Page 54 of The Highland Ghost’s Virgin

"I'm not going to hand you off," she said to Nora. "In case you were concerned."

Nora's mouth worked.

"I know you weren't concerned. You're two weeks old. You don't know enough yet to be concerned, which I think is an excellent way to start." Grisselle's thumb traced once across the small forehead. "I'd recommend it, actually. Not knowing enough to be concerned. I tried the other way for three seasons in London, and I can report that it's not an improvement."

The cloud shifted outside, and the light in the room changed briefly, warmer, before it went grey again.

Grisselle had spent three years in London convincing herself she didn't want the things she couldn't have. A house that recognized her step. People who argued at supper and meant nothing by it. Somewhere that would still be standing when she came back to it.

She'd gotten very good at not wanting them.

She looked around the east room. The cradle in the corner Greer had lined with the yellow blanket. The hook on the wall where Alpin had hung his second riding cloak three days past and not retrieved it, which meant it had become her room's cloak hook now without discussion. The worn place on the window seat where someone had sat for years before she arrived.

Nora's eyes were closing.

"Don't," Grisselle said, not meaning it.

They closed anyway, slowly, with the complete indifference to instruction that was Nora's primary personality trait so far, and her weight went loose and heavy in Grisselle's arms. Grisselle sat at the window with the grey loch behind the glass and the empty castle around her and the specific warm weight of the baby asleep against her chest.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The days settled into a good shape around Alpin.

Mornings were Nora and the breakfast table and whatever argument Senga was having with the shelf situation, which had not resolved itself despite one week of sustained effort.

Afternoons were the estate, the tenants, the grinding work of a keep in autumn with winter coming — but he found himself back inside earlier than he used to be, drawn by no reason he was prepared to name out loud.

Evenings were the four of them at supper, or the six of them when Niall and Dougal stayed, and somehow the table had gotten louder without anyone even knowing when it got that way.

He'd put his hand out to steady Grisselle on the stair one morning when she had Nora in one arm and her skirt in the other and not enough hands to steady herself. She'd taken it without thinking, and neither of them had remarked on it, and his hand had stayed at the small of her back for three steps longer.

She'd reached past him for a book from the high shelf in the study two days later, close enough that her hair brushed his jaw, and gone back to her chair with the book and said, "Thank you," to the middle distance.

He'd said, "I dinnae do anything," and she'd said, "No, I know," and that had been the whole of it, and it had taken him the better part of an hour to stop thinking about it.

"Ye're distracted," Niall said, from across the chessboard.

"I'm thinking."

"Aye, that's what I said." Niall moved his bishop. "Ye've been thinking at that window for the last ten minutes. I've moved twice."

Alpin moved a piece without looking at the board. Niall took it immediately.

"She's good for the place," Niall said, not looking up from the board.

"She really is good for the place," Alpin said, because it was true and easier than whatever else Niall was building toward.

Niall set the captured piece down against the oak table. "Grandda used to say a keep only mirrors the mind of its Laird. For two years, this hall has smelled like cold ashes and old grief. She brings light into the room, Alpin. Even the men in the lower courtyard walk lighter when she’s about."

Alpin’s hand hovered over his remaining knight, his jaw tightening at the mention of his grandfather. " Grandda spent forty years carrying this clan on his back and died believing he hadnae done enough to guard it. I'll nae let this keep fall to ruin, but I'll nae turn it into a gilded cage either."

"Ye carry his face, but ye carry his burdens twice over," Niall said softly, looking up from the board to hold Alpin's gaze.

Alpin stared at the black king on the board, the wood worn smooth by three generations of MacLeod hands. The memory of his grandfather's final, rambling days—the sudden outbursts, the fixation on the crashing waves beyond the cliffs—hung thick in the air between them.

"I have no time for ghosts, Niall," Alpin grunted, his fingers finally settling on the carved piece and shoving it forward into a defensive line. "I have a clan to feed and a winter to survive."

"Aye," Niall murmured, taking another of Alpin's pieces with a quiet, knowing smile. "And a wife who sees right through you."