Chapter 6 #2
"I survived three," Grisselle said, her chin lifting as she turned back to the hills.
She threw the core of her apple over the wall, watching it drop into the gorse below, her green eyes flashing with a dangerous, wild light.
The mud on the steep sheep-track was thick, black, and slick as grease, but Grisselle did not slow down. She grabbed a fistful of wet heather, hauled herself over a jutting shelf of granite, and pulled her boots up onto the high ridge.
She let go of her skirts. The heavy green wool dropped, caked in dirt halfway to her knees.
She didn't care. She threw her head back, shut her eyes, and pulled the freezing, salt-heavy wind deep into her lungs.
She let out a loud, entirely unladylike laugh that the gale snatched straight out of her throat.
"If ye take one more step to yer left, I’ll be explaining to yer father why his daughter is floating in the Minch."
Grisselle spun around, her boots skidding on the wet shale.
Alpin stood ten paces away, rising out of the mist. His thick hair whipped into a wild, black tangle around his face.
His plaid was soaked through at the shoulder, a heavy coil of hemp rope slung across his chest. He stopped mid-stride, his heavy boots planted wide on the incline.
He stared at the mud on her knees, the dirt packed beneath her fingernails, and the wild rust-colored mess of her hair.
His dark brows knit together into a hard, confused line.
He didn't look like the cornered, suffocating giant from the London ballroom, nor the freezing, distant stranger from the East Tower.
He looked entirely unguarded, thrown completely off balance by the sight of her standing on the edge of a cliff with a grin on her face.
"I have excellent balance, Laird Herston," Grisselle said, raising her chin over the howling wind. "I am not going to fall."
"The rocks daenae care about yer balance," Alpin growled, closing the distance between them in three long, ground-eating strides. He grabbed her upper arm, his large fingers completely encircling her bicep, and pulled her two feet back from the precipice.
The moment his hand clamped over her sleeve, the heat from the tower room flashed between them, sharp and sudden. Grisselle’s breath hitched. Alpin’s jaw locked. He dropped her arm as if the wet wool had burned him, his hand falling swiftly back to the hilt of the dirk at his belt.
"Ye should be in the keep," he muttered, turning his face toward the grey water below. "Greer would be looking for ye."
"I don’t think so," Grisselle countered, refusing to step back from his massive frame. "And you spend a great deal of time avoiding your own hall. Do the fires inside burn too hot, or do you simply prefer the company of seagulls?"
The pale scar on Alpin’s neck twitched. He snapped his gaze back to her, his black eyes narrowing. "I check the nets, lass. It’s how me people eat."
"You check the nets before the sun rises, and you stare at the water until it sets," Grisselle said, her voice dropping into a low, steady rhythm. "If you intended to ignore me for the next forty years, you should have chosen a painting."
Alpin leaned forward, his broad chest blocking the wind, casting her entirely in his shadow. "I dinnae choose a painting. I choosed a woman who doesnae ken when to hold her tongue."
"Then we are poorly matched," she shot back, tilting her head up to hold his stare, her green eyes flashing, "because I have no intention of holding it."
Alpin didn't pull away. He stepped closer instead, until barely a hand's width separated them, close enough that she caught the salt and woodsmoke clinging to his plaid.
His chest rose and fell in a heavy, uneven rhythm.
His gaze dropped from her defiant eyes to the center of her mouth, lingering there for a long, dangerous second.
"Ye have dirt on yer nose," he said, his voice a rough, low rasp.
He reached up, one rough thumb dragging slowly across the bridge of her nose, wiping away a smear of mud gone unnoticed until then. His thumb lingered a half-second longer than the task required.
Grisselle didn't blink. Though her breath caught somewhere it hadn't before. "And you have seaweed on your boots. Are you going to run away again, or are we going to stand on this cliff until it rains?"
A short, dark sound broke from his chest, something caught exactly between a scoff and a laugh. He stepped back, the hard, impenetrable wall slamming back into place behind his eyes, though the pulse beating wildly at the base of his throat betrayed him.
