Page 51 of The Highland Ghost’s Virgin

Isobel looked up from the table, both elbows on the wood, cup at her chin.

"Good morning," she said to Grisselle, entirely unbothered by the shelf debate continuing behind her. "She slept?"

"Eventually." Grisselle pulled out the chair across from her. "You?"

"Tolerably." Isobel tipped her head toward the hearth. "Senga made me drink something last night that tasted of bark and old ambition. Said it would help."

"Did it?"

"I slept like a stone, so aye, I think so."

Alpin was across from her, already into his breakfast.

He looked up when Grisselle came in, took in Nora, set down his bread, and said, "Hand her here."

Grisselle stopped walking. Isobel's cup paused halfway to her mouth.

"Sorry?" Grisselle said.

"Hand her here." He said again, as if it was very normal.

He pushed his plate to one side and held out both hands. Grisselle crossed the kitchen and put Nora into them before her brain had finished understanding what was going on.

She sat down. Picked up her cup and watched him over the rim of it.

He held Nora the way he'd held her at the window — correctly, competently, one hand at the back of the skull — and Nora looked up at his face, studying him.

"She needs her morning feed," Grisselle said.

"I can see that."

"The cloth's in my left."

"I see it."

He reached for the damp cloth tucked at Grisselle's sleeve without asking, and she let him take it. He twisted the corner the way Senga had shown them and offered it to Nora, who took it for approximately four seconds before she pulled back and looked at his face again instead.

Alpin looked down at her. Nora looked up at him.

"She's nae eating," he said.

"I can see that."

Isobel pressed her lips together very firmly and looked at the table.

Alpin tried again, angling the cloth. Nora accepted it, made a brief effort, and then turned her face toward his jaw with the cloth still in reach and seemingly forgot entirely that food was a thing that had ever interested her.

"She keeps looking at me," he said.

"She does that with new things." Grisselle wrapped both hands around her cup. "She'll settle."

She didn't settle. He tried three more times, patient, methodical, the way he approached everything, and three more times Nora took a passing interest in the cloth before finding his face more compelling and abandoning the project entirely.

"She's nae hungry," Alpin said.

"She's hungry, Alpin," Grisselle said. "She's just distracted."

"By what?"