Page 26 of The Highland Ghost’s Virgin

Alpin reached out and ran a hand along the mare's neck, more from habit than need. "She threw Fergus twice last month. Wouldnae let Isobel near her for a week after."

"She likes having her ears scratched. Just there." Grisselle demonstrated, and the mare's eyes went half-shut, her lower lip drooping loose. "I don't think anyone's told her she's meant to be difficult."

"She's nae meant to be anything. She's a horse."

"Everyone's meant to be something, apparently. I've been told what I'm meant to be since I was old enough to hold a fork correctly." Grisselle kept brushing, not looking at him. "Perhaps she's simply never had anyone tell her otherwise."

Alpin didn't have an answer for that, so he let it go. He stood there instead, close enough that the mare's tail brushed his sleeve, watching Grisselle work the brush down the same patient line over and over, and found himself in no particular hurry to leave.

"You could hold the halter properly," Grisselle said. "Since you're standing there doing nothing useful."

"I'm inspecting her shoe."

He hadn't looked down at the shoe once. Grisselle straightened, brush still in hand, and found him watching her mouth instead of the mare's hoof — a beat too long before his eyes cut away to the stall wall like it had suddenly become interesting.

"You're standing very still for a man inspecting a shoe."

His jaw worked. He crouched down fast, too fast, and lifted the mare's hoof like he'd meant to all along, though his thumb pressed harder into the frog of it than the job called for.

"Ye going to hand me that pick, or should I use me teeth?"

Alpin took the halter from her without further comment, and for a while neither of them said anything at all, the only sound the soft rasp of the brush and the mare's contented breathing and the wind working at the loose shutter somewhere above the loft.

It was, he realized somewhere in the middle of it, the easiest quarter hour he'd spent with another person in longer than he cared to count. No council pressing him toward decisions he hadn't made, no ghosts pulling at him from three miles out, just a horse and a woman who talked to him like he was simply a man standing in a stable, nothing more complicated than that.

The realization sat wrong in his chest, like a stone swallowed too fast.

"I should see to me council," he said, too abruptly, and reached to hand the halter back to her.

Their hands met on it again, same as the bread that morning, and this time neither of them pretended it hadn't happened. Grisselle didn't let go of her end.

"You said that already. About the shoe. Neither one was true."

"Aye." He didn't let go of his end either. "Neither was."

The mare shifted, impatient, and the halter swung between them, forgotten. Grisselle's gaze dropped to his mouth and came back up fast, and whatever she saw on his face made her breath catch loud enough that he heard it over the wind in the loft.

"Alpin."

"Daenae." His voice came out rougher than he meant it. "If ye say it, I willnae be able to walk out that door, and I need to walk out that door."

She let go of the halter first. He was gone before she'd drawn her next breath, boots loud on the stable stones, and it was a long moment before she trusted her hands enough to pick up the brush again.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The next day Mistress Greer arrived in the hall with an armful of fabric swatches and a face like a woman preparing for battle, dropping the whole bundle onto the long table with a thump that sent two bolts of cloth sliding to the floor.

"Right," Greer said, before Grisselle had even taken her seat. "We have a great deal to see to and precious little time to see to it in, so we'll start now and argue about the rest as we go."

"Isobel mentioned fabric." Grisselle picked up a swatch of deep green wool, turning it toward the window light. "I didn't realize it meant quite this much fabric."

"It never means less than this much fabric me Lady. Ye're marrying a Laird, nae eloping with a tinker." Greer began sorting the swatches into piles with brisk, practiced hands. "The whole glen will be watching, and half of them hoping for something to gossip about after. We'll nae give them the satisfaction."

"Has a date even been set?" Grisselle asked, already suspecting the answer.

"Nae officially. But preparations daenae wait on officially, me Lady. They wait on nothing at all, in me experience." Greer held up a bolt of cream linen, considered it, and set it aside. "The moment that man opens his mouth and gives us a day, I intend to already have half the work done."

The door banged open before Grisselle could answer, and Isobel swept in without waiting to be invited, dropping into the seat beside her as though she'd been summoned personally.