Lady. Been a long while since this land had one. I’m Dougal.”
Elspeth turned to Magnus to see his reaction, but his eyes were fixed ahead, scanning the sea of grey wool with rhythmic precision.
He’s counting. He is counting them one by one.
His gaze shifted to the fence line along the northern edge, then up to the sky. “How’s the flock?”
“Well enough. The ewe with the bad ear’s settled. The twins from September are gaining.”
“And the south pen?”
“Three shy.” Dougal’s weathered face did not change. “Found two at the Brennan boundary Wednesday. Third’s somewhere.” He pointed a gnarled, dirt-caked finger vaguely toward a thick cluster of gorse. “Thinks I cannae see her.”
Magnus looked at the gorse. A small woolly shape was visible, technically stationary, betrayed by its curved outline against the yellow needles.
“Aye,” he said, his chest rumbling against her back. “I see her.”
“She kens I see her. She doesnae care.”
Magnus dismounted. Elspeth watched him cross the field.