Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Woodsmoke and wet dog filled the Great Hall, beneath which lingered another, stranger scent. Elspeth could not immediately identify it, but she suspected it was goat.
Mrs. McAulay held her by the arm, already moving.
“As ye can see, we keep the fires banked through the night. The dogs settle better for it, and the Laird prefers the warmth when he comes down before dawn, which is every morning without fail. The man sleeps four hours if we’re lucky.”
She steered Elspeth expertly around a massive dog that was not asleep so much as occupying the corner with great intention. “Mind Brochan, he’s deaf in one ear and willnae hear ye coming. Best to step wide.”
Elspeth stepped wide. Brochan did not stir.
The hall was vast and stone-vaulted, and it would have been deeply impressive if not for the evidence of daily life distributed across every single surface.
A bridle hung haphazardly from a chair back, a stack of ledgers sat on the end of the long table beside what appeared to be someone’s abandoned leather boot, and three separate hounds lay in various stages of horizontal repose.
A goat had relocated from the doorway to a spot directly beside the central hearth.
“Is the goat always there?” Elspeth asked.
“Aye, she’s always there. That’s Morag. The Laird tried to move her to the stables twice in autumn, and each time she was back by morning. Third time she knocked the stable door clean off its hinges,” Mrs. McAulay said, her voice rich with fondness. “We daenae try anymore.”
“That seems…” Elspeth watched Morag settle her chin more firmly on the warm hearthstone. “Reasonable.”
“Through here.” Mrs. McAulay drew her through a low archway into a corridor that was slightly better organized than the hall, meaning the items along its walls had been placed there with at least some structural intention.
Heavy wooden pegs held cloaks, rope, and what appeared to be a very large net whose purpose Elspeth decided not to pursue.
“The kitchens are below; Mrs. O’Halloran runs them. She’s been here for twenty years. She’ll feed ye whatever ye ask, and she’ll also tell ye whether what ye’re asking for is worth eating, whether ye want that opinion or nae. Best to want it. She’s usually right.”
“I’ll remember that.”
“The stores are through the kitchen. The Laird checks them himself every Thursday; he kens every number without writing them down. I’ve seen him catch a half-sack discrepancy in barley from forty feet away.” Mrs. McAulay shook her head fondly. “Mind of a trap, that man.”
They came out into a low-ceilinged room that served, as far as Elspeth could tell, for three separate functions: a secondary sitting room, a place to store winter equipment, and apparently somewhere to dry herbs.
The plants hung in thick bundles from the dark beams, filling the damp air with something between a garden and a physic.
She liked it instantly, and felt a vague, defensive wave of guilt about that.
“The solar is above.” Mrs. McAulay was already moving toward the stairs.
“The Lady’s room, technically speaking, though it’s been nobody’s for, well, long enough.
The light’s good in the mornings. I’ve aired it twice this week on the chance…
” She stopped, pressing her lips together before starting again.
“I hoped he might bring someone home this time.” Her voice turned thick and wet at the edges again. “I lit candles in there Thursday.”
Elspeth looked at the back of the older woman’s head. “Ye kent he was going to the auction?”
“I prayed he would go to the auction.” Mrs. McAulay paused to smile before resuming climbing the steps. “I’ve been praying since Michaelmas. The Lord moves slowly, but He does move.”
The solar sat at the top of a short flight of stairs, and it was genuinely beautiful. Elspeth stood in the threshold, taking it in. Wide windows faced east, dark now, but she could easily imagine the bright amber light they would catch in the morning.
The space had been cleaned and laid with a peat fire that had been burning long enough to thoroughly chase the chill out of the stone walls. Two chairs sat near the hearth, beside a small writing desk and empty wooden shelves waiting to be filled.
“And here…” Mrs. McAulay was already pulling her onward, back down the corridor. She walked past a heavy door, identifying it as the Laird’s study. They passed two smaller doors, then climbed a winding staircase to the upper corridor. “The library.”
Elspeth stopped.
It was magnificent, though not grand. A long, narrow room lined with shelves from floor to ceiling, with a window at the far end and a single worn chair positioned beneath it.
Candles rested on a low table beside it.
The shelves were full, not decoratively so, and contained books that had been heavily read, some with spines creased several times over.
“He reads?” she asked softly.