"Go back down the track," Alpin ordered, pointing a thick finger toward the valley. "Keep to the right of the gorse. And wash yer hands before ye sit at me table, or Dougal will think I’m starving ye in the mud."
He turned on his heel and strode up the ridge, disappearing into the thick grey mist without looking back. Grisselle stood alone on the rock, her heart hammering a frantic, echoing beat against her ribs, her fingers pressing hard against the dirt on her skirt.
The fire in the East Tower had burned down to a pile of glowing red embers. Grisselle sat on the edge of the heavy oak bed, aggressively pulling a stiff bristle brush through the tangled ends of her hair, when a sharp rap hit the heavy door.
Before she could answer, the iron latch lifted. Isobel slipped inside, kicking the door shut behind her with the heel of her leather slipper. She carried a heavy clay jug in one hand and two battered tin cups in the other.
"Greer nearly swallowed her own tongue when she saw the mud on the hall floor," Isobel announced, setting the cups down on the bare wooden table with a loud clatter.
"I will fetch a mop in the morning," Grisselle said, lowering the brush.
"Daenae ye dare. Senga needs the exercise," Isobel said, pulling the cork from the jug with her teeth. She spat it into her hand and poured a healthy measure of dark, amber liquid into both tins. "Drink this. It’ll keep the damp out of yer bones."
Grisselle took the cup, sniffing the sharp, peaty burn of the ale before taking a small, searing sip. She coughed, her eyes watering instantly.
Isobel dropped into the high-backed wooden chair by the hearth, pulling her knees up to her chin and taking a long swallow without flinching. "I saw Alpin when he came back. He looked like he’d been hit in the head with an oar. Did ye push him off the cliff?"
"I considered it," Grisselle rasped, rubbing her burning throat. "He is the most infuriating man I have ever met."
"He’s a rock," Isobel agreed, tracing the rim of her tin cup with her thumb. "And rocks daenae move unless ye hit them with something heavier. But perhaps ye’re heavier."
Grisselle set her cup down on the blanket chest, her fingers curling into the wool of her skirts.
"I am a contract, Isobel. Nothing more. My parents dragged me to London the year my father came into his title.
They wanted a husband who could match it.
I refused every man who looked at me because I couldn't stand the smell of their perfume.”
"So ye chose a giant who smells of salt and wet dog," Isobel said, a dry smile touching the corners of her mouth.
"I chose the hills," Grisselle corrected sharply. "I chose the air, and a way clear of a marriage market that had already decided what I was worth before I ever opened my mouth. I didn't expect the man himself."
Isobel’s smile faded. She lowered her cup, staring into the red embers of the fire. The silence in the stone room stretched, filled only by the distant, muffled roar of the sea breaking against the keep’s foundations.
"When our grandfather died," Isobel started, her voice dropping to a low, quiet murmur, "Alpin dinnae cry.
He was ten years old. He just walked down to the shore and sat on the shingle for two days.
Me father had to carry him back inside. After that he stopped playing.
He stopped talking to the boys in the village. He just watched the water."
Grisselle stopped breathing, her eyes fixing on Isobel’s face.
"Our father took the Lairdship after that, but grief had already taken half of him with it. Alpin's carried this family since he was ten years old, Grisselle, whether or not he wore the title for it. He doesnae ken how to do anything else."
"He knows how to give orders," Grisselle pointed out gently.
"Orders are easy. People are hard," Isobel said.
She looked up, her dark eyes pinning Grisselle to the spot.
"He agreed to this marriage because the council threatened to strip his authority if he dinnae produce an heir.
But he dinnae go to London to find a wife.
He went to find the girl who wrote that letter. "
Grisselle swallowed hard, the burn of the whisky returning in her throat. "I told him the truth. I told him I wrote it to his grandfather, the legend."
"I ken," Isobel said, standing up and brushing the wrinkles from her skirt. She picked up the empty tin cups, her face entirely serious now. “And he's never once forgiven himself for being the one who came back out of that water."
Isobel walked to the heavy oak door and left Grisselle with her thoughts.