Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Alpin did not wait for her to regain her breath. His large hand remained wrapped around her wrist, his grip like a lead weight as he turned on his heel and dragged her straight through the small, arched doorway leading to Lady Danbury’s conservatory.
The heavy glass door shut behind them with a dull, hollow thud, cutting off the sharp, rising hiss of the ballroom whispers. The air in the side room was thick and damp, smelling of bruised geraniums, wet earth, and the cold iron of the glass frames.
Alpin let go of her wrist, but he did not retreat. He planted himself between her and the exit, his broad shoulders casting a long, jagged shadow over the orange trees in their clay pots. His dark eyes fixed on her face, hard and unblinking, while his thumb stayed hooked behind his leather belt.
"Talk," he commanded. The single word was low, flat, and carried the heavy burr of the northern rocks.
Grisselle rubbed the pale skin of her wrist where his fingers had been.
Her chest was heaving under the old white muslin, the green silk ribbon beneath her breasts tightening with every breath, but she did not drop her gaze.
She squared her shoulders, looking straight at the jagged white scar that ran from his jaw down to his wool collar.
"You have no business being here," she said, her voice thin but steady, meeting his look with her own green eyes. "You are supposed to be at the bottom of the Minch."
Alpin’s jaw tightened until the old scar twitched.
He reached into the deep pocket of his mud-stained coat, pulled out the folded sheet of heavy paper, and held it inches from her nose.
The red wax of her grandfather’s broken crest was cracked through the center, looking like a fresh wound between his thick fingers.
"This has me name on it, lass," Alpin said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, quiet rumble.
"It has me keep on it. Me people had to hand this to me across me own trestle table while me council was screaming for an heir. Now tell me why a girl from London is writing love letters to a man she’s never laid eyes on. "
Grisselle’s fingers bunched into the muslin of her skirt. The smell of horse-sweat and peat smoke off his wool plaid was dizzying in the small, warm room, but she refused to cower.
"I was not writing to you," she snapped, her chin lifting.
"I was writing to the Alpin Herston who had the courage to row out alone against the great bull whale to feed his clan.
The man who died twenty years ago saving his people.
My grandfather told me the story. He said the sea took him fighting, and that there wasn't a man left living in the north who could match him. "
Alpin went completely still. The paper in his hand gave a small, sharp rustle as his fingers clenched around the edge.
The dark skin of his forehead drew together, a strange, hollow look crossing his features.
He stared at her, his gaze dropping from her green eyes to the wild, untamed rust of her curls, then back again.
"That was me grandfather," he said softly, the iron leaving his voice for a brief, heavy second. "He went under when I was ten."
Grisselle’s ribs clamped shut. She looked at the massive frame of the man before her, at the raw, dark night in his eyes, and the truth hit her like a stone thrown through glass.
He is the grandson.
The legend she had loved since girlhood, the dead hero she had used as a shield against the cruel wagers of Mayfair, was not a ghost. The courage she had praised in her midnight letter belonged to the old man whose terrible, violent death had clearly ruled this living man’s life.
Neither of them moved. The silence between them grew thick, broken only by the steady drip-drip of water from a zinc pipe into an iron trough cornered behind the palms.
His gaze was heavy, tracking the heat that had risen in her freckled cheeks, while Grisselle found herself staring at the dark, powerful pulse beating at the base of his scarred neck.
Her heart gave a violent, unbidden thump against her ribs, not from the terror of his size, but from a sharp, electric current that seemed to pass through the very air between them.
Alpin broke the stare first, his eyes sliding toward the frosted glass of the ballroom door where the shapes of the London guests were still pressed like curious gulls against a window.
"The council wants a lady," Alpin said, his tone turning flat, business-like, and devoid of any soft grace.
He stuffed the letter back into his belt.
"Six grey men who spend their days counting me years and me empty chairs.
They want the line to continue, and they willnae leave me hall until I give them a name. "
Grisselle let out a short, defensive laugh. "What do ye mean?"
"Ye’ve already given yer name to me clan," Alpin pointed out, stepping a half-inch closer until she could feel the heat radiating from his chest. "Three hundred people out there believe I crossed the border to claim me bride.
