“Malcolm spoke for most of it,” Fergus said.
“Nothin’ unusual there.”
“Aye,” Fergus agreed. “The lad doesnae know when to hold his tongue.”
Alasdair stopped walking as they reached the landing of the staircase. “Is there somethin’ ye’d like to ask me, Fergus?”
“No, me Laird.” Then, suddenly, Fergus’ lