Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The days settled into a good shape around Alpin.
Mornings were Nora and the breakfast table and whatever argument Senga was having with the shelf situation, which had not resolved itself despite one week of sustained effort.
Afternoons were the estate, the tenants, the grinding work of a keep in autumn with winter coming — but he found himself back inside earlier than he used to be, drawn by no reason he was prepared to name out loud.
Evenings were the four of them at supper, or the six of them when Niall and Dougal stayed, and somehow the table had gotten louder without anyone even knowing when it got that way.
He'd put his hand out to steady Grisselle on the stair one morning when she had Nora in one arm and her skirt in the other and not enough hands to steady herself.
She'd taken it without thinking, and neither of them had remarked on it, and his hand had stayed at the small of her back for three steps longer.
She'd reached past him for a book from the high shelf in the study two days later, close enough that her hair brushed his jaw, and gone back to her chair with the book and said, "Thank you," to the middle distance.
He'd said, "I dinnae do anything," and she'd said, "No, I know," and that had been the whole of it, and it had taken him the better part of an hour to stop thinking about it.
"Ye're distracted," Niall said, from across the chessboard.
"I'm thinking."
"Aye, that's what I said." Niall moved his bishop. "Ye've been thinking at that window for the last ten minutes. I've moved twice."
Alpin moved a piece without looking at the board. Niall took it immediately.
"She's good for the place," Niall said, not looking up from the board.
"She really is good for the place," Alpin said, because it was true and easier than whatever else Niall was building toward.
Niall set the captured piece down against the oak table. "Grandda used to say a keep only mirrors the mind of its Laird. For two years, this hall has smelled like cold ashes and old grief. She brings light into the room, Alpin. Even the men in the lower courtyard walk lighter when she’s about."
Alpin’s hand hovered over his remaining knight, his jaw tightening at the mention of his grandfather.
" Grandda spent forty years carrying this clan on his back and died believing he hadnae done enough to guard it.
I'll nae let this keep fall to ruin, but I'll nae turn it into a gilded cage either. "
"Ye carry his face, but ye carry his burdens twice over," Niall said softly, looking up from the board to hold Alpin's gaze.
Alpin stared at the black king on the board, the wood worn smooth by three generations of MacLeod hands. The memory of his grandfather's final, rambling days—the sudden outbursts, the fixation on the crashing waves beyond the cliffs—hung thick in the air between them.
"I have no time for ghosts, Niall," Alpin grunted, his fingers finally settling on the carved piece and shoving it forward into a defensive line. "I have a clan to feed and a winter to survive."
"Aye," Niall murmured, taking another of Alpin's pieces with a quiet, knowing smile. "And a wife who sees right through you."
"Yer move."
"It's yer move. Has been for three minutes."
Alpin looked at the board. He was losing badly.
Niall looked at him over the board half smiling because he knew he was going to win this round.
Alpin made his move and lost his rook.
He took her to the shore that evening.
Not with any particular plan. He'd gone himself first, the way he always did when the castle felt too much like the inside of his own head, and she'd been on the steps when he came through the yard.
He'd said, "Come on, then," without stopping, and she'd fallen into step beside him without asking where.
The tide was out. The sand was hard and cold, and the sky had gone the deep ink blue of early autumn evenings, the first stars already through.
"This is where it happened," he said.
Grisselle didn't ask what. She waited.
"I was ten." He kept his eyes on the water. "Me grandfather and I, out past the point. A whale came up under the boat, nae rare, in these waters, but this one was wrong. Too big, too deliberate. It hit the hull twice." He paused. "The second time, we went in."
She was standing close enough that he could see her from the edge of his vision, her hair loose from its pins in the wind, her arms crossed against the cold.
"The water here in October," he said, "gives ye about ten minutes before yer body stops doing what ye tell it."
"How long were you in it?"
"Long enough." He bent down, picked up a stone, turned it in his hand. "Me grandfather got me to the surface. Got me to the rock at the point. Held me there." He set the stone down instead of throwing it. "He dinnae make it back."
The wind off the water was loud enough to cover whatever small sound she made.
"He was the best man I ever knew," Alpin said. "He used to tell stories, yer grandfather knew him, ye said. So ye already ken that part."
