Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Elspeth was half-listening to Katherine debate lace against plain hem when she noticed Liam standing in the doorway, hat already in hand, patient in the way he had of waiting to be noticed rather than announcing himself.
He cleared his throat. “Agnes, fancy a walk to the paddocks?”
Agnes looked up from the edge of the bed, where she’d been half-listening to Katherine debate the merits of lace against plain hem for the better part of ten minutes. “The paddocks?”
“Aye. Every animal on this land has something to teach a future lady, if she’s willing to listen.” Liam extended a hand toward her, patient, unhurried. “Sheep, cattle, horses. A good lady kens her land the way she kens her own household.”
Agnes considered this with seriousness, then slid off the bed and crossed to take his hand without further debate. “Will also the goats be there?”
“I’d wager on it.”
“Then I’m ready.”
Elspeth watched them go, Agnes’s hand small inside her father’s, the two of them quiet and matched in stride despite their difference in height, neither saying much of anything further.
Something in her chest settled just watching it, the easy, unhurried way of it, a father who didn’t need to fill silence to be understood.
The moment the door clicked shut behind them, Katherine’s whole posture changed.
It was subtle. A straightening of the spine, a stillness that hadn’t been there a moment before, the busy chatter about lace and hemlines gone, replaced by something careful and coiled.
She set down the gown she’d been holding, crossed the room, and took both of Elspeth’s hands in hers.
“There’s something I havenae told anyone yet.”
Elspeth straightened at that, every instinct going quiet and attentive at once. “Katherine.”
“Ye have to promise me ye’ll nae make a sound. Nae until I’ve said it properly.”
“I promise nothing of the sort. Ye ken I’ve never once kept a promise like that in me life.”
“Elspeth.”
“Fine, I promise.” Elspeth squeezed her hands. “Now, tell me before I burst from waiting.”
Katherine’s cheeks had gone pink, and her eyes were bright in a way Elspeth hadn’t seen since the morning she’d first laid eyes on Liam across a crowded hall, years ago now, and had spent the whole evening pretending she hadn’t.
“I’m with child.”
Elspeth’s mouth opened. Nothing came out of it for a full second.
“Nay.”
“Aye.”
“Katherine.” She said the name like it might need repeating to be believed. “Katherine.”
“I ken. I’ve said yer name back to meself a hundred times since I found out, in exactly that tone.”
Elspeth threw her arms around her before either of them could say anything further. Katherine laughed against her shoulder—a wet, breathless laugh. For a moment, neither of them managed words at all, just held on, rocking slightly, both talking at once.
“How far along?”
“Nae far. Two months, the midwife thinks, though she willnae swear to it.”
“Does Liam ken?”
“Nay. Nobody kens. Ye’re the first I’ve told, ye’re always the first I tell.” Katherine’s grip on her hands tightened. “I wanted to be certain before I said it aloud to anyone, even him. Especially him.”
“Why especially him?”
“Because once I tell Liam, it becomes real in a way it isnae yet. Right now, it’s only mine to be frightened of.” Katherine pulled back far enough to look at her properly, hands gripping tight rather than loose. “I’m terrified, Elspeth.”
“Ye neednae be.”
“I am, regardless of whether I need to be or nae. Every morning since I found out, I’ve woken and lain there a full minute before I dared move. Just waiting to see if it was still true, as though thinking about it too hard might undo it.”
She laughed again, unsteady this time. “But I’m also delighted. I didnae ken a person could hold two such opposite things in the same chest without splitting clean in half.”
“Ye’re nae splitting. Ye’re simply carrying a great deal at once.” Elspeth brought their joined hands up between them. “Ye carried Agnes too.”
“That’s different.”
“It’s nae so different as ye think.” Elspeth rested her forehead against Katherine’s, the way they’d done as girls, sharing secrets too large for the space between them.
“Ye’ll be a wonderful mother. I’ve never once doubted it, nae since I watched ye scold half the kitchen staff into behaving better than they’d managed in years, purely by expecting better of them. ”
“That’s nae the same skill as raising a child.”
“It’s precisely the same skill. Ye’ll simply be expecting better of someone considerably smaller.”
