Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Dougal’s shoulder caught the oak beam as he hauled the wooden barrel toward the hearth, his breath coming in whistling gasps that smelled of stale ale and dried oats.
He dumped the barrel onto the stone with a thud that shook the iron fire-irons, then straightened, clapping his calloused hands together.
His eyes, milky around the edges with age, drifted toward the ceiling beam where a faint creak echoed from the room above.
"The lad sleeps like his grandfather," Dougal muttered, rubbing his gnarled knuckles. "Thinks the weight of the keep rests solely on his shoulders, just as Old Alpin did before the deep claimed him."
Grisselle paused in her mending, the bone needle poised midway through a strip of coarse wool. She kept her voice even, leaning slightly over the hearth light. "The deep claims many men along the coast, Dougal. It’s the way of the sea."
"Aye, but most men daenae drag the ghost of the leviathan back to shore with them," Dougal said, his voice dropping into a raspy whisper.
He gestured toward his own left jaw, trailing a thick finger down to his throat.
"Old Alpin took the full brunt of the tail when the beast overturned the longboat, aye, shattered the timber right into the lad's face.
The old man held the boy underwater beneath his own chest until the thrashing stopped.
Kept the monster from taking the boy whole, but left him with the mark to remember the price. "
Grisselle’s thumb pressed hard against the sharp point of her needle until the skin flushed white. "The old Laird died saving his grandson."
"The old Laird died," Dougal corrected softly, turning toward the doorway, "and the boy washed ashore breathing air he never thought was his to keep."
The old man shuffled out into the passageway, the heavy latch clicking shut behind him.
Grisselle did not finish the stitch. She set the wool aside, her fingers cold despite the roaring peat fire, and rose from the bench.
The stone corridors were silent, wrapped in the deep, suffocating stillness of midnight.
She walked up the spiral stairs, her bare feet making no sound against the cold flags, until she reached the arched doorway leading to the outer battlement.
The iron door stood half-open. Drafts of salt-heavy wind whipped around the stone jambs, carrying the sharp, iron tang of the rising tide far below.
Alpin stood at the stone ledge, his broad shoulders silhouetted against the dark curve of the Atlantic.
He wore no plaid over his linen shirt, and the freezing wind plastered the cloth against the sharp angle of his ribs.
His fingers were clamped onto the cold granite parapet so tightly that the knuckles showed stark and white against the dark stone.
Grisselle stopped three paces behind him. "You’ll freeze the blood in your veins standing out here in the dark."
Alpin did not turn around. His dark hair blew wildly across his forehead, but his posture remained rigid. "The air is clear out here."
"The air is bitter," she said, taking a step closer. The wind pulled a loose strand of her red hair across her lips. "And the sea is louder tonight than usual."
"It always sounds like this when the tide turns," he said. "It calls in the debt."
Grisselle stepped into his line of sight, forcing him to look at her. The moonlight caught the long, jagged line of the scar stretching from his jawline down beneath his collar. In the low light, the thick pale skin looked like a permanent mark branded deep into his flesh.
"Dougal spoke of the longboat," she said softly.
Alpin’s jaw flexed, the muscles leaping along his cheekbone. He looked away, his eyes fixed on the black, churning water hundreds of feet below where the waves crashed against the jagged teeth of the shore. "Dougal speaks too much."
"He said Old Alpin held you under."
"He pushed me away," Alpin said, the words dropping like lead weights into the dark space between them.
He turned his head toward her, his black eyes hollow, stripped clean of the arrogant, teasing warmth he usually wore like armor.
"He dinnae drown holding me. He looked right at me with calm eyes, fixed on me face with a strange, hard certainty. "
Grisselle’s hand twitched at her side, her chest tightening until she could barely draw the sharp night air into her lungs. She stayed motionless, letting the raw bite of his voice fill the quiet.
"He told me to tell me father he went into the water proud," Alpin said, his throat working as he swallowed against the memory. "I reached out. I caught his wrist with me hand and screamed at him to pull himself up, that there was room on the wood for both of us."
He dragged a breath in through his nose, his hand clenching into a fist at his side.
