Page 49 of The Highland Ghost’s Virgin

"Aye, well." He rocked the cradle once more. "It's the best ye're getting tonight."

Grisselle made a sound that was not quite a laugh and not quite agreement, and settled back in the chair. Alpin stayed where he was at the cradle instead of leaving, and the three of them were quiet together in the small room.

The fire in the passage threw its light under the door, and he stood there thinking that this was a thing he hadn't broken yet, and trying to decide whether that meant he still might, or whether it meant he didn't have to.

He'd been lying on his back for the better part of an hour, staring at the ceiling, when he gave up on sleep entirely and sat up.

The fire had burned to embers. He didn't rebuild it. He pulled on his shirt and his boots, and stood, and told himself he was going to walk the south parapet the way he did on nights when the sea had its hooks in him, and sleep wasn't coming regardless.

He got as far as the top of the stairs.

His feet took the turn toward the east passage without him consciously knowing. He kept on going because arguing with himself at this hour had a poor record of success. The torches were long since guttered, and the castle was entirely quiet, in the way it only was after the second hour of night, when even Senga had gone to bed.

He'd been thinking about the chair.

Not Grisselle in the chair specifically, or not only that. The three of them in the small room, him at the cradle, her watching him without saying anything, Nora's fist loosening around his finger by degrees. The way the room had felt complete in a way he didn't have a word for.

It's a contract, he'd told Niall, three weeks past. It's a practical arrangement between two people who want different things from it.

He stopped outside the door; there was no light under it. No sound. He stood with one hand against the door frame and listened, and heard nothing, and pushed the door open an inch.

Grisselle was asleep in the chair, her head tipped sideways, her hair loose and fallen across one shoulder. She'd pulled a blanket over herself at some point, though it had slipped, bunched at her waist, one hand still curled around the edge.

The cradle was beside her.

He looked at it and found two eyes looking back at him.

Nora was awake. Not crying, not fussing, just awake, flat on her back, looking at the ceiling. Her fist moved against her cheek. Her chest rose and fell.

Alpin stood in the doorway for a moment longer than made sense.

Then he went in.

He lifted her from the cradle the way he had seen Grisselle do a few times, one hand beneath the skull, the other at her back. Nora turned her face toward him and looked at him. He stood very still.

All right, all right, then.

He carried her to the window. The night was clear, the loch below running silver under a near-full moon, the hills black against a sky he'd known his whole life and never found anything comfortable in, not since he was ten years old and learned that it went on whether or not you wanted it to.

Nora looked at the ceiling some more.

"That's the loch," he said, very quietly, tipping her slightly toward the glass. "Ye cannae see it properly from here, but it's there. Ye'll ken it by summer. Loud in a storm and quiet in the mornings."

He paused. She had no opinion on this. "There are seals on the south bank come October. Isobel used to cry about them when she was small. Thought they were cold." He looked down at the small face, the enormous unworried eyes. "They werenae cold. They're seals. They're built for it."

Nora's grip on his finger shifted, tightened again.

"Yer mother was Ailie Fraser," he said, after a moment. The name sat flat and factual in the air between them. "I dinnae ken her. I should have. She was clan, and she lost her husband, and I should have kenned the name of every widow we had on the point, and I dinnae." He looked out at the water. "That's something I'll be doing differently."

She made a small sound. Not a complaint, just a sound, like she was really listening to the conversation.

"Aye," he said. "I hear ye."

He shifted his weight, and the bairn flopped, heavy against his chest, her small head bobbing before dropping limply into the hollow beneath his chin.

He found himself standing the way he'd seen Grisselle stand with her — turned slightly inward, one arm angled up to keep her secure. His body working it out without being asked.

He hadn't held a bairn since Isobel, and Isobel didn't count because he'd been twelve and terrified and had handed her back to the nurse after approximately thirty seconds.