"I know the stories," Grisselle said. "I didn't know the rest."
He nodded once. He didn't tell her the rest. The part that sat in his chest like a stone of its own, heavier than the one he'd just set down.
He told her about the old man instead.
"He knew every seal on the south bank," Alpin said. "Had names for them. Three of them he had opinions about, said one was vindictive, one was lazy, and one was the smartest creature on the coastline, and he meant no offense to anyone present."
Grisselle's mouth curved. "Which one was vindictive?"
"The big bull on the eastern rock. He'd stolen a catch from me grandfather, twice in one week, and me grandfather said it wasnae theft, it was a grudge, and that he respected it."
She laughed, and he felt it against his shoulder.
"He carved them," Alpin said, his gaze fixed on the quiet shadows of the room.
"Whale bone, mostly. Small figures—whales, sea-birds, and old crests from the lost ships.
He'd sit in the study for hours with a small knife, just carving, and if ye asked what he was making he'd say he dinnae ken yet, that the bone knew and he was just listening.
" He paused. "I've never moved them. They're still on the top shelf. "
"I've seen those carvings on the shelf," Grisselle said softly, the realization settling over her. "I didn't know what they were until now."
"Most people daenae." He turned the stone over in his hand.
"He told stories. Ye'd sit down next to him meaning to ask about something practical, and an hour later ye'd look up and the light had changed and he'd never once answered yer question and ye dinnae mind at all.
" He set the stone down. "Yer grandfather was the same, I think. From what ye've said of him."
"He was." She looked at the water. "They'd have driven each other mad."
"Or never stopped talking."
"Both," she said. "Definitely both."
At some point while he was talking the cold got into her shoulders, and he didn't think about it. He just turned and put his arm around them, and she turned into it. They stood like that facing the water, her shoulder against his chest, his chin near the top of her head.
He stopped talking.
She tipped her face up.
He kissed her slow, certain, his hand coming up to cup her jaw, his thumb tracing the warm line of her cheekbone until her breath hitched against his lips.
The shift between them was absolute; the roar of the shore, the biting cold, and the whole dark, endless length of the water receded into nothing.
She kissed him back with a sudden, fiercely gathering desperation, her fingers curling tight into the heavy wool at the front of his coat, anchor and invitation all at once.
Alpin growled low in his throat—a sound raw and long-suppressed—and pulled her closer.
She came willingly, her body flush against his, and in an instant, the kiss stopped being gentle.
His hand slid from her jaw down to the curve of her nape, tangling in the wind-loosened strands of her hair to tilt her head back. The heat of his mouth turned possessing, demanding every quiet truth she had held back since arriving at Herston.
Grisselle yielded to the pull, her chest heaving against his, her heartbeat hammering so hard in her ears it drowned out the tide. She tightened her grip on his coat, tugging him nearer as if she could pull him past the walls he kept built around himself.
When she finally pulled back first, her breath came in sharp, shallow, ragged gasps against his mouth, her lips swollen and trembling, her eyes wide and dark with a hunger neither of them could pretend was gone.
"Alpin."
"Aye."
"We're not married yet."
"I'm aware."
Her hand loosened in his coat, slowly, finger by finger, without letting go entirely. He kept his arm where it was, her cold cheek against his throat, the water loud in front of them.
"If we keep doing this," she said, "we're going to do something we can't undo before the priest gets here."
"I ken."
"And then Greer will know. And Isobel will know. And Senga will tell the village."
"Senga already tells the village everything."
"Alpin."
He loosened his arm. She stepped back an inch, only an inch, and looked at him in the dark with her hair all undone by the wind and her mouth still warm from his, and he looked back at her and said nothing, because there was nothing to say that would improve on the silence.
She straightened her coat and turned toward the castle, and he fell into step beside her. They walked back up the shore without touching, though the inch between their arms said everything the conversation hadn't.
By the time they reached the keep, Greer was waiting in the hall with a shawl.
She handed Grisselle the shawl without a word.
Grisselle took it. "Thank you, Greer."
"Aye," Greer said, and went back to the kitchen, and from somewhere behind the door Isobel's voice rose and fell in whatever she was telling Senga, and the fire in the hall was going, and Nora was quiet in the east room above them.