"'Live, lad,' he said. And then he pushed. A hard, deliberate thrust of his arm that shoved the bow stem, and me with it, out into the current. His white beard disappeared beneath the surface, and the water took him."
He looked away, his eyes locking back onto the dark, churning Atlantic below. "I was ten. I watched him go under because he chose to put me on that timber instead of saving himself. I came back with a torn throat and a chest full of brine, and they put his plaid on me father’s shoulders."
"You were a boy," Grisselle whispered, her voice cracking despite her best efforts.
"I was the one who survived," he corrected, turning his full frame toward her.
He took a short step forward, hovering over her, his chest rising and falling in shallow, ragged bursts.
"Every breath I've drawn since that morning has felt stolen.
This keep, the clan, the bread on me table, none of it belongs to me.
It belongs to the man who stayed at the bottom of the bay. "
He looked back toward the dark stairs leading down to the hall. "The bairn sleeping upstairs in the crib. Ye, standing here in the wind with yer chin set like ye mean to fight the world for me. It sits on top of a debt I havenae paid. I havenae earned a single inch of it."
"Alpin."
"I have to go back out," he said, cutting her off, his eyes locking onto hers with a desperate, unyielding glare. "The longboats are being readied for the morning tide. I'm taking the men out to the deep water where the ledge drops off. Where it happened."
Her blood ran cold. "The sea is turning violent. The squall is coming in from the north."
"It doesnae matter," he said, his fingers reaching out, hovering an inch above her cheek without quite touching her skin.
His hand was trembling. A tiny, involuntary tremor that made her heart seize in her chest. "I cannae stay in this hall, looking at ye, looking at that child, pretending I am a man who deserves to live in the light.
I have to face it. I have to go back to the water and let the ledger be settled. "
Grisselle looked at the tremor in his fingers, then up into the dark, tormented depths of his eyes.
The sharp, fiery retorts that usually sprang so easily to her tongue vanished.
She did not tell him he was being foolish.
She did not argue against the madness of taking a boat out into a gathering storm.
She reached out.
Her fingers closed around his wrist, feeling the frantic, hammering pulse beneath his skin. She pulled his hand down from the air and pressed it flat against her own cheek, wrapping her smaller fingers over his cold knuckles.
Alpin froze. A low, ragged intake of breath rattled in his throat.
"Grisselle..." he breathed, his voice breaking on her name.
She did not let go. Instead, she stepped directly into his space, closing the distance until the wool of her dress brushed the linen of his shirt.
She raised her other hand and pressed her palm flat against the center of his chest, right over his beating heart, feeling the raw, thundering heat of him through the cloth.
Alpin’s resistance snapped like dry kindling.
He let out a long, shuddering sound—half-groan, half-sigh—and buried his face into the crook of her neck. His arms wrapped around her waist, locking her against him with a fierce, desperate strength that threatened to lift her off her feet.
He held her as if the world were slipping out from beneath them, his broad hands gripping the fabric of her dress, burying his face in the warmth of her hair.
Grisselle wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, pulling him down, holding his head against her shoulder. She felt the heavy, ragged rise and fall of his chest against hers, the tension that had held him rigid for weeks slowly melting into the desperate, overwhelming need of the moment.
When he pulled back, his eyes were pitch black, searching her face in the pale moonlight. He did not ask for permission, and she did not give him room to ask.
Alpin leaned down, his mouth catching hers in a kiss that was devoid of hesitation or banter.
It was raw, fierce, and deep, tasting of salt, cold wind, and heat.
Grisselle gasped against his lips, her fingers sliding up into his thick, damp hair, pulling him closer, yielding completely to the weight of his body pressing her back against the stone wall.
His hands moved to her waist, lifting her slightly, his mouth tracing the sharp line of her jaw down to the exposed slope of her neck. A soft sound escaped her throat, her head tilting back against the granite as the cool night air burned against her heated skin.
The careful, measured boundary they had drawn between themselves for weeks crumbled into ash under the force of the tide pulling them together.
He pressed his forehead against hers, his breath hot and ragged against her lips, his dark eyes wide and fixed entirely on her face.
"I am not letting the sea take you," she whispered against his skin, her thumb tracing the rough, scarred line along his jaw.