“Most nights,” Mrs. McAulay said simply. “After the castle doors are checked.” She paused. “He thinks no one kens.”
Elspeth looked back at the worn chair, at the candles positioned exactly right for a solitary reader, the shelves chosen, arranged, and returned to repeatedly over the years.
She thought of the massive, taciturn man in the courtyard who had bluntly told her there was no carriage. She decided not to examine that thought too closely and quickly followed Mrs. McAulay back into the corridor.
The upper corridor was wider than the ones below, boasting better torchlight and a once-vivid crimson carpet runner, now dulled by years of footsteps. There were three doors to the left and two to the right.
Mrs. McAulay stopped before the second door to the right and pushed it open. “Yer chamber.”
Elspeth crossed the threshold.
The room was large, warm, and laid with far more luxury than the rest of the rugged castle suggested. Fresh, crisp linens covered the bed. A fire was burning evenly in the hearth, and a washstand held a proper ceramic pitcher. The window shutters were locked tight against the Highland cold.
On the edge of the mattress, someone had placed an extra blanket of heavy, thick wool. It was either a thoughtful gesture or a silent warning about the nocturnal temperature. Possibly both.
Becky was already there, standing in the middle of the room with Elspeth’s smaller trunk open at her feet.
Their eyes met.
Becky’s eyes said, I have seen the goat.
Elspeth’s eyes answered, I ken.
“Yer maid arrived ahead,” Mrs. McAulay said approvingly, breaking the silence. “Good lass, that one. The rest of yer luggage should arrive within the week.”
“Of course,” Elspeth agreed.
“I’ll have hot water sent up. And something substantial from the kitchen.
Ye’ve nae eaten properly, I can tell,” Mrs. McAulay added with complete authority and no trace of unkindness.
“There’s cold meat and bread, and Mrs. O’Halloran made an apple preserve last Tuesday that’ll change yer opinion of the Highlands forever. ”
She turned toward the door to make her exit, but then stopped dead.
Magnus was standing in the corridor. He was not doing anything in particular. He was simply standing outside the open door, with his large arms hanging at his sides and his face fixed in its default expression.
He looked at Elspeth. He looked at the room. He looked at the fire, carefully checking whether it had been built to last the night.
“Me Laird.” Mrs. McAulay ’s voice was warm. “She’s arrived safely. The room’s warm. I’ve seen to it.”
He nodded once, his broad chest rising. His dark eyes briefly moved back to Elspeth. A quick check to confirm that she was alright.
“Good,” he said.
Mrs. McAulay looked between them with an expression of profound satisfaction. She squeezed Elspeth’s hand once, then patted Magnus’s massive arm as she passed him, a gesture he accepted without responding. Her footsteps softly retreated down the corridor, leaving a heavy silence behind them.
Elspeth stood in the doorway of her new chamber, while Magnus stood tall in the corridor.
His dark eyes swept across the room behind her again, checking the tightly shut window and Becky standing with neutral precision beside the open trunk.
It was a thorough survey, however quick and practical. It was the same way he had surveyed the women at the auction, the way she suspected he calculated most things in his life; checking them off against an internal list of rigid requirements and moving on the instant they were satisfied.
“All set?” he asked, his voice low.
“Aye.” She paused, her fingers smoothing her silk skirts. “Thank ye. For the room. It’s… It’s warm.”
He nodded once. A sharp, definitive nod.
She expected him to turn and leave, but he seemed to have no such intention.
She looked squarely at him. Her eyes moved to the dim corridor, then to the heavy closed door behind him, which presumably led to his quarters.
She thought of the library downstairs, the solitary worn chair, and the candles placed with such exact intention.
She thought of Mrs. McAulay ’s quiet revelation.
An interesting man, indeed.
“Do ye have a favorite book?” The question came out before she could think better of it, but her tone remained light. “In the library. I noticed there were quite a number of them.”
“Nay.”
She blinked, caught off guard by the unexpected reply. “No favorite, or no books?”
“No favorite.”
“Oh.” She folded her hands tightly in front of her. “Do ye play an instrument? Or enjoy music? There was a fiddle at the auction.”
“Nay.”
“Right.” She swallowed, forcing herself to try one more time. “Do ye have, I daenae ken, particular places on the estate ye prefer? For leisure, I mean. In the evenings.”
