Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
The leather mail-pouch had crushed the white wax on the seal, but the elegant, sprawling script of the London postmark was still perfectly legible.
Alpin sat at his high desk, his thumbs hooked into his belt, watching Grisselle from across the room.
She was standing by the narrow window, the letter held between her fingers.
She hadn't read it yet. She was just staring at her name written in that sharp, delicate hand that looked entirely ridiculous against the grey stone of his walls.
"It’s from her ladyship, then," Alpin said, his deep burr cutting through the rhythmic whistle of the wind outside.
Grisselle didn't turn around. Her thumb moved once over the cracked wax, scraping a tiny white flake onto the floorboards. "My mother has very little to do in Mayfair during the summer except remind her remaining daughters that they have not yet managed to secure an earl."
"Open it," Alpin muttered, shifting his weight until the oak chair groaned under him. "The boy from the village has been waiting three hours for a reply if one is needed."
Grisselle ripped the parchment open with a single, sharp jerk of her wrist.
Alpin watched her eyes move down the page.
He didn't look at the ink; he looked at the line of her jaw.
For the first three lines, her face remained perfectly still.
But as her eyes hit the middle of the sheet, the skin beneath her ears flamed a sudden, bright red.
Her nostrils flared, and her left hand came down on the edge of the stone windowsill with enough force that her knuckles went entirely bloodless.
She didn't sob. She didn't let out a breath. But her small shoulders went completely rigid under her green wool gown.
Alpin stood up, his heavy boots hitting the flagstones with a sharp thud as he crossed the room. He didn't ask for permission. He reached over her shoulder and took the parchment straight out of her fingers.
Grisselle didn't try to pull it back. She simply stood there, her arms dropping to her sides, her green eyes fixed on the empty air outside the window.
Alpin’s eyes scanned the narrow, crowded text.
...the gossip at Almack’s is quite as tedious as you might expect, though your sister Mary’s new carriage has drawn some admiration.
Lord George remarked at dinner that the freckled hill-girl has finally found her proper cage in the rocks.
They are calling it the 'Highland Rescue' at White’s; a few of the younger gentlemen had a wager on whether the Laird would require a rope to drag you from the carriage or if the smell of the sheep would suffice to keep you there.
You must tell me if he has a proper carpet, or if we are to tell your father that you are sleeping on the heather...
Alpin’s fingers tightened on the edge of the paper until the thick rag-parchment tore down the center.
A strange, hot iron taste flooded the back of his mouth.
It wasn't the dull, familiar weight of his own old grievances; it was a sharp, sudden fury that hit him right between the ribs, making his pulse hammer against his scar with a violence that shocked him.
The hill-girl.
He crumpled the paper into a tight ball in his massive fist, his black eyes fixing on the side of her face. "The viscount’s friends have very little to do with their money if they’re throwing it away on the color of yer face."
Grisselle spun around, her eyes flashing with a dangerous, wild light that was entirely different from her usual defiance. "Give that back to me."
"It’s trash," Alpin growled, his voice dropping into a hard, dangerous rumble. "It belongs in the grate."
"It is my mother’s letter, Laird Herston!
" she shot back, stepping straight into his space until her small chest brushed the rough wool of his plaid.
"And I am perfectly capable of reading what the ton thinks of me without your assistance.
I knew what they were saying before I left London, and I know what they are saying now. "
"Then ye’re a fool for letting it stay in yer head," he said, looming over her, his broad chest blocking out the light from the window. "Ye’re in the North now. The wagers at White's daenae carry past the Tweed."
"Oh, how comforting," Grisselle mocked, her voice cracking just enough to let the raw, sharp edge through.
She poked a stiff finger hard into the center of his chest, right over the crumpled parchment in his hand.
"The great Laird tells me the world has stopped laughing because I am standing on his rocks.
Do you think I don't see how you look at me?
You treat me like an entry in your ledger, a nuisance you had to drag out of Mayfair to keep your grey-beards from complaining! "
"I treat ye like the contract we agreed to," Alpin barked, his jaw locking tight.
"You treat me like a shadow!" she yelled, her chin lifting so high he could see the wild pulse jumping at her throat. "You spend your days at the water pretending I am not here, and the one time you came into my room, you looked at me as if I'd stolen your grandfather's broadswords!"
"Ye havenae stolen anything," Alpin rasped, his face turning a dark, angry red beneath his wind-burnt skin. He dropped the crumpled paper onto the desk, his hands coming down on her shoulders before he could think, his large fingers gripping the green wool. "And I daenae look at ye like an enemy."
"Then look at me!" she demanded, her fingers locking into the rough wool of his plaid to pull him down, her breath hot against his chin.
"How do you mean to spend a lifetime with a wife you only read like a contract, Alpin?
You'll wear yourself thin hunting for the loophole in me, and there isn’t one to find. "
Alpin froze, his hands staying flat against her shoulders.
The gale outside hit the narrow glass with a violent rattle, but inside the small study, the air suddenly went completely still.
He looked down into her wide green eyes, and for the first time since he’d met her in that suffocating London drawing-room, he didn't see a viscount's daughter or a contract to be managed.
He saw the sharp, fierce angle of her chin, the dirt beneath her fingernails from the baking trough, and the absolute, unyielding iron in her spirit that had refused to let the city break her.
She was the girl they had written off because she wouldn't look polite in a parlor.
And he was the Laird who had buried himself under ten years of stone and silence, no matter how many hands — Isobel's, Dougal's, Niall's — kept reaching in after him.
Alpin’s grip on her shoulders loosened, his large thumbs smoothing over the rough fabric of her collar. His jaw relaxed, the white scar on his neck softening as his breath came out in a long, ragged plume.
"They’re small people, Grisselle," he said, his voice dropping into a low, quiet burr that seemed to fill the narrow space between them. "The lot of them. They live in brick cages and they’re afraid of the wind."
Grisselle’s fingers didn't let go of his plaid, but the frantic, angry rise and fall of her chest slowed. She stared up at his face, her lips parting slightly as she traced the line of his scar, her green eyes losing that sharp, defensive armor for the first time since they’d left the south.
"They are very loud cages," she whispered.
"The hills are louder," Alpin said, his hand sliding down from her shoulder to grasp her forearm, his grip firm but no longer angry. "And they daenae give a damn about Lord George or his wagers."
A tiny, sharp line appeared at the corner of Grisselle’s mouth, the barest hint of her usual biting smile breaking through the dark mood. "Does that mean you aren't going to buy me a proper carpet, Laird Herston?"
A laugh broke out of Alpin before he could stop it. He stepped in rather than back, close enough that the toes of his boots bracketed hers on the stone.
"The stone was good enough for me grandfather," Alpin muttered, his black eyes dropping to the center of her mouth before he caught himself and stepped back a single pace.
He didn't slam the wall back up this time; his face remained open, his broad shoulders squared against the window light.
"And if yer mother asks again, tell her the sheep here have better manners than the gentlemen at Almack’s. "
Grisselle let out a short, genuine laugh that seemed to clear the stale smell of ink right out of the room. She let go of his plaid, smoothing her green skirts with a quick, brisk movement of her hands that had nothing to do with London manners.
"I will tell her exactly that," she said, her voice steady again as she picked up the torn pieces of the parchment from the desk. She walked to the hearth, dropped them straight into the grey embers, and watched the paper catch, the yellow flame illuminating the sharp, fierce line of her profile.
Alpin stood by the high desk, his fingers tracking the edge of the brass inkwell, his eyes fixed on her as the smoke disappeared up the chimney.
The air between them had changed; the contract was still there, folded tight against his ribs, but the room didn't feel small anymore.
Supper came and went with Alpin's chair sitting empty at the high table long enough for Greer to start muttering about wolves. When full dark fell, and he still hadn't come up from the water, Grisselle pulled her cloak from its hook and went looking for him where Isobel always said he'd be.
The tide was sliding out over the shingle with a long, dragging hiss that nearly drowned the crunch of her slippers.
Grisselle kept her cloak wrapped tight around her chest, her chin tucked against the spray that came stinging off the dark firth.
Ahead of her, the massive, broad-shouldered shape of Alpin cut a black silhouette against the grey foam of the breakers.
He didn't move. He stood with his heavy boots planted deep in the wet sand, his face turned toward the open sea.