Page 44 of The Highland Ghost’s Virgin

Grisselle carried Nora into the small sitting room off her own chamber instead, and settled into the chair nearest the banked fire there. She looked down at the small, red, furious face finally going slack against her shoulder, one tiny fist working loose from the plaid to curl instead against the front of her nightgown.

Grisselle sat with the bairn for a long while, the fire ticking low in the grate, the bairn's breathing evening out into the steady rhythm of sleep. She found she had absolutely no intention of letting anyone carry this child anywhere else, though she hadn't yet worked out how she meant to say so, or to whom.

Leaving the quiet warmth of the sitting room behind, Grisselle hurried down the long corridor with the baby toward the main entry.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Alpin heard the door bar lift before he was fully awake, the sound carrying up through stone, and he was pulling on his shirt before Dougal's fist even reached his chamber door.

"Bairn at the gate, me Laird. Left this morning, near dawn."

He was down the stairs two at a time, and the scene that met him at the great doors stopped him dead on the bottom step. Grisselle knelt on the cold stone with the basket open in front of her, a scrap of paper forgotten in one hand, and the other hand already curled beneath a small red-faced skull like she'd done it a hundred times before this morning.

"There now," she said. "There now, you're all right."

The crying, which had filled the whole passage a moment before, hitched and softened, and by the time Alpin crossed the threshold it had dropped to a low, fussing complaint, the bairn's fist working loose against the wool of Grisselle's shawl.

"She's cold clean through," Grisselle said, not looking up, already unwinding the shawl from her own shoulders to add a second layer against the small body. "Someone build up the kitchen fire. Now, please."

Senga was already gone before the sentence finished. Effie stood frozen with the iron bar still half-raised, and Greer arrived at a near-run, one hand pressed flat to her chest at the sight on the step, grief crossing her face and folding away again just as fast.

"Whose is she?" Isobel breathed, cloak thrown crooked over her nightgown.

"Ailie's. Tam Fraser's widow." Grisselle held the note out without releasing the bairn, forcing Isobel to take it from her hand rather than surrender the child even for a moment. "There's no kin left."

Alpin stood at the bottom of the stairs and watched a woman who'd been arguing with a stable boy about brush direction three days past settle a stranger's orphan against her shoulder, as if the two of them had been introduced somewhere long before this morning.

"Ye should hand her to Greer," he said. "Or to one of the maids. Ye've nae done this before."

"Neither have they, apparently, given how everyone's standing about staring instead of helping." Grisselle rose, the bairn still tucked against her, and something in the set of her shoulders told him plainly this was not a conversation open for negotiation. "I have her. Someone find a proper cradle, not a basket that's been sitting God knows where."

"There's the old cradle in the west tower," Greer said slowly. "Hasnae been used since."

"Then it'll be used again." Grisselle was already moving toward the kitchen, toward the fire Senga would have going by now, and the whole household turned as one to follow her. Isobel first, then the maids, then Greer bringing up the rear with the abandoned basket in her arms like she couldn't quite leave it behind either.

Alpin didn't move.

He stood in the cold passage a moment longer, alone with the note still in his hand where Isobel had passed it to him, and read it twice before the words settled properly.

The clan does not leave its orphans to chance.

True enough.

He'd known that his whole life.

By the time he reached the kitchen, the fire was roaring, and the bairn was quiet, properly quiet, wrapped now in a blanket Senga had produced from somewhere and settled in the crook of Grisselle's arm. Isobel hovered close enough to touch.

"She's got yer coloring near enough," Isobel said, peering down at the small face. "If anyone asks, we'll say she's a MacKay. They've all got that ear; they'll nae notice one more oddity."

"She's Ailie's daughter, and she'll be raised as such," Grisselle said, though her eyes didn't leave the bairn's face as she said it, one finger tracing lightly along the curve of a tiny ear that showed no crook at all.

"Aye, but ye cannae mean to keep her yerself." Greer said it carefully. "There's the MacTaggarts down the glen, lost their own bairn to fever last spring. Mairi at the smithy has milk enough and to spare. It's how it's always been done, when the Laird's own house isnae settled for it."

"This house is settled for it."

"Grisselle." Alpin's voice came out rough, and every head in the kitchen turned toward him at once. "Ye're nae even wed yet. Ye cannae simply…"

"I can’t simply what? Hold a child who has no one else to hold her?"