“I daenae.” He paused heavily. He seemed to genuinely consider the foreign word, his brow furrowing. “Leisure.”
She looked at him.
He looked back at her with a blank expression.
“Yer childhood,” she pressed on, because she was thoroughly committed now, and this had to be safer ground. “Did ye grow up here at Ben Cruachan? Did ye have favorite places as a lad? Things ye enjoyed doing.”
“Dead,” he said.
Elspeth froze. She stared up at him. He looked right back down at her, and the vast corridor fell into a suffocating silence.
“I beg yer pardon?” she rasped.
“Me family,” he stated, delivering the line without decoration. “They’re dead. So, that is yer question about me childhood answered.”
She stared at him.
He seemed to believe with absolute sincerity that he had answered her question in the most helpful, efficient manner possible. He was watching for her reaction.
She tried frantically to conjure a response that was not, I’m so sorry, ye could have said that differently. Or even better, were ye raised by wolves?
The two responses scrambled for dominance in her mind, though only the second felt truly inadvisable. She settled heavily on silence, because silence at least did not make the conversational wreckage any worse.
Magnus shifted his massive weight slightly. He looked uncomfortably at the solid wood doorframe. He looked at the stone floor. He looked into the middle distance.
He cleared his throat with a low rumble.
“Ye’ll likely need boots,” he said. “Until yers arrive from yer home. The floors are cold, and the courtyard—” He broke off. “It’s a working castle.”
Elspeth blinked, stunned. She looked at him, then looked down at her feet; at the soft, delicate kid slippers she had worn to the auction, which were already demonstrably unsuitable for this wild environment and of which she had been painfully aware since her very first step on the cobblestones.
She looked back up, her pride flaring.
“I daenae wear boots anyway,” she told him, wrapping herself in all the icy dignity available to a woman in a strange fortress at an ungodly hour.
Something sharp crossed his face.
He is disappointed. He expects absolute compliance from me.
His jaw set hard. His eyes darted away from hers to the shuttered window, then to the floor, and finally back to the doorframe beside him.
He nodded once, an uncomfortable, final nod that signaled the conclusion of a topic he would never revisit. Then he turned to leave.
He had to angle his massive shoulders slightly, acting on pure instinct, as he ducked beneath the low wooden lintel. It wasn’t a sharp or clumsy movement, but a perfectly automatic one borne from years of familiarity.
He opened the door opposite her, stepped through the threshold, and then the heavy oak clicked shut behind him.
His scent was all that remained of his short presence.
Rain, woodsmoke, cured leather, and wrapped in this all, something warmer. A raw, distinct note of cold air. It had flooded the room with him, and it lingered after he left. Just barely, already beginning to fade into the draft.
Elspeth sank onto the edge of the bed as the fire settled with a soft pop. Outside, the wind found a small gap somewhere in the warped shutters, making a low, whistling sound before losing its grip again. Becky was white as a ghost as she stood silently beside the open trunk.
Barbarian. I’ve been traded away to an absolute barbarian.
A man who answered questions about art and music with “Nay” and questions about his family with “Dead,” seeming to fully believe that these truncated words were complete and sufficient answers.
A man who had offered her heavy work boots, which she could only interpret as a clumsy attempt at warmth, and who had looked genuinely confused when the gesture was not met with the same enthusiasm it had been offered.
She lifted her head to look at Becky. Becky looked right back at her.
“He said dead,” Elspeth whispered.
“I heard.”
“As an answer to a question about his childhood.”
“Aye.” Becky paused, before adding in a carefully neutral tone, “To be fair, technically it is an answer.”
Elspeth blew air through her lips, falling back onto the mattress and staring blankly up at the ceiling. The stone above her was ancient, massive, and unbothered by her emotional predicament.
She thought about the romantic sonnets she had read, about dramatic Highland moons and mythical heroes with depthless eyes who composed brilliant poetry in the dark.
Then she thought about a man who ducked under his own doorframe by muscle memory, offered leather boots instead of comfort, and possessed arms—she was profoundly annoyed to notice even now, especially now—built to a physical scale that defied all reason.
She closed her eyes tightly and took a deep breath through her nose.
Barbarian.
Yet, this time, the word did not land in her chest with quite the same force.