Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Elspeth pushed open the library door and went straight to the third shelf from the bottom, the one beside the sermons, where she had left the book with its spine turned just so—a habit her old governess had beaten into her before she had ever learned her letters properly.
Her fingers found sermons. Then a ledger of household accounts nobody read. Then more sermons.
She crouched and ran her hand along the gap, as though the book might have fallen and wedged itself somewhere out of sight.
Nothing.
She stood up, checked the shelf above it, then the one below. Then she went back to the original spot. Surely she had misremembered. Surely a book that thick did not simply vanish from a locked room in a castle full of people who could not read half so well as she could.
It was not only one book. She counted the gaps as she went, four of them scattered across two shelves, each space too clean. Dust was wiped from where something had recently occupied it.
Someone had deliberately gone through this library and removed certain books.
Elspeth closed the last cabinet with more force than necessary.
She marched out of the library, down the corridor, past Mrs. McAulay , who called something after her about the noon meal, which Elspeth replied to hastily, and out through the side door.
The courtyard was bright with a cold, clean light that made everything look sharper.
She found him near the stables.
A black stallion reared against a length of rope, his hooves cutting the air. Magnus stood his ground without so much as stepping back. One hand was steady on the line, and he was faintly murmuring words she could not catch from this distance.
The horse came down hard, snorted, and tried again. Magnus waited him out, his feet planted, his shoulders set. Two dogs sat nearby with their tongues out, watching the whole process.
Elspeth’s steps faltered on the cobbles. She caught herself against the fence post and sharply reminded her feet what they were meant to be doing.
By the time she reached the paddock, the stallion had settled enough to be led, and Magnus had bent down to retrieve a chicken that had wandered into his path. The indignant bird was tucked beneath one arm as though this were an ordinary interruption to the business of breaking a half-wild horse.
“Someone removed a book from the library,” Elspeth stated flatly.
Magnus glanced up. He did not stop walking, so she fell into step beside him, matching his stride toward the stable door. “Did they?”
“A romance novel. The very book I’ve been reading.”
He looked down at the chicken as though it had just said something requiring his full attention. He turned it slightly, checking its wing, its feet, anything.
“Perhaps someone borrowed it.”
“Did ye borrow it?”
“Nay.”
“Magnus.”
“Aye?”
“Did ye remove the book?”
He set the chicken down inside the stables and straightened slowly, rolling one shoulder as though it had gone stiff. Morag picked that exact moment to trot past them with something green hanging out of her mouth, bleated once triumphantly, and kept going.
“There were too many foolish things in that library,” Magnus said.
Elspeth folded her arms. “Did ye perhaps confiscate all the romance novels?”
“I relocated them.”
“Why?”
His jaw worked. He picked up a bridle from the fence post and inspected the leather far more closely than a bridle he had hung there himself required.
“Ye’ve already asked me questions about courtship. About stars. About poetry.” He said the last word like it cost him something. “I feared the books might encourage more of the same.”
Elspeth stared at him. “You hid me books because ye were afraid of a discussion.”
“I didnae hide them. I relocated them.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere they’ll do less damage.”
She opened her mouth to tell him precisely what she thought of a grown man, a laird, sneaking through his own library like a thief to strip it of anything with a beating heart.
She found the words tangled somewhere behind her teeth, because he had chosen that moment to drag a forearm across his brow, and his sleeves were rolled to the elbows.
The dirt streaked across his skin betrayed that he had spent the whole morning at the fences, and his hair fell dark and damp at the collar.
She dug her nails lightly into her palm and made herself look at the bridle in his hands instead of at him.
“That is theft,” she hissed. “In me own home, that would be theft.”
“This is me home.”
“That is worse.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, and he immediately caught it before it could bloom into an actual smile and sent it back where it came from. He hung the bridle on its hook with more care than the task warranted, buying himself a few seconds she did not miss.
“I’ll consider returning them,” he said, “once ye stop askin’ me if I’ve ever recited poetry to a lass beneath the stars.”
“I asked that question once.”
“It was a memorable once.”
Morag reappeared at the stable door and fixed Elspeth with a flat, unbothered look. One of the dogs got up, circled twice, and settled against Magnus’s boot as it belonged there. Which, Elspeth supposed, it did.
