Chapter 13 #2
Alpin's jaw tightened. He didn't turn away this time, not immediately, and for a moment neither of them said anything at all, the space between them considerably smaller than it had been a breath ago.
"That was different."
"Was it?" Grisselle's hands went still on the clasp of her cloak, not quite finished fastening it. "I confess I've thought about it a fair amount, trying to work out how."
"It was a mistake."
"You've mentioned that before. Twice, if I recall." She tilted her head, watching him the way she'd watch a man lying badly at cards. "You say it very firmly, for a mistake you don't seem to regret."
"I regret it plenty." He said, looking at her mouth.
"You're doing that thing again."
"What thing?"
"Standing very still while you deny it," she said, her voice dropping into a smaller, far less steady cadence than she intended.
Grisselle pulled hard on the leather reins, pretending to adjust her grip as her fingers fumbled against the cold brass buckle.
Warm color rose quickly along her throat, creeping up to her cheeks.
She kept her eyes fixed firmly on the horse’s dark mane, her knuckles white against the leather as she realized how close he had stepped.
Alpin didn't pull back. He reached out with one broad, slow hand, his heavy fingers covering hers over the leather reins, instantly stilling her restless movement. The warmth of his palm cut straight through the chill air.
"If I wanted to deny something, lass," Alpin said, his low, gravelly voice steady and completely in control as he looked down into her dark eyes, "ye would nae have to guess at it."
Grisselle swallowed hard, her pulse fluttering against her collarbone as his chest rose and fell just inches from hers. She tried to summon a quick, sharp retort, but the sheer weight of his presence held her tongue, leaving her fingers trapped quietly beneath his on the leather.
Alpin's jaw tightened, and he turned toward the door before she could see whatever his face was doing with that. "The horses are waiting."
"Of course they are. Practically."
She was laughing at him. He could hear it in her voice even without turning around, and found he didn't mind it nearly as much as he ought to.
They rode down from the castle side by side, the track narrow enough in places that conversation came in fits and starts, broken up by the need to mind footing on loose stone or duck beneath a low branch overhanging the path.
"That's Herston land, all the way to the burn," Alpin said, nodding toward the sweep of pasture falling away to their left, dotted with black cattle grazing unbothered by the wind.
"Been Herston land longer than anyone kens for certain.
Me grandfather used to say his own grandfather couldnae remember a time it belonged to anyone else. "
"It's beautiful."
"It's mostly rock and heather and sheep that daenae ken their own good sense."
"That's the same thing as beautiful." Grisselle sat easier in the saddle than she had the first week, he noticed, her seat settling into the horse's gait without the stiffness she'd arrived with.
"Everything in London was hedged and measured and owned twelve times over before anyone got near it.
This just…" she gestured at the sweep of empty land, the grey sky pressing low over the hills, "—is. "
"It's harder land than it looks. Ye'll want to remember that come winter, before ye go romanticizing it further."
"I'm allowed to admire something and know it's difficult at the same time. The two aren't opposites." Grisselle glanced sideways at him, the corner of her mouth going crooked. "I'd have thought you'd understand that better than most, being both yourself."
"I'm nae difficult."
"You're the most difficult thing I've encountered north of London, and I include the sheep in that comparison."
His mouth twitched, and he looked away toward the pasture like the cattle had suddenly demanded his full attention.
"Aye, well. Most folk who admire it havenae had to survive a February in it."
"Most folk who survive things stop admiring anything at all. I'd rather not become most folk." She looked over at him, something testing in the look. "Did your grandfather love it? The land, I mean. Or did he live on it because that's what was expected of him?"
Alpin considered the question.
"He loved it. Talked about it the way some men talk about a woman, if I'm honest, like it had moods he understood better than anyone else could, like it forgave him things it wouldnae forgive another.
I never kent, growing up, whether he loved the land or the sea more.
I suspect he never quite decided either. "
"And you?"
"I daenae get the luxury of deciding. It's mine to hold, whatever I feel about it."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I've got today." He nudged his horse forward as the track widened, ending the conversation before it could press further into ground he wasn't ready to walk on. Grisselle let it go, though he caught her glancing at him once more before the village came into view below.
Grey stone cottages clustered along the curve of the shore, smoke rising thin and steady from a dozen chimneys, fishing boats drawn up along the strand, nets spread out to dry across the rocks like something woven by giant spiders.
Grisselle slowed her horse without seeming to notice she'd done it, taking the whole scene in.
"It's busier than I expected."
"Did ye expect empty cottages and starving dogs?"
"I expected something smaller." She watched a group of children chase something — a dog, or each other, it was hard to tell — along the strand, their shouts carrying faintly on the wind. "This looks like people who are actually living, not simply enduring."
"They work hard for the privilege."
"That's true of most places worth living in, I think.
" She nudged her horse forward again, down the last stretch toward the first cottages, and Alpin followed, watching her take in the smoke and the nets and the noise of it with an attention that unsettled him slightly, though he couldn't have said why.
The first person to spot them was old Mairi, hanging washing outside her door, who dropped a wet shirt clean into the mud at the sight of Grisselle.
"So it's true, then," Mairi called out, crossing the yard, wiping her hands on her apron. "The lass from London, come to see us proper at last, Lady Herston that will be."
"Grisselle," Grisselle said, already dismounting, holding out her hand before Alpin could offer any introduction of his own. "Not Lady anything yet, so you needn't trouble yourself over titles."
"Mairi." The old woman took her hand, studying her face with open curiosity. "Ye've a firm grip, for a London lass."
"I've been told I have a firm opinion on most things as well."
Mairi laughed, delighted, and called something over her shoulder toward the open door. By the time Alpin had seen to the horses, three more women had appeared from neighboring cottages, drawn by the sound of it, and Grisselle was learning names faster than he'd have managed in a year of trying.
"Ye'll want to watch Fenella there," Mairi said, low, tipping her head toward a stout woman crossing the lane. "She'll talk yer ear clean off about her hens if ye let her start."
"I like hens."
"Ye say that now."
They walked the length of the village that way, Grisselle stopping at nearly every door, asking after children by name once she'd been told them a single time, remembering which cottage belonged to which family with an ease that unsettled Alpin somewhat, given he'd known most of these people his whole life and still occasionally confused the MacKay boys for one another.
"That's yer smithy's wife," he murmured, as they passed a low stone cottage near the well. "Una. Husband's Fergus."
"The one who proposed to the officiant."
"Aye, that Fergus."
"I've heard a great deal about that Fergus." Grisselle was already crossing toward the cottage, and Una emerged before she'd reached the door, wiping flour from her hands, blinking at the sight of her Laird's intended standing uninvited in her own dooryard.
"Me Lady."
"Just Grisselle, please. I'm told yer husband once proposed marriage to a priest mid-ceremony."
Una's face went through several expressions in quick succession before settling on resigned amusement. "Aye, well. He'd had a fair bit of whisky by then, and the priest does have a kind face."
"I would very much like to hear the whole story someday, from someone who isn't Isobel."
"Isobel tells it with entirely too much embellishment. Come in, if ye've a moment. I've bread just come out."
Alpin lingered near the well while the two women disappeared inside, watching the lane fill up slowly with people finding reasons to pass by. A boy walking a pig that didn't need walking, two girls suddenly very interested in a puddle they'd otherwise have ignored.
He'd walked this same lane a hundred times as Laird, had every one of these faces nod to him with proper respect, correct distance. None of them had ever once dropped a wet shirt in the mud at the sight of him.
She's done in an hour what I havenae managed in ten years.
He was still turning that thought over when a scream cut through the ordinary noise of the lane, not fear, just the raw, furious pitch of an infant.
A young woman came hurrying around the corner of the smithy, the bairn red-faced and thrashing against her shoulder, her own face gone thin with the particular exhaustion of someone who had already tried everything she knew.
"I'm sorry," the girl said, to no one in particular, bouncing the baby with increasingly desperate rhythm. "She's been like this since dawn, I cannae stop her."
Grisselle appeared in Una's doorway at the sound of it, took one look, and crossed the lane before Alpin had even fully turned toward the noise.