Katherine laughed properly at that, the sound breaking loose from wherever she’d been holding it. For a moment, they stood there, foreheads pressed together, hands clasped, neither of them saying anything at all.
“I used to think,” Katherine said eventually, quieter now, “that ye’d be the one telling me this news first. About yerself. Nae the other way round.”
“There’s still time for that.”
“Aye.” Katherine pulled back, studying her. “And ye… ye’re happy here. Truly. I’ve watched ye all morning, and I’ve nae once seen ye wear that face ye used to wear at home, the one ye thought fooled everyone.”
“What face?”
“The one that said ye were counting the days until something better came along.” Katherine’s thumb brushed once over Elspeth’s knuckles. “Ye’re nae wearing it now.”
Elspeth considered that for a moment and found, to her own surprise, that she didn’t have an argument ready.
“I used to think it’d be something grander than this,” she admitted. “All those stories I read ye. Princes on horseback. Vows shouted from cliffsides.”
“And now?”
“And now I’m nae certain I want a cliffside at all.
” She glanced toward the door, where Agnes’s laugh carried faintly from the direction of the paddocks, where Liam’s low voice answered something she couldn’t make out.
“I think I might simply want this. A full house. People who choose to stay in it, even after the shouting from cliffsides has gone quiet.”
Katherine’s eyes had gone bright again, and this time she didn’t bother blinking back her tears. “Ye’re getting soft, Elspeth MacRae.”
“I’m getting married soon. I’m allowed a bit of softness.”
“Ye’re allowed considerably more than a bit, if that’s the direction ye’re headed.”
Katherine squeezed her hands hard once more and let go, already reaching to swipe at her own eyes with the heel of one palm. “Now, nae a word of this to anyone, especially nae Liam’s mother. Or she’ll have the whole clan informed before supper.”
“Yer secret’s safe.”
“It had better be.”
She sniffed once, decisively, and turned back toward the abandoned trunk as though nothing had happened, though her hand lingered, just briefly, against her stomach before she bent to retrieve the gown she’d set aside.
“Now, lace or plain hem? I refuse to leave this room until ye’ve decided, and I willnae be swayed by any argument that doesnae account for how it looks when ye’re dancing.”
* * *
Inspecting the western boundary was the first task of the day, and Duncan met him at the fence line with two horses already saddled.
“Ye slept,” Duncan said, eyeing him. “That’s new.”
“I slept some.”
“Aye, ye look it.” Duncan swung up. “We’re checking the whole stretch today, or just where the fire happened?”
“The whole stretch. If O’Brien’s men found one weak point, they’ll have looked for others.”
They rode the fence line in long silence, Magnus checking each post, each length of stone wall, running his hand along seams the way he had two days past, looking for anything a blade might have worked loose.
Her laugh, sharp and sudden, ringing off stone.
He was three posts past the halfway mark, Duncan already speaking, before he realized he hadn’t heard a word of it.
“… which is why I think we move the second watch to the ridge instead,” Duncan finished.
“Aye.”
“Ye didnae hear a word of that.”
“I heard some of it.”
“Ye heard none of it. Ye were staring at that fence post like it owed ye money.” Duncan’s mouth curved. “Or thinking of something else.”
“I was thinking of the patrol.”
“Ye were thinking of something with considerably softer edges than a patrol, Cousin. I’ve ken ye since we were boys; I can tell the difference.
” Duncan didn’t press further, only turned his horse back toward the second watch point, grinning in a way that made it clear the subject wasn’t closed so much as postponed.
Magnus met with the guards next, in the courtyard, four men standing at rough attention while he laid out the new rotation.
“Two men at the postern gate, always. No exceptions, no matter how quiet the night’s been.” He walked the line of them, checking each face. “Ye’re relieved every four hours, nae six. A tired man misses things a rested one wouldnae.”
“And the eastern ridge, me Laird?”
“Three men, armed, rotated the same.”
A loose curl against her jaw.
He should have moved straight to the next point.
Instead, he found himself looking past the guard’s shoulder toward the keep, toward the window that was, he happened to know without ever having deliberately learned it, Elspeth’s chamber, and lost the thread of what he’d meant to say next for the length of a full breath.
“Me Laird?”
