Chapter 8 #2
Over the course of this morning, watching him move had become its own problem. He had a long, unhurried stride, covering uneven ground without once looking down at it.
He reached the dense gorse, crouched low, and said something to the ewe that Elspeth could not hear over the wind. The animal looked at him and then calmly walked out of the gorse toward the pen.
He came back, his heavy boot catching the stirrup, and remounted behind her. The return of his body heat was a sharp shock on her spine.
“How’s yer roof holding?” he asked Dougal, his arm settling back across her waist.
“Same as it was. North corner.”
“I’ll send someone before the week’s out.”
Dougal nodded, already turning back to the iron latch.
Elspeth looked at the old man’s hands, the cracked skin, the practiced movement of fingers that had done this exact job maybe ten thousand times.
She looked past him to the low stone cottage.
On the north corner of the roof, a section of thatch had been replaced recently, but the straw was loose and poorly bound.
“The Brennan boundary,” she said, her voice clear in the crisp air. “Is it far?”
Both men looked at her instantly.
“Half a mile south,” Dougal answered, squinting up. “Why?”
“Yer sheep go there.” She looked across the pasture, keeping her tone strictly analytical.
“Three times that ye’ve noticed. If the fence were sound, they’d likely find the boundary anyway, but if there’s something drawing them specifically to that corner, it might be worth checking whether Brennan’s pasture has better grazing on that edge.
Then ye’d ken if it’s a fence problem or a feed problem. ”
An absolute silence fell over the pasture.
Dougal looked from Elspeth to Magnus.
Magnus said nothing, but the muscles in his jaw shifted slightly, tightening under the skin.
“Aye,” Dougal said after a long beat, shifting his hat. “Might be.”
They moved on.
Magnus remained silent for the first long stretch of track after Dougal’s fence.
“Feed problem or a fence problem,” he said eventually, his deep voice vibrating right through her.
“It seemed like a reasonable distinction.”
Another long silence. “It was.”
She did not show what that brief praise did to her. She kept her eyes fixed on the muddy track ahead, her hands tight on the pommel, and thought determinedly about sheep.
The second stop was a widow. She lived in a low stone cottage with a bright yellow door and three young children who appeared at the small window the moment the horse’s hooves struck the road. They remained there in a silent, staring row until Magnus dismounted and knocked.
She came out drying her hands on her apron. She took one look at Elspeth sitting high on the stallion and immediately began smoothing her stray hair behind her ears.
“Me Laird.” She looked up, her gaze tentative. “And Me Lady.”
“Mistress Violet.” Magnus paused, his jaw working briefly, as though the sentence required more effort than inspecting three roofs. “This is Lady Elspeth.”
Violet waited. When nothing else came, she looked between the two of them, then pressed her lips together to suppress a smile. “Aye, Me Laird. I can see that she is.”
A faint, unmistakable flush crept up the back of Magnus’s neck. But the next moment, he glanced at the roof timbers, the door lintel, the window frame. His eyes scanned the outside of the cottage, cataloging every flaw, noting every crack.
“Winter stores. Are ye set?”
“Well enough.” Violet nodded. “The children are fed.”
“The roof on the eastern side needs attention before the hard frost.”
“I’ve managed.”
“Aye. I’ll send the Brennan lad. He’s good with thatch.”
Violet looked at him for a moment, then she gave a small nod. “That’d be welcome.”
Elspeth leaned forward slightly in the saddle, her fingers loosening on the reins. “The yellow door,” she said.
Violet looked up, startled.
“It’s a lovely color,” Elspeth noted softly. “Did ye paint it yerself?”
Violet blinked. Then, the hard guard on her face came slightly open. “Me husband did. Three years past.”
“It suits the stone.”
It was a small thing.
For a moment, they simply looked at each other, before Violet nodded once and went back inside.
Magnus remounted, and his large arm settled across Elspeth’s waist to gather the reins.
She had been anticipating it. She had been firmly telling herself not to anticipate it for the last mile. Still, the solid warmth of his forearm arrived before she properly braced herself for it. Her skin flushed beneath her clothes.
