Page 39 of The Highland Ghost’s Virgin

"Thank ye," the girl said. "Truly."

"She's a beautiful girl."

"Aye. Loud, but beautiful." The mother laughed, some of the strain finally leaving her shoulders, and moved off down the lane with the bairn now dozing peacefully against her.

Grisselle stood watching them go, her hands still curled slightly, as though they hadn't quite finished the shape of holding something.

Alpin's eyes went to the loose curl that had worked free of her braid on the walk down, then to the flush still sitting high on her cheeks from the effort of soothing a red-faced stranger's bairn in front of half the village.

He found himself admiring how beautiful she was.

"You're staring," Grisselle said, without turning around.

"I'm nae staring."

"You've been staring since the smithy's wife's cottage. It's very rude, you know."

"I'm allowed to look at me own intended."

"That's not looking. That's studying. There's a difference, and you're doing the second one."

Alpin found he had no honest answer that wouldn't require explaining exactly what he'd been studying, so he offered none, and gestured instead toward the last stretch of the village they hadn't yet walked.

"There's the chapel left to see, and old Fergus's forge, if ye can stand another hour of this."

"I could stand several more hours of this." Grisselle fell into step beside him, glancing back once toward the lane where the young mother had disappeared with her now-quiet bairn.

"They're me people," Alpin said.

"They could be mine too. Eventually."

"Aye," he said. "Eventually."

He looked at her a moment too long saying it, and something in his face shifted; the careful distance he'd kept the length of the village gone slack for just a breath.

"You keep saying that word as if it frightens you."

"What word?"

"Eventually. As though the wedding's a thing that's happening to you, not a thing you're choosing." Grisselle stopped walking, forcing him to stop too. "Is it? A thing happening to you?"

"It's a contract."

"That's not what I asked."

His jaw worked. "Ye ken what it is, Grisselle. Ye were there when we made it."

"I know what it was. I'm asking what it is now, standing in your village, with your people already calling me theirs before you have." She held his eyes, not backing down an inch. "You don't have to answer. You could just stand there and let your face do it for you, same as you've been doing all afternoon."

"And what's me face saying?"

"That's what I'd like you to tell me instead of making me guess." She said, trying to hold her tone steady, though her dark eyes flickered as he took another half-step forward.

Alpin reached out, his broad hand cupping the side of her neck, his thumb resting over the fast, fluttering pulse at her jaw. He leaned down until his breath brushed hot against her temple.

"Ye do nae need to guess at what is yers, Grisselle," Alpin said, his low, gravelly voice carrying an unshakeable, possessive weight that made her breath hitch. "The date will be set when I say it is set. But make no mistake, ye are mine, and that will nae change whether we stand before the priest tomorrow or a month from now."

Grisselle’s lips parted, a sharp intake of air rushing into her lungs as his thumb stroked slowly across her heated skin, leaving her speechlessly pinned beneath his gaze.