Bonetide

Chapter 9

Chapter

Nine

Ican’t stand being in this cottage for another day.

Two days of restless work in the studio. Two evenings of looking at the dark bay from the kitchen window and pretending I’m not looking at it, pretending I’m not searching for him. The castle is like a splinter under my skin, one I can’t get out no matter what I do.

So I walk.

I take the path behind the cottage, the one that climbs the slope through the bracken to the moor.

The morning is clear and warm for once. The dew has evaporated and the bees are buzzing merrily in the heather.

I’ve brought the sketchbook and the canvas bag I’ve started using for cuttings, and I’ve told myself I’m going to do my job.

I’ve told myself a lot of things.

I’m maybe half a mile up the moor, sitting on a stone with the sketchbook open on my knee, when I hear it.

The hollow tread of hooves on peat. A rhythm that isn’t the wind.

I look up.

Alasdair is coming across the moor toward me, and to my utter surprise, he’s astride a brown horse.

No saddle. No bridle. His hands rest loose on the horse’s neck like he’s resting them there, not steering. He’s in black trousers and a black shirt with the sleeves rolled, and his feet are bare. His hair is loose against his jaw.

He pulls up about ten feet from me. The horse, a stocky bay mare with a long black tail and the rough coat of something that lives outside, stands and watches me with liquid eyes.

I know a good horseperson can have complete control over a horse by just steering with the calves alone but generally there is some sort of verbal command to stop and I didn’t hear him give the horse one.

“Good morning,” Alasdair says in his thick brogue. I’m suddenly very aware that I am down low and he is on a lofty perch, peering down at me.

“Good morning,” I reply as I quickly shut the sketchbook and get to my feet.

“You seemed in a hurry earlier,” he comments.

I can’t help but narrow my eyes at him. I don’t know why I have such animosity toward him this morning but I do. Maybe because it’s getting a little annoying being watched all the time.

“I had to get out of the house.”

“Aye.” His eyes flick down the slope toward my cottage, then back to me. “I thought I’d find you on this side today.”

I raise a brow, wondering what that means.

“After the other day when you went exploring,” he finishes.

Ah. So he knows I was poking around his property. Only he doesn’t seem to be bothered by the idea the way I’m bothered by him showing up around the cottage.

I ignore the comment though and gesture to the horse with my sketchbook. “Pretty well trained. No bridle.”

“She prefers it.”

“The horse does?”

“Aye. We’ve an understanding.”

The horse watches me with the deep liquid patience of an animal who’d rather be eating. Unlike the white one, this horse seems perfectly ordinary. Though the man on its back is anything but.

“Speaking of horses.” I tuck the pencil behind my ear. “I saw a white one in the trees. On the road to your castle.”

“Ah,” he says with a small nod. “I wondered if you would. Did you go near him?”

I shake my head. “No. He was off the track in a clearing. I waved at him like an idiot, of course. He just looked at me so I kept walking. Got the feeling he wasn’t that friendly.”

He looks at me for a long second.

“Your feeling was correct. He’s not friendly, and you’re not to go near him.”

“All right,” I say, though I feel that pathological avoidance thing that Maddie is always talking about rearing its ugly head, that urge to do the opposite of what I’m told to do.

He studies me, squinting for a moment, as if he can read this defiance on my face. “I mean it. He’s wild. He bites.”

I open my mouth, then close it again.

The part of me that read The Black Stallion thirty times in the third grade is sitting up in the back of my head, alert.

He bites is a challenge, she’s saying. He bites is exactly the thing the hero says to the girl in the book before the girl tames the horse no one else can ride!

As you can see, I have not entirely outgrown her.

The other part of me, the part that’s grown some sense in the last year since I got my ass handed to me by life, points out that wild horses in the Scottish Highlands are not Walter Farley’s wild horses, and that he bites is what people say when they’re trying not to alarm you. There’s something worse than biting.

“Okay, I get it,” I respond carefully. “I’ll stay away.”

He watches my face. I can see that whatever he sees doesn’t fully satisfy him, but he lets it pass.

“I came to ask you something,” he admits.

“You said you wouldn’t come to the cottage again,” I point out.

“And I haven’t.” He looks around. “I’m not even sure if this is Galloway property or crown land.”

I give him an expectant look. “Alright, well what did you want to ask me?”

“To come down to the rocks tonight. The flat black ones at the foot of your spit.”

“What? Why?”

“You asked me what ready meant. I’m giving you a place and a time. After dark, I’ll come up from the water. If you’re there, I’m there. If you’re not, I go home.”