She turned her attention deliberately to the dog. Not to the forearms. Not to the collar.
“I want the books back,” she insisted. “All four of them.”
“Four.” He said it like a man recalculating a debt. “Ye counted.”
“I counted twice.”
“Thorough.” He reached past her to loop the stallion’s lead over the rail, and for one unhelpful second, his arm brushed close enough that she caught his scent. Warm, blended with that of horse and hay.
“Where are they, Magnus?” she pressed.
He looked at her, making her wonder if he was debating whether to lie or adjust the truth. Then, in a perfectly even voice, he said, “I’ll tell ye when ye stop lookin’ at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like ye’re about to set the stables on fire to make yer point.”
Elspeth’s chin lifted. “I havenae yet decided against it.”
He almost smiled again. She hated that she had learned to spot it.
* * *
He caught it before it went any further—jaw setting, mouth flattening back into its usual line—and told himself that settled the matter. He did not move. She was there, arms crossed, chin up, waiting for him to make things worse. He saw no reason to disappoint her.
“Ye are impossible,” she huffed.
Magnus shifted the chicken to his other arm. “I was tryin’ to protect ye.”
“From books?”
“From disappointment.”
He looked at her too long, long enough to notice how her eyes flashed when she was riled, long enough that he had to plant his boots to the ground to keep from closing the distance between them.
Elspeth clutched the edges of her shawl and tucked it back into place without once breaking his gaze. Behind her, one of the dogs gave a low whine, as though it too sensed that the wind had changed.
“I shall decide what disappoints me, thank ye.”
She turned on her heel. Her skirts caught the air and snapped around her ankles as she started toward the courtyard gate, gravel crunching sharply beneath her boots, her chin held up.
She did not look back. She told herself she would not look back and held to it for exactly four strides.
Magnus watched her go. The dog at his boot lifted its head, glanced at both of them, and thumped its tail once against the ground. The chicken, tired of being ignored, pecked once at his sleeve.
He did not notice. His eyes stayed fixed on Elspeth’s retreating back, the stiff set of her shoulders, the way her braid swung hard when she rounded the well.
He had not planned to say anything further. He told himself this even as his mouth opened, even as the word was already leaving his lips before he had decided whether he wanted it to.
“Elspeth.”
She stopped mid-stride, one boot raised slightly off the cobbles before she set it down with exaggerated care. Her spine went straight as a bolt. She did not turn.
Neither of them moved.
The wind pulled at her skirts and scattered the loose hay across the yard.
It carried the smell of the stables toward them, horse and leather and turned earth.
Behind him, the black stallion blew out hard through its nose and stamped once in the paddock, impatient with the pair of them and their silence.
Magnus searched for something to say and found nothing sensible in him. He was a man built for fences and ledgers and the counting of grain, not for finding words quickly enough to stop a woman mid-stride.
He stood there a moment too long, his jaw working before any useful word arrived. The chicken squirmed. He tightened his grip on it without thinking, and it settled, resigned. In the end, he reached for the only thing at hand.
“Tomorrow, I must inspect the loch,” he said. “And the western boundary.”
It was not what he had meant to offer, if he had meant to offer anything at all. But it was out now, whether or not it made sense to anyone listening, including himself.
Elspeth glanced back over her shoulder. One eyebrow lifted, slow and deliberate.
“Afterwards,” he added, “ye may have yer second outing.”
“Tomorrow?” She turned fully now, arms crossed. Her weight had shifted, no longer aimed quite so squarely at the gate, one foot already angling back toward him.
“After I inspect the loch.”
“How generous of ye.”
Magnus frowned, resettling the bird against his ribs, buying himself a second he did not strictly need. He glanced past her, toward the loch. “I am tryin’ to compromise.”
“Are ye?”
“Aye.”
Elspeth’s arms tightened further across her chest, her fingers curling into the fabric of her sleeves until her knuckles paled.
She took one step toward him, then another, closing the distance he had left open between them until she stood near enough that he had to tip his chin down to hold her eyes, near enough that he could see the furious tremor along her jaw.