Chapter 10 #2
“Because from where I stand, Magnus Wallace, ye confiscated me books.” She held up one finger, counting.
“Ye denied me ribbons, because apparently ribbons are also a threat to the stability of this entire holding.” A second finger joined the first, and the dog at Magnus’s feet lay down flat, its ears low.
“Ye informed me that disappointment is dangerous, as though I were a bairn who cannae be trusted to want somethin’ and survive nae gettin’ it.
” A third finger. “Ye have decided on yer own, without a single word to me, what I am and am nae permitted to enjoy in me own home.”
She drew in a sharp breath through her nose. Magnus said nothing.
“So forgive me,” she continued, quieter now but no less sharp, each word placed with care, “if I struggle to distinguish that from bein’ twelve years old again and bein’ told by me father what is best for me.”
Magnus straightened to his full height. The chicken, sensing the change in the man holding it, gave one indignant squawk and flapped once against his forearm, feathers scattering into the space between them. He did not so much as glance down at it.
“I am nae yer father.”
“Nay.” Her voice dropped, though it lost none of its edge, none of its aim, and she held his gaze steadily. “Ye arenae.”
For a moment, something in her face eased, just slightly. She did not step back. Neither did he.
The wind came again, tugging loose a strand of hair across her cheek, and she let it stay there. She did not lift a hand to brush it away nor look away from him.
His hand twitched at his side, some foolish notion rising in him to reach out and tuck that strand back himself. He curled his fingers into the chicken’s feathers instead and let it be.
“But ye are very good at decidin’ things for me, without ever askin’ what I might want,” she added.
Magnus opened his mouth to object, but found nothing worth saying.
He had answers for most things. He had an answer for a fence that would not hold, for an ewe that would not birth clean, for a steward who padded the grain count by half a stone. He had gone thirteen years without a question he could not turn over once and set down solved.
But this one pressed on his chest, and he stood there watching her face, without a single word ready to meet her firm gaze.
His eyes dropped briefly past her shoulder, toward the low grey shape of the old watchtower at the edge of the yard, where four books currently sat wrapped in oilcloth beneath a loose stone, exactly where he had hidden them two nights ago. Like a boy hiding stolen sweets from his mother.
He quickly looked away from the tower so that she would not follow his gaze. He thought of his mother’s voice reading by the hearth, and of a version of himself that used to ask her to read the same page twice.
Elspeth stood her ground in front of him, chin tilted up, waiting him out. One of the dogs had wandered over to sit at her feet instead of his. At that moment, this simple fact struck him as a betrayal worth noting.
Magnus exhaled hard through his nose, the breath fogging faintly in the cold morning air.
“If ye agree, me Lady.” The formality came out stiffer than he had calculated, an old habit reaching for him in a moment when he had nothing left in his arsenal. “Tomorrow. After the loch.”
Elspeth tilted her head a fraction. “An official outing?”
“An inspection.”
Her brow creased. “I shall decide what to call it,” she said, “once I’ve survived it.”
And that was it.
She turned, skirts snapping around her ankles, and walked back toward the castle without waiting to see whether he had anything further to offer her, which he did not, and which she clearly knew.
Magnus did not call after her again. Instead, he stood at the paddock rail with the chicken tucked under his arm and watched her go.
Her braid had become half-loose at the march she had set herself to, swinging against her back with every step.
Her skirts caught and released, caught and released, in a rhythmic movement the wind could not have summoned.
The dog beside him sat up and watched her too, ears pricked, tail giving one slow sweep across the dirt.
“Daenae,” Magnus muttered.
She reached the well, rounded it without breaking stride, and did not look back. He found himself waiting for her to do so, with his jaw set and one hand braced against the top rail of the fence hard enough that the wood creaked faintly under his palm.
She did not look back.
Magnus became aware, several seconds too late, that he was still standing exactly where she had left him, with his eyes fixed on an empty archway she had long since gone through.
A man watchin’ an empty gate is a man who’s lost an argument he didnae ken he was having.
The horse behind him stamped once. He turned back to look at it.
The rope had gone slack in his other hand while he was not paying attention.
He had to gather it up again, hand over hand, forcing his attention back where it belonged—on the animal in front of him and not on the particular sway that had carried a woman out of sight around the corner of his own keep.
He clenched his teeth and hauled the lead taut.
The chicken squawked, huffy at being jostled. He set it down, and it stalked off with its feathers ruffled, offended at what had transpired throughout the morning.
Duncan’s voice carried across the yard, something about the grain wagons and the eastern road, and Magnus answered him without ever hearing a word of that question. His attention snagged again on the empty archway where the courtyard opened onto the keep.
He caught himself doing it and stopped. He made himself look at the horse instead, at the rope in his fist, at anything that was not a woman’s skirts vanishing around a corner, and found the effort of it considerably more work than the horse had been.
The dog that had abandoned him for her returned with its tail low and settled back against his boot as though nothing had happened at all.
Magnus looked down at it. It looked back up at him, unbothered. He decided the animal had the right idea and tried, with limited success, to follow its example.