Page 47 of The Highland Ghost’s Virgin

"Is there something ye need, Niall?"

"More bread, if there is any." He stood, helped himself from the sideboard, and came back. "Isobel says the cradle needs a new side-pin; the old one's worked loose. I told her I'd see to it this afternoon."

"Fine."

"I thought ye might want to come."

"I'm busy."

"Aye," Niall said. "Ye look it."

He left shortly after, taking his plate with him. Alpin stood alone with his maps and the distant sound of Grisselle's voice carrying down the passage from the kitchen, talking to someone — Senga, from the answering laugh — in the easy, unhurried way she'd developed with the household that still caught him off guard when he heard it.

He went back to his maps.

By the fourth day the study had begun to feel very small. He found Greer in the passage outside the linen room and stopped.

"The bairn should go to one of the maids," he said. "Cait, maybe. She's shown the most interest and her workload's the lightest."

Greer set down the folded sheet she was carrying. "Has she?"

"It's a reasonable arrangement. The child needs consistent care from someone with the time to give it."

"Cait's seventeen."

"Old enough."

"Morag's seventeen as well, and ye said her name to me last week when ye wanted someone reliable for the east tower stores. Ye cannae have it both ways, me Laird." Greer picked her sheet back up. "Besides, the bairn's already settled. Disrupting that now would only⁠—"

"I'm nae asking for an opinion on it, Greer. I'm telling ye the arrangement."

Greer looked at him over the folded linen. "Aye, me Laird," she said, and walked away.

He found out from Isobel two hours later that Greer had told Grisselle. Grisselle found him in the armory.

She didn't knock, which told him everything about the state of her before he'd turned around, and when he did turn, she was standing in the doorway with both hands loose at her sides.

"A maid," she said.

"It's a reasonable choice."

"A maid." She stepped inside. "She's been here five days, and you want to hand her to Morag or Cait, who is afraid of the chickens."

"Morag is a maid and perfectly capable; it’s what she’s trained for."

"She dropped a ladle last week because a cat walked past her." Grisselle's voice stayed level, which cost her something he could see in the set of her jaw. "I'm not asking you to do anything, Alpin. I'm not asking you to hold her, or talk to her, or be in the same room as her. I'm asking you to leave the arrangements that are already working alone."

She paused.

"She sleeps. She feeds. She's warm." Her chin came up. "Which is more than I can say for the welcome she's had from the Laird of this house."

He'd have argued that — he had a response ready, something about practicality, about the nature of contracts and what they did and didn't oblige him to, about the fact that a foundling bairn was not part of any arrangement either of them had agreed to.

"Ye said ye daenae want children," he said instead.

Grisselle's mouth opened, and then closed. Something crossed her face that she didn't cover fast enough.

"That's got nothing to do with it," she said, but quieter.