“Aye. Rotated the same.” He cleared his throat. “Report anything out of place. A broken branch, a gate left open that shouldnae be. I daenae care how small it seems.”
The livestock came next, and that, at least, was work simple enough that his hands could manage it without his head’s full attention, which turned out to be precisely the problem.
“This one’s favoring her front leg, me Laird,” the shepherd said, holding the ewe steady while Magnus crouched to check the hoof.
“How long?”
“Since this morning. Might be a stone caught in it.”
Magnus worked his thumb along the hoof and found nothing. He found instead that his hands had gone still, caught on the memory of kneeling in the mud with this very ewe while Duncan made unhelpful comments.
Curls escaping their pins…
“Me Laird. The hoof.”
“Aye.” He found the stone, worked it loose, and set the ewe back on her feet, and did not allow himself to consider, even for a moment, why the whole business had put him in mind of curls escaping their pins.
He fixed the gate hinge alone, which he’d expected would help, since there was no one present to notice if his attention wandered. It did not help.
He got the pin half-seated, and his mind went, without his permission, to the sound of her laughter drifting down a corridor that morning. He hadn’t seen her, only heard it, muffled through a door, bright and unguarded in a way that had stopped him mid-stride in the hall.
The pin slipped. He caught his knuckle on the iron instead, swore under his breath, and stood there for a moment sucking on the graze while the gate swung uselessly on its half-mended hinge, unrepaired, mocking him.
He sharpened blades after that, two of them, Jinny and a second sword that had gone dull from disuse. Duncan found him at it in the armory an hour later, watching from the doorway.
“Ye’ve been at that same blade for twenty minutes.”
“It needs sharpening.”
“It needed sharpening for maybe five of those minutes. The other fifteen ye’ve spent staring at the wall.”
Duncan crossed to lean against the workbench, the very bench that Magnus had spent a considerable part of the previous evening thoroughly failing to think about while doing this same task.
“Ye ken, for a man who claims he’s got a mortal enemy plotting something against him, ye’re spending an awful lot of today thinking about something else.”
“I’m thinking about the patrols.”
“Ye’re thinking about a woman, and badly, from the look of ye.” Duncan picked up a whetstone, turned it over, set it back down. “I’d say it’s nae me business, except ye’ve nearly sliced yer thumb off twice since I walked in, so I’m making it me business.”
Magnus set the blade down rather more firmly than the moment required. “I have a fire to account for. A man with oil and a grudge, somewhere out there, planning Christ kens what. I daenae have time to…”
“To what?”
He didn’t finish the sentence. There wasn’t a version of it that didn’t sound exactly as foolish aloud as it did in his own head.
The grain stores were last, and he counted the sacks himself rather than trust the steward’s tally.
Which was, he told himself, simply thoroughness.
It had nothing whatsoever to do with needing something that required numbers and nothing else, something with no room in it for curls or laughter or the particular sound she made low in her throat when—
“Forty-one, me Laird,” the steward said. “Same as I counted.”
“Count them again.”
“I already counted them twice.”
“Count them a third time.”
The steward gave him a look that suggested he’d long since stopped questioning his more inexplicable demands and started counting again from the beginning.
Magnus stood there in the grain store, arms crossed, watching sacks be tallied for the third time.
He thought, with no small amount of disgust at himself, that he was a man who had rebuilt an entire clan out of ash and ruin with his own two hands, who had buried more men than most lairds twice his age, who did not, as a rule, lose track of a simple conversation about fence posts.
And could not, apparently, get through counting grain sacks without the whole of his attention sliding sideways toward a woman he’d promised that he would not so much as touch again before the handfasting.
“Forty-one, me Laird. Same as before.”
“Fine. Forty-one.” He turned and left before the steward could offer to count a fourth time.
He walked back toward the keep with his jaw set and his hands faintly blackened from the gate hinge.
He told himself, with more conviction than he actually felt, that tomorrow would be better.
That a man with an enemy circling his lands, oil-stained furnace stones, and doubled watches to oversee had no business losing an entire day to the memory of one woman’s mouth.
That whatever this was, he intended to master it the same way he’d mastered every other unruly thing on this land, by main force and sheer refusal to yield.
He did not, if he was being honest with himself, feel confident about his odds.