Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Supper had been warm and loud and exactly what Elspeth needed, and now she couldn’t sleep.
She lay still for several minutes, listening to the castle settle around her. The distant drift of music from the hall where two of the musicians had started a slow reel that nobody had asked for. The creak of the floor above where Duncan was still moving around.
Beautiful sounds, indeed.
She watched the ceiling and counted the reasons she should stay in bed.
I need me strength tomorrow.
A bride-to-be shouldnae be seen wandering the castle.
I can think about when we were intimate.
Nay, nay, I shouldnae do that.
She got to four before she gave up and reached for her cloak.
The stone circle sat on the high ground above the castle, a short climb up a sheep track she’d found three weeks ago when she’d needed somewhere the walls couldn’t follow her.
She knew the way well enough to manage without a candle, and the sky, when she pushed through the door in the west wall, stopped her where she stood.
No moon tonight.
Only stars, wall to wall, the kind of sky she’d read about in the poetry book she’d given Magnus, the kind of sky the poets had apparently been telling the truth about after all.
She stood with her cloak pulled tight and her head tipped back, and felt the cold come down against her face, clean and sharp, and thought that tomorrow she was getting married.
She climbed.
The track was steep enough that she had to watch her feet for the first stretch, the grass wet from yesterday’s rain, and by the time she reached the flat ground inside the circle, her breath plumed in the cold air.
She found the broad stone she’d sat on before, brushed it with her sleeve, and settled.
The stars above Ben Cruachan were magnificent and indifferent and exactly right.
I cannae get enough of this view.
She’d read once, in a very dramatic poem Katherine had pressed into her hands the winter before, that a woman standing beneath the stars on the eve of her wedding ought to feel like the heroine of her own story.
At sixteen, Elspeth had believed that completely. She’d imagined something with more ceremony to it. A prince, possibly. A declaration. Someone with good hair arriving on horseback to announce that she was worth wanting.
Instead, she had a man who talked to his sword and kept a blackened cup like it was made of gold and had nearly upended an inkwell while reaching for her last night in his study, and her stomach had been turning over slow and warm ever since.
I daenae feel so much like a heroine right now.
Her lips curled into a smile.
She knew the poem by heart, had known it since she was fourteen and had spent a solid week copying it into her journal in different colors of ink. She said it quietly, to the dark, to the stones, to no one.
“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”
She stopped. Pressed her lips together. Thought about their intimacy in the study. Thought about Magnus’s hands on her waist this afternoon, the way he’d watched her face when the counting stopped, the way he’d let go the moment he noticed the room watching.
She said the next line.
“And if ever stars were kind, they were kind to those who stood beneath them and asked for nothing more than this.”
That one wasn’t in the poem. She’d added it herself, at fifteen, in green ink, because the original hadn’t gone far enough.
She pulled her knees to her chest and looked up and thought about the stone circle and the fact that she hadn’t once, not in the last week, thought about princes.
She’d thought about a man repairing a henhouse door in the rain because he didn’t like leaks. She’d thought about the way he’d said it’s nae nothin’ about a cup he’d never once explained, in a voice that had given away everything he’d meant to keep to himself.
She’d thought about tomorrow, and she’d felt her chest lighten rather than tighten, and she wasn’t sure exactly when that had happened, but it had.
She tipped her head back and found the brightest star above the eastern hill and said quietly, “I believe I’m going to be all right.”
The wind moved through the standing stones, and she smiled at herself for saying it out loud.
A sound came from behind her. Low, soft, a boot heel finding rock rather than grass.
She turned.
A man stepped out of the dark at the edge of the circle, where the shadow of the far hill reached longest. He was broad and dressed in rough dark wool with no clan colors she could see in the starlight. He moved with so much ease.
He stopped three yards from her.
Elspeth did not stand. She pressed her feet flat to the ground and sat very straight and said nothing, because the only sounds available to her right now were wrong ones and she could feel that clearly.
The man looked at her the way a man looked at something he had expected to find.
“Lady Elspeth,” he said. “A pleasure to finally meet ye.”
* * *
Morag had ribbons in her beard.
Magnus noticed this first because Morag was standing in the middle of the Great Hall where no goat had any business standing, and second because someone had tied three of them—green, white, and a yellow one that matched the flowers Mrs. McAulay had won out of Katherine—into the coarse fur beneath her chin with what appeared to be genuine effort.
He looked at the goat. The goat looked at him.
“Nay,” he said, and pointed at the door.
Morag ate the yellow ribbon and walked toward the kitchens instead.
The hall was unrecognizable. Every surface Mrs. McAulay could reach held flowers, candles, or a village woman arranging one or both, and three of them were arguing pleasantly about the height of the centerpiece while a fourth added more heather over their objections.
The musicians had arrived before dawn and were presently debating something fierce near the hearth, one of them tapping the rhythm of his point on the flagstones with his boot heel.
Two boys chased each other between the table legs and were collected and redirected by passing adults without anyone breaking their stride.
From the far end of the hall came Katherine’s voice. “Mrs. McAulay , I am nae sayin’ the heather isnae beautiful. I’m sayin’ it’s below the roses.”
“The heather,” Mrs. McAulay said, “has been at Ben Cruachan handfastings since before yer mother was born, Lady MacDougal, and it willnae be put below anythin’.”
“The roses are taller.”
“Then the roses can stand straighter.”
“They’re flowers, Mrs. McAulay , they cannae stand.”
“They can try.”
