Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Iguess someone is here.”
He heard her before he saw her.
The stable had its own particular quiet in the mornings, the soft percussion of hooves shifting on straw, the low rhythmic breath of animals at rest, the occasional creak of timber settling against the cold.
Lachlann had learned the texture of that quiet well enough over the years to notice when something changed inside it, and the sound of the side door opening, followed by the familiar lightness of her step on the stone threshold, changed it considerably.
Shadow noticed too. The stallion's ears pricked forward, head lifting from the hay, and Lachlann ran a steadying hand down his neck.
"Easy," he murmured.
Alba appeared around the edge of the stall a moment later, her hair still half-pinned from whatever she'd been doing before this, a wool shawl pulled close against the morning chill.
She stopped when she saw him, taking in the scene. Lachlann in his shirtsleeves, brush in hand, Shadow standing patient beside him, and something in her expression settled the way it sometimes did when she found things as she'd hoped to find them.
"Ye're up early," she said.
"I'm always up early." He returned his attention to Shadow's flank, drawing the brush in long, even strokes. "Ye're the one who's late."
She made a sound that was almost a laugh and went closer, stopping just outside the stall to look the horse over with the appraising eye she brought to most things.
Shadow turned his great head toward her and she lifted her hand slowly, letting him take her scent before touching his nose.
"He's settled today," she said.
"He's always settled when there's company worth havin'."
She glanced at him sidelong, and he kept his eyes on the horse. He heard rather than saw her slip into the stall beside him, and a moment later she was reaching past him for the spare brush hanging on the post.
They worked in companionable silence for a while. She took Shadow's other side without being asked, working the brush in smooth, careful strokes, and the horse stood easy between them as though this were a long-established arrangement rather than one invented on the spot.
Lachlann watched her over Shadow's back when she wasn't looking, the concentration in her face, the unselfconscious efficiency of her movements.
He had stopped pretending, some weeks back, that he didn't look at her.
He reached for the water bucket to rinse the brush, and Shadow chose that precise moment to shift his weight, a sudden sidestep that swung his hindquarters into Lachlann's arm, sent the bucket tilting, and threw a generous arc of cold water directly across Alba's front.
She shrieked.
The sound of it startled Shadow all over again, which achieved nothing except making the horse take another step and slosh the remaining water across the straw.
Alba stood with both hands lifted, staring down at herself, her expression cycling rapidly through shock and indignation before landing somewhere closer to outrage.
"Lachlann."
"That was the horse," he said, with complete sincerity.
She looked up at him.
He saw the exact moment she decided it wasn't funny, and then the exact moment, immediately following, that she decided it was. Her hand shot out and flicked a palmful of water directly into his face.
He blinked.
She was already laughing. Bright, unguarded, the kind of laugh she didn't always let out, and the sight of it did something to his chest that he had mostly given up trying to name.
He reached into the bucket.
"Lachlann, dinnae ye dare."
He dared.
What followed was not dignified by any measure.
Alba retreated across the stable with considerably more speed than he'd expected, ducking behind a hay bale and launching a handful that caught him squarely on the shoulder.
He cornered her near the far wall and she dodged left with a breathless laugh, made it almost to the door before he caught her around the waist, both of them thoroughly wet and neither of them particularly bothered by it.
She twisted in his grip, still laughing, pushing at his chest without any real intent, and he pulled her closer.
He didn’t pull her roughly, just firmly enough that she stopped trying to get away and leaned into him instead, her forehead dropping briefly against his shoulder while she caught her breath.
"Ye're soaked," she said, muffled against his shirt.
"Aye." He looked down at the top of her head. "So are ye."
She pulled back just enough to look up at him, cheeks flushed, hair beginning to escape its pins in earnest now, and he was struck, as he sometimes was, by the particular way she looked when all her defenses were down — not absent, never fully absent with her, but quiet.
"Ye'll catch yer death," he said.
"I willnae catch me death from a splash of water."
"Ye're already shiverin'."
She wasn't, quite, but she wasn't arguing either. He reached up and brushed a wet strand of hair from her face, tucking it back with more care than the gesture strictly required.
"I ken how tae warm ye up," he said, low and quiet.
Her eyes narrowed, but her mouth was doing the thing it did when she was trying not to smile. "Is that so."
"Aye. There's a fire tae be laid upstairs and ye're standin' in a cold stable wearin' a wet gown." He stepped back, giving her room. "That's all I meant."
"I kent that was all ye meant," she said, with great dignity, wringing a section of her skirt out onto the straw.
"Of course ye did."
His room held the cold of the morning, the fire having been left untended since he'd risen before dawn.
Lachlann set about laying it properly while Alba stood near the window and wrung what water she could from the ends of her hair, her shawl abandoned over the chair already.
He worked methodically, kindling first, then the smaller logs angled to catch, the larger ones crossed above.
