Chapter 11 #2
“Magnus Wallace,” she said, already gathering her skirts, “ye daenae get to spend a fortnight decidin’ what I read, what I wear, and where I go, and then simply”—she flung a hand toward him, encompassing the past two minutes—“kiss me as though that settles the matter.”
“It settled somethin’,” Magnus said.
“It settled nothin’.” She was walking now, back toward the birches, spine straight as a lance. “It merely proved that for all yer talk of discipline and disappointment and decidin’ what’s best for everyone, ye are exactly as ruled by yer own wants as any man livin’.”
He stood dripping on the bank, watching her go, and found he had no argument prepared for that either.
“What about our outing?” he called after her. It suddenly seemed important that this did not end with her walking off into the trees with his book and his good sense both.
She turned, just enough to fix him with a look that could have curdled milk, and then continued without breaking stride.
Magnus watched the birches swallow her, the pale flash of her skirts visible for a few strides longer before the path bent and hid her from view.
The loch settled quietly behind him, its waters lapping softly against the rocks, and somewhere off toward the ridge, a curlew called once and went silent.
He lifted two fingers to his mouth. He stood there longer than the gesture warranted, water running cold down his spine, and found himself thinking, with considerable and unwelcome clarity, that he had spent thirteen years training himself out of wanting things.
He had not trained himself out of this.
He did not take the short path back to the castle. He took the long way, through the birches, past the place where her skirts had gone out of sight, and told himself that had nothing to do with longing.
* * *
Sleep proved uncooperative.
Elspeth lay staring at the canopy above her bed for the better part of an hour, turning over the memory of cold water and warm lips until she gave up and rose before the sun had properly committed to the sky.
She dressed quickly, twisted her hair into a serviceable bun, and went searching for anything that might occupy her hands and mind enough to leave no room for the shape of Magnus Wallace’s shoulders.
She found Mrs. McAulay in the Stillroom, elbow-deep in a crate of dried herbs that had arrived the day before in no discernible order.
“Might I help?”
Mrs. McAulay glanced up, surprise, delight, and brisk practicality shifting across her face all in the space of a breath. “If ye’ve a mind to sort feverfew from tansy without poisonin’ the household, I willnae say nay.”
Elspeth rolled up her sleeves and set to work.
It was, she discovered, precisely the sort of task she had hoped for. Enough attention required to keep her hands busy, not enough to prevent her mind from wandering anyway, though at least now it wandered while she was being useful.
She sorted bundles by scent and shape, listened to Mrs. McAulay ’s steady stream of commentary on which tenant needed what and by when, and gradually built a small, satisfying order out of chaos.
“The north chimney’s been smokin’ somethin’ fierce,” Mrs. McAulay said, tying off a bundle of dried mint. “I told the Laird a fortnight past, and he said he’d see to it.”
“Has he?”
“Oh, aye. Climbed up himself before dawn Tuesday and cleared it out. Didnae wake a soul,” she said, unremarkable in her expression, and moved on to the next crate.
Elspeth paused over a bundle of dried lavender. “He climbed onto the roof?”
“He does most things himself if he thinks it’s broken.
” Mrs. McAulay nodded toward the corridor, as though the castle’s various failings might be observed from where they stood.
“The stable door hinge, the well pulley, Fenella’s roof when the frost cracked her beam.
He was up there with a hammer before the household even kent it needed doin’. ”
“Does no one else fix things?”
Mrs. McAulay gave her a look that suggested the question answered itself.
“They stopped tellin’ him, mostly. Or they tell him, and he’s already there before the words are properly out.
” She shrugged, tying off another bundle.
“It’s simpler that way. For him, I mean.
He’d rather do things by himself than wait for someone else to do them wrong.
Or worse, ask for help while doin’ them. ”
Elspeth turned that statement over and over in her mind as she worked.
By midmorning, she had learned that Magnus had personally delivered medicine to a sick shepherd’s wife three valleys over, on foot, because the horses were needed elsewhere.
That he had helped birth a breech lamb at two in the morning a week past, alone, because the shepherd’s hands were too cold to manage it and no one had thought to send for anyone else.
That he carried grain sacks rather than waiting for the stable lads, checked every door in the castle each night with his own hands rather than trusting the task to the watch.
That he had on at least one occasion mended a torn fishing net for a boy of eight simply because the boy had been standing nearby looking forlorn about it.
He did not ask for help. He did not, so far as Elspeth knew, believe help was something available to him.
She thought of the books hidden in the watchtower, wrapped in a blanket like they were too precious or too dangerous to leave out in the open.
She thought of a man who checked every door himself because he trusted no one else to check it properly, and found the two thoughts sitting rather uncomfortably close in her chest.
She said nothing of it to Mrs. McAulay . She arranged the shelves with more care than the task strictly required and told herself this was about being useful, nothing more.