The wager-books are already open. If I leave here alone, yer father is ruined, yer name is mud, and me council goes back to hunting Edinburgh for whatever biddable girl with a decent dowry will still have me. "
He leaned down slightly, his dark brow furrowing. "We make a bargain, lass. A betrothal in name only. A marriage of convenience to satisfy the old men. I give ye a roof, ye give me a quiet hall where no one asks me why I am looking at the water. No romance. No grand words. A deal."
Grisselle’s hand went to the glass table behind her, her fingers pressing into the cold zinc.
Every sensible bone in her body told her to scream for her father, to tell this savage giant to take his horse and his mud back to the rocks.
He was rough, dangerous, and carried a dark, brooding storm inside him that she didn't understand.
But then she looked past his shoulder at the glass doors. She saw Penelope Asquith’s faint silhouette, the memory of Mr. Hartley’s wet, mocking chuckle rising in her ears like bile. Three years of walls, of tight shoes, of being told her wildness was a disease that left her worthless.
If she said yes, she would be back in the heather. She would have the wind off the braes in her face. She would see the high, wild country where her sister and brother still kept their homes, far from the suffocating fog of Mayfair. She would be free of the drawing rooms forever.
"No romance," she repeated, her voice dropping to match his hard cadence.
"None," Alpin said.
"You will not try to pen me in a nursery or tell me how to ride?"
The corner of Alpin’s mouth gave a tiny, almost invisible twitch against his scar. "Me keep has more stone than we have maids, lass. Ye can ride to the top of the crags for all I care, so long as ye stand at the table when the council comes to look at ye."
"And an heir?" The word came out steadier than she felt. "They'll want one eventually."
"They will." Alpin didn't look away. "We'll need to try for one, soon enough, lass. Though I'll give ye me word on it, I willnae touch ye. Unless ye beg me to."
Her mouth dropped open. "That will never happen."
Something moved behind his black eyes, close enough to amusement to count. He reached out, one rough finger tipping her chin up until she'd no choice but to hold his gaze. "We'll see, lass. We'll see."
Grisselle drew in a long, deep breath of the damp air, her heart hammering against her stays with a frantic, wild rhythm. The turmoil of the choice was a physical ache in her throat, but she reached out her hand anyway, her small fingers steady as she held them out over the geraniums.
"A contract, then, Laird Herston," she said.
Alpin looked at her hand for a full beat before his large, calloused palm closed over it once more, the skin rough as sandstone against her own.
"A contract," he agreed.
As his fingers locked around hers, a cold chill shot straight up Grisselle’s spine.
She looked at his dark, uncombed hair and the fierce, primitive line of his jaw. She had her escape, she had her hills, but as the heavy glass door swung open to let them back into the light of London, one terrifying question remained beating in her mind.
How under heaven am I going to follow this savage man?
The narrow parlor of the Mayfair townhouse had never felt smaller. Grisselle stood by the sideboard, her fingers tracing the chipped edge of a tea saucer, while her mother paced the threadbare carpet with an energy she hadn’t shown in three seasons.
"A Laird, Grisselle! A real Highland Laird with an estate and a proper castle," Lady Hunter gasped, pressing her lace handkerchief to her throat as if she might faint from the sheer, impossible luck of it.
"The papers are already calling it a romance of the borders.
The way he walked in, the size of him! Every mouth in London is stopped clean up. "
Lord Hunter did not look up from his desk.
His brow was knitted into a deep, heavy ridge.
"He says next to nothing, Margaret. The man sat in my study for twenty minutes, signed the marriage contract, and spoke precisely three sentences.
'The keep is weather-tight. The lady will have her own horse. We leave on Friday.'"
"And what more should he say?" Her mother countered, her stays creaking loudly as she turned on her heel. "He is a man of action! He does not need to waste breath on small talk like these pale London boys."
"It is moving too fast," Her father muttered, his thumb pressing into the broken crest. He finally raised his eyes to Grisselle, his gaze filled with a dark, protective worry.
"A daughter is not a sack of grain to be bartered away to a stranger who arrives out of the night fog.
Grisselle, look at me. Are you certain of this man? "
"He has a name, Father," Grisselle said, her voice flat, sounding far more detached than she felt. "And he has a roof. Is that not what we came to London to find?"