There was a particular satisfaction in this, in the physical directness of it, the way skill and patience produced something reliable and warm. He struck the flint and nursed the first small flame until it found the kindling and began to speak for itself.
"Ye're very precise about that," Alba said from behind him.
"There's a right way and a wrong way." He sat back on his heels and watched the fire begin to establish itself. "The wrong way ye spend half the mornin' coaxin' it along. The right way it takes care of itself."
"And ye always dae it the right way."
"I try."
He heard the smile in it and didn't turn around.
He added the last log and rose, brushing his hands on his trousers, and found that she had moved closer to the hearth, her hands extended toward the growing warmth.
The fire was catching properly now, beginning to push its heat into the room. Lachlann stood beside her and felt the welcome of it against his damp shirt.
"Here," he said, and when she turned he reached for the back closures of her gown, the ones he knew from experience were the most difficult to reach, and worked them loose without ceremony.
She let him, holding still, her eyes on the fire, and when the gown was loose enough, he lifted it from her shoulders and laid it over the back of the chair closest to the heat.
She settled onto the low stool near the hearth in her shift, her hands wrapped around each other, beginning to warm.
The firelight moved over her, and he pulled the second chair and sat close enough that their shoulders nearly touched when she turned.
Neither of them moved apart.
"Shadow's been off this past week," she said after a moment. "Before today, I mean. Restless at night. I hear him from the east corridor."
"He's been off since the last time Torquil's men came through the glen." Lachlann watched the fire. "Animals ken things before we dae."
"Ye think he sensed them?"
"I think horses are less foolish than men about what they choose tae ignore." He glanced at her. "He'll settle again once things are quieter."
She was quiet for a moment, turning that over. "And the new stable lad? Is he managin' him well enough?"
"Better than I expected. He's patient with him, which is most of it." He shifted in the chair. "Shadow daesnae need skill so much as he needs someone who willnae be rattled by him. The stable lad isnae rattled."
"Good." She nodded, satisfied with that. Then, after a beat, "The eastern fence willnae last the winter."
He looked at her. "I was goin' tae bring that tae ye this week."
"I walked it yesterday." She tilted her head. "Three sections near the birch line are near gone. If the ground freezes hard before we fix it, we'll lose it entirely and the sheep will be halfway to the headland before anyone notices."
"I'll send men out before the end of the week."
"Before the end of the week is too generous," she said, not unkindly. "It needs to be tomorrow, or the day after at the very latest."
He considered arguing, then considered who he'd be arguing with and on what basis and decided against it.
"Tomorrow," he said.
"Thank ye." The corner of her mouth moved.
She laughed, quiet and warm, directed at the fire, and he felt the sound of it settle somewhere in his chest the way familiar things did when you'd stopped expecting them and started simply receiving them.
She was quiet for a moment after they'd let the conversation settle, looking at the fire with the expression she wore when she was turning something over in her mind.
Then she reached into the pocket of her discarded gown, crossing briefly to retrieve it, and came back with a folded letter, the seal already broken.
She held it for a moment before she extended it toward him.
"I want ye to read it," she said. "Alone. Nae now, if ye dinnae want." She paused. "But ye keep writin' tae me, and I thought I wanted ye tae have somethin' back. In writin'. Somethin' that was mine tae give." She said the last part with a carefulness that told him it had cost her something to say.
He looked at the letter for a moment before he took it.
The handwriting on the folded exterior was hers, he'd have known it anywhere by now, the slight leftward lean of it, the way she pressed harder on certain letters than others.
"Aye," he said. He folded it once more and set it on the table beside him with a deliberateness that he hoped conveyed what he meant, not dismissal, but care. "I'll read it taenight."
She nodded, and the carefulness in her face eased by a degree.
He looked at her beside the fire for a moment, at the way the warmth had begun to bring color back into her cheeks, at the quiet contained in her that was not blankness but depth, and he thought as he had thought a number of times recently, with an increasing simplicity that surprised him, that he was glad she was here.
"Have ye been up the tower yet?" he asked.
She turned to look at him. "Which tower?"
"The north one." He watched her face. "The view from the top. Ye can see clear tae the headland on a good day. The whole of the glen." He paused. "I've been meanin' tae take ye."
Something shifted in her expression, a brief, controlled thing that another man might have missed. "Nay," she said. "I havenae."
"Is it the height?"
A small silence. "Maybe."
He reached over and took her hand where it rested on her knee, not making anything of it, just setting his over hers the way he'd found himself doing more frequently.
The simple fact of contact that seemed to say what he wasn't always certain how to put in order.
"There's naethin' tae be afraid of," he said. "I'll take ye. We'll go slowly, as slowly as ye need." He met her eyes when she looked up at him. "And I'll be right beside ye the whole of the way."
She looked at him for a moment with that particular quality of attention she had, the one that made him feel, on occasion, that she was reading something he hadn't quite said.
"All right," she said, quietly. "Aye."
He nodded, his thumb moving once across the back of her hand.