Three fields further along, standing slightly apart from its mother at the muddy edge of the pasture, was an injured calf.
Magnus spotted it from the saddle. He changed direction with a subtle shift of his weight, and the horse followed.
They came up alongside the stone fence, and he stared down at the calf for a long, quiet moment.
“Right foreleg,” Elspeth said.
He glanced up at her, his dark eyes sharp. “Aye.”
He dismounted, went in through the wooden gate, and crouched in the damp grass beside the calf. The calf stood still for him. Magnus ran his large, bare hand down the young animal’s leg with a slow, even pressure. His scarred knuckles stood out against the pale hide.
The calf’s ear flicked once. Magnus said something to it, his voice too low for Elspeth to catch the words, and the calf turned its head toward his shoulder.
She watched the steady, careful way his hands moved.
There was hard work in those fingers, a roughness that contrasted sharply with the gentle touch he now used.
The calf settled under his hands the same way the ewe had followed him out of the gorse.
Not forced, but redirected by a quiet steadiness that he exuded whenever he was near them.
He came back, remounted, and said nothing for three full minutes as the horse walked on. Then: “I’ll have it checked. Likely soft ground near the water trough.”
Then they found Morag. She was at the far end of the lower field, standing on the wrong side of a drystone fence that appeared, from what Elspeth could see, intact. She had no clear reason for being on the wrong side of it.
Magnus saw her and exhaled heavily through his nose. Elspeth felt the vibration down her back, the deep breath, the weary quality of it.
He dismounted and crossed the damp grass with his hands tucked behind his back. He stopped directly in front of Morag and stared down at her. Morag stared back.
“Ye’re becoming impossible,” he said, his voice low, even, and completely unhurried. “The fence is there for a purpose.”
Morag chewed.
“Ye were in the south pen this morning. Ye were in the Great Hall last night. Ye are now in a field ye have no business being in, and I cannae determine how ye got here.” He looked at the intact stone fence, then back at the goat. “Ye’ll tell me nothing, I assume.”
Morag swallowed. Then she began chewing something else.
“Aye,” Magnus said flatly. “I thought so.”
“This,” Elspeth muttered dryly, nodding to the goat, “is the one villager ye havenae bothered to properly introduce me to. And yet she seems to be more favored.”
Then she laughed.
It came out before she could stop it. A real, unbridled laugh, the same one the chicken had shocked out of her in the courtyard. She pressed her hand over her mouth immediately, but it did not help. The sound was already out, ringing sharp and clear across the cold, silent field.
Magnus straightened his spine and turned around. He crossed back to the horse, remounted, settled his heavy weight behind her, and stared at the track ahead.
“I was merely inspecting livestock behavior,” he said, his voice completely grave.
She bit her lower lip. Hard. The pain did not fully work to clear her face.
“Of course,” she said, her voice trembling with residual mirth. “Very thorough.”
“It is important to understand the patterns.”
“Aye. She has several.”
A long pause. “She has too many.”
She pressed her lips tightly together and stared at the jagged line of the hills, breathing carefully through her nose until the laughter finally settled in her chest.
His hand suddenly tightened around her waist as the great horse stepped sideways on a loose, wet stone.
The movement was automatic, brief, a split-second correction that lasted only until he had the reins sorted and the stallion’s hooves level again.
It was nothing. A purely functional gesture. But it registered.
She looked at the grey track.
He is strange. He is impossible.
He spoke to stubborn goats at length, spoke to people in blunt monosyllables, knew the state of a widow’s roof on his land, and could spot a limping calf from fifty yards away.
She was becoming, she thought with a sudden cold spike of panic, dangerously susceptible to finding him interesting.
He is interesting.
That thought was highly inconvenient. Especially since his arm was a warm band across her waist. The mountain cold came at her from all sides, biting through her shawl, except for the point where his body met hers.
She concentrated very hard on the distant hills. The hills were beautiful yet unhelpful, and the horse walked on.