Page 30 of The Highland Ghost’s Virgin

Sgàil shifted against Grisselle's side, resettling himself with his tail curled over his own paws, and she found her hand had drifted back to his head without her quite remembering when.

"A keep only truly wakes up when there are children in it," Mòr said at last, quiet, almost to herself, the words drifting out into the hall. "I've seen it happen before, in other houses. All that empty stone waiting, waiting, and then a bairn's cry fills it up and suddenly the whole place kens what it was built for in the first place."

"I hadn't thought much on children," Grisselle said, which was, she realized even as she said it, no longer entirely true.

"Ye wouldnae have, yet. Ye've been married nae time at all, and there's a wedding still to get through before any of that." Mòr's smile was easy, grandmotherly, the kind of smile that asked for nothing in return. "I only meant it as an old woman muses on an empty hall, lass. Nothing more than that. Pay it no mind."

She rose not long after, unfolding from the chair with the same unhurried care she'd used to sit in it, and held out one thin hand toward the cat. Sgàil lifted his head, considered the gesture for a moment with what looked almost like reluctance, and then dropped from the chair and crossed the stone floor to resettle himself across her shoulders, exactly where he'd started.

"Goodnight, lass," Mòr said, already moving toward the door. "Daenae let the fire go out on ye. Cold stone holds a chill long after the flames are gone."

"Goodnight," Grisselle said, and watched her go, the old woman's black shawl disappearing into the dark of the passage with the cat draped over her shoulders like something grown there rather than worn.

Grisselle sat alone a long while after that, the mending forgotten in her lap, the fire burning down slowly toward embers.

A keep only truly wakes up when there are children in it.

The thought lingered more than she wanted it to. She tried to convince herself it was only an old woman's idle thought, offered by a fire on a quiet evening, nothing more sinister than that. She told herself so plainly, twice, the way she'd once told herself the kiss on the beach had meant nothing, and believed it exactly as much.

It means nothing. She's an old woman who likes to talk.

But the words stayed with her all the same, settling somewhere she couldn't quite dislodge them from. When she finally rose to bank the fire and climb the stairs to her own cold bed, she found herself, for the first time since she'd arrived at Herston Castle, thinking of small shoes by a hearth and a cradle in an empty corner of a room that had never once held either.

She pressed her palm flat against her own stomach, standing alone in the dark hall, and didn't examine why.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Greer arrived at his study door without knocking, which told him everything he needed to know about the conversation that was about to happen before she'd said a single word.

"Me Laird." She set an armful of fabric swatches and a folded list down on his desk, directly atop the ledger he'd been pretending to read. "We need to talk about a date."

"I told Eachann there'd be one within the fortnight."

"Aye, and the fortnight's half gone, and I have a hall to prepare, a feast to plan, and a clan that'll start asking questions if their Laird cannae manage to name a day for his own wedding."

Greer folded her arms, plainly a woman who had rehearsed this on the walk up from the kitchens and intended to deliver every word of it. "The preparations cannae wait on ye finding yer courage, me Laird. I say that with all due respect."

"Ye say it with no respect whatsoever, Greer."

"Aye, well. I've known ye since ye were in short clothes. I've earned a little right." She tapped the folded list once, hard, with one finger. "We will really appreciate a date me Laird, or I'll pick one meself and ye can explain to the lass why her own wedding got decided by her housekeeper."

Alpin looked down at the list, then at the swatches of green, cream, and Herston plaid spread across his ledger. A knot of familiar tension tightened in his chest. Signing off on the tartan meant locking the council's contract into stone, sealing a bargain forged out of political survival rather than choice.

He smoothed a hand over his jaw, finding no answer that would satisfy her without exposing how thoroughly the upcoming wedding choked him.

"I'll have it settled by week's end," he said, pushing the swatches away.

"Thank ye, me Laird." Greer gathered the swatches back into her arms, though she left the list behind, squarely in the center of his desk where he couldn't avoid seeing it. "The clan's expecting a wedding, me Laird, whether ye're ready for it or nae. Best ye decide to be ready."

She left without waiting for a response, and Alpin sat looking at the list a long while after the door had shut behind her, the words on it meaning considerably less to him than the fact of its existence.

Proof, apparently, that this was happening whether he'd finished deciding how he felt about it or not.

He put off going anywhere near the great hall until well past midday, telling himself it was the grain stores that needed his attention and not any particular reluctance to walk into whatever Greer had set in motion.

The grain stores, when he finally checked them, needed nothing at all. He went to the hall anyway, on his way to the stables, or so he told himself.

He heard them from outside the hall. Isobel's laugh first, bright and unguarded, then Greer's voice underneath it, dry and put-upon, and a third voice threading through both of them that he'd have known blind in a crowded room by now.