“That’s the offer?”

“It’s not an offer.” His reply has all the patience in the world. “It’s a place and a time.”

“But…why the rocks?”

“Because I told you I wouldn’t come to your cottage till you asked. The rocks aren’t your cottage.”

“That seems like a loophole…”

“I’m good at those.”

Yeah, I can see that.

“Right but…” I rub my lips together, trying to figure out what to say because I’m not even sure what he’s saying. “Don’t you think you could just…try to be frank with me? Because so far, every time we’ve met, you’ve had the most cryptic, vague shit coming out of your mouth.”

His brows raise, but he doesn’t say anything. I guess I am being a bit blunt, but hell, he could use it.

“And that’s an issue for you?” he eventually asks.

I raise my shoulders and give my head a shake.

“I just want to know what you want. Are you…interested in being friends? More than friends? Neighborly acquaintances? Why can’t you come to my cottage, you’re the one who makes the rules, don’t you?

Why do I have to meet you at the rocks? Why are you always swimming? Really just…what do you want with me?”

The horse shifts its weight beneath him. Alasdair gives me a tiny curve of a smile.

“You want to know what I want with you?”

I give him an incredulous look. “Well, yeah?”

He looks at me for a long moment and the world seems to still. The wind has died entirely. The only sounds I hear are the faint breath of the horse, the gulls a long way off, and the dry rasp of the bracken when the air finally moves through it.

“I want to know you, Iris. As much as you’ll let me.

As long as you’ll let me.” His voice has gone lower, a timbre I feel in the marrow of my bones.

“Whatever you call that—between friends and more than friends—is your business. I’m not going to put a name on it for you.

I came around the bay because I wanted to see you.

I’m asking you to the rocks because I want you there.

And I can’t come to your cottage because I made you a promise, and I’m a man who keeps his promises. ”

“That’s the most you’ve said to me at once.”

“Aye.”

“And it still doesn’t quite answer the question.”

“No.” The smile comes back. Smaller. “But it’s closer than I’ve been before.”

I guess that’s progress?

“I’ll think about it,” I mutter. Because unlike him, I’m not promising anything.

“I hope you do,” he says, eyes glittering.

Then the horse turns with a snort and he rides off across the moor without looking back. His mount moves in a slow rolling canter, the kind that says it could go faster but is choosing not to. It’s one hell of a beautiful sight.

I stand there with my sketchbook, watching him go. I don’t try to draw it. I’d only make it worse.

My phone has three texts from Maddie when I get back to the kitchen.

you alive?

Iris?

has the neighbor gotten you laid yet, or are we still pretending we’re not pretending?

I write back: Not yet. Going for a drive rn.

She replies instantly: good. go far. text me later.

I put down the phone. I look at the kettle, thinking I might have a cup of tea but I’ve already had enough caffeine from the coffee this morning, and I’m out of sugar anyway.

What I want is a real stiff drink, in a room with people in it who don’t know my name, and don’t look at me the way Alasdair does.

I want to get the bartender at the Torridon, who struck me as the no-nonsense kind, to tell me something about my neighbor and his castle, something Alasdair wouldn’t want me knowing.

I told Maddie I was going for a drive, so I get the car keys.

The Torridon is the same as it was the first time, with the lazy fire and a mixture of locals and tourists. The bartender glances up when I come in, and frowns in that way of faint recognition.

I pull up a seat at the bar and eye the beers on tap and the menu.

“What can I get for you?” he asks.

“Whatever’s local on tap, amber preferred, and the special for lunch.”

He fills the glass. “American, aye?”

“Aye,” I say, still feeling silly when I say it with my accent.

“I remember ya. You were the one taking over the Galloway place down the road.”

“That’s me.”

He sets the amber pint in front of me. “I’m John MacLeod. Welcome back.”

It’s a small thing—welcome back—but it does something to me. Makes me feel like I’m slowly becoming a part of the land. Either that, or it’s becoming a part of me.

He brings me a plate of haddock and chips with the kind of mushy peas that come from a can, and a lemon wedge. The haddock is good, the same fish they use in the Cullen skink (I know, I was dismayed too when I learned skink was not a fish).

After I’ve had half my pint, and the lunch rush seems to slow, I work up the courage to blurt, “Mr. MacLeod.”

“Aye? You can call me John.”

“What if I meet another John? I’ll get confused.”

“You’re sooner to meet another MacLeod.”

“Okay, well, John…you know the castle across the bay from my cottage?”

“Ob Gorm Mor.”