Magnus turned away before either of them could catch him watching and stepped back into the corridor, where Duncan and Liam had taken up residence at the small table outside the solar with two cups and a settled air that suggested they’d been there since before the goat incident.
Duncan looked up. “How’s the hall?”
“Mrs. McAulay and Katherine are debatin’ flowers.”
Liam lifted his cup. “Who’s winnin’?”
“Mrs. McAulay . By a considerable margin.” Magnus pulled out the empty chair and sat. “The watches changed out clean this morning?”
Duncan’s expression stayed easy, but his eyes moved once to Liam and back. “Aye. Western approach had nothing to report. North postern neither.”
“And the lower pass?”
“Two men from first light. Same.” Duncan turned his cup in a slow circle on the table. “Calm mornin’.”
Magnus nodded.
He looked down the corridor toward the hall, where the noise had taken on a different shape now, a fiddle starting up, someone testing a tune and circling back to correct it.
The castle smelled of beeswax and fresh bread and the greenery they’d hauled in from the hills yesterday, and it sounded like a home. He sat with that for a moment before pushing back from the table.
He’d meant to go to the stables. He went back to the hall instead because he hadn’t seen Elspeth all morning, which was unlike her.
She should be pacing around the hall now. Where is she?
Agnes was standing near the far wall, watching the musicians with her arms folded and her head tilted. Magnus came and stood beside her, because she was the only other person in the room not currently talking.
She glanced up at him. “The tall one is off the beat.”
“Aye.” Magnus looked at the musicians. “He’ll find it.”
Agnes considered this and returned her attention to the tall musician. After a moment, she said, “Elspeth taught me a step last week. For the cèilidh.”
Magnus looked down at her. “Did she?”
“Aye. She said it was simple, but that simple was better than falling.” Agnes unfolded her arms and held one out to him with seriousness. “Will ye practice it with me? So I daenae fall in front of everyone.”
He looked at the small hand extended toward him. He looked at the hall full of people. He looked at the hand again.
He took it.
What followed was witnessed by considerably more people than he would have liked.
Agnes counted the steps aloud, which he respected, because it was the correct approach, and she turned at precisely the right moment, which she had clearly practiced.
The only issue was that Magnus was focusing hard on not dropping or stepping on the six-year-old.
His feet made their own arrangements, and when he glanced up from watching Agnes’s careful footwork, he found that three village women, both musicians, Duncan, Liam, and Mrs. McAulay had formed a loose and very attentive audience.
Magnus released Agnes’s hand and straightened. “Good,” he told her. “Ye’ll nae fall.”
Agnes nodded, satisfied, and went back to watching the musicians.
Magnus walked to the door with his hands clasped behind his back. Becky nearly walked into him in the corridor.
She stepped back with an apology already forming, and he held up a hand.
“Lady Elspeth,” he said. “Where is she?”
Becky’s face did something small and uncertain that he didn’t like. “I daenae ken, me Laird. She hasnae rung for me this mornin’.”
“She hasnae come down?”
“Nay. I thought perhaps she was restin’. I didnae want to disturb her.”
“Where was she last night?” Magnus kept his voice level. “Did she seem so tired to sleep in past dawn?”
Becky folded her hands at her waist. “She asked me for a candle, me Laird. Before I said goodnight. She said she wanted to go out to the loch. To see the stars.” A pause. “I thought she’d only be a moment. I didnae hear her come back, but I was tired and I…”
Magnus was already moving.
He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t run.
He walked the length of the corridor at a pace that made Becky half-jog to keep up.
Then he stopped at the foot of the stairs, looked up and said nothing for the space of three seconds, and what moved through him in those three seconds he put straight back down where it came from.
She went to the loch. She’s at the loch.
He passed the hall and looked around one more time.
Christ, she’s nae here.
He passed Mrs. McAulay in the doorway saying something about the roses and Katherine arguing back, but he didn’t hear either of them. He grabbed Duncan by the arm outside the solar and pulled him three steps clear of Liam before he spoke.
“Elspeth went out last night,” he hissed. “To see the stars. She hasnae come back.”
Duncan set his cup down on the windowsill. His face went still. “The stone circle?”
“Or the loch. Becky said the loch.” Magnus turned toward the yard. “Get Liam. Tell him quietly; I daenae want the household in panic.”
“Aye.” Duncan was already moving. “Horses?”
“Mine’s ready. Have them saddle Liam’s grey.
” Magnus stopped in the corridor, hand flat against the wall, and thought about O’Brien’s tracks in the western glen.
The broken branch. The sight line to the castle.
“Three men from the night watch, the ones who covered the western approach. I want them with us.”
“I’ll get them.”
“Five minutes, Duncan.”
“Aye.”
Duncan went.
Magnus walked to the stables and saddled his own horse, working the buckles in order without thinking about the order, the way he’d learned to do everything in the dark years after the fire. He checked the girth twice. He checked it a third time.
A ribbon was caught on the stable door latch. Auburn, narrow, the kind a woman threaded through her hair when she’d pinned it up. He pulled it free, held it in his fist, and stood there for a moment.
Elspeth had wanted ribbons the morning of her handfasting. She’d said so to Katherine last week, laughing about something he’d only half-heard from the corridor. He’d meant to say something, but he hadn’t. He’d gone back to his accounts and thought he had time.
He put the ribbon in his coat pocket, checked the girth a fourth time, and led the horse out into the yard.
I never let her wear her bloody ribbons.