Page 74 of Bonetide

The quilt is folded back carefully and there is the small dent of his head on the pillow next to mine, but that’s the only sign he was there.

I sit up slowly, my body protesting, and look down at myself, puzzled.

I’m wearing his shirt. I don’t remember putting it on. I remember him pulling the heavy quilt up over both of us, I remember the smell of him, and I remember falling asleep against his chest, but I don’t remember anything after that.

Oh, well, I do remember telling myself I might be sleeping with a murderer and I’d be lucky to be alive this morning. Anyway, I’m alive!

I do a light stretch as I look around the room, my muscles slow to wake and little testy. The fire in the small fireplace has burned to embers. The candles on the mantel are gone, the wax pooled at the base. The room smells like beeswax and woodsmoke and him.

I get up, slowly easing myself out of the high bed. The floor is cold under my feet, making my soles scrunch. There are slippers, old, soft, woman’s slippers, set neatly at the side of the bed as if put there for me. I have no idea whose slippers these were and I don’t want to know and I definitely don’t want to put my bare feet in them. I find my socks scattered about and put them on, then put on the slippers.

I also find a robe over the back of a chair. It is heavy wool, the dark blue of the deep loch, and the hem trails on the floor when I put it on. I belt it tightly and head off to find him.

The castle in the morning is a different place than the castle by firelight.

The corridors are longer. The stone is colder. The light through the slit windows lays in pale bars across the flagstones. The tapestries on the walls are duller than they were last night and the candles in the sconces have not been lit.

I don’t know where I’m going but I walk anyway. The castle is large and quiet and somewhere in it he is awake.

I try every door on this upper corridor but all are locked, so I head down the narrow stone staircase to the lower level. I find him right away.

He’s in the study he showed me yesterday, at the desk stacked with books and has a fountain pen in his hand and a thick, textured piece of paper. He is writing something, his penmanship small and careful.

He looks up when I come in and while he doesn’t outwardly smile this time, his eyes do. “Foxglove.”

“Good morning,” I say through a yawn.

“You’re awake.”

“No, not until I’ve had coffee.”

He sets the pen down and folds the paper, sliding it into the desk drawer as he stands.

He crosses to me. He puts his hands at my hips through the wool of the robe and he kisses me on the forehead. It’s so sweet I feel my toes curl.

“Sleep well?” he murmurs against my skin.

“I think I’m still asleep.”

“Come, I’ll feed you.”

I laugh and he takes my hand and leads me to the kitchen, which is now warmer than it was last night. The fire in the long hearth is up. There’s fresh bread on the wooden table, the smell of it the first thing I take in. There’s butter in a small dish and a tea pot under a cloth.

There is also a small white dish with three kippers laid neatly in it, glossy in the morning light, skin still on.

He’s been awake long enough to bake. My nose wrinkles. And sort out some fish for breakfast?

He pulls out the bench for me. I sit and he pours my tea. “I’m sorry I don’t have any coffee in the house at the moment, but I’ll make sure to remedy that.”

“It will do,” I reply, even though it most definitely will not do. Tea is my après-coffee caffeinated drink; the bridge between coffee and wine. I won’t function without it, and my ADHD will run amok.

“So you aren’t a coffee drinker?” I wonder, reaching for the sugar jar and pouring an obscene amount in my teacup, because I need something.

“Is that a dealbreaker?” he inquires wryly, watching the sugar keep coming.

“Could be,” I quip, though I give him a small smile that says I’m only kinda kidding. Serial killers I can work with, but someone who doesn’t drink coffee? Yeesh.

He pours the tea and watches me take my first sip, then cuts me a slice of the bread and butters it slowly, the knife flat across the warm crust, and slides the plate in front of me. Then he sits across from me on the bench with two kippers on his own plate and eats the fish the way he does everything, slowly and with all the patience in the world. Then again, I wouldn’t be in a rush to eat that dried fish either. There are too many Scottish specialties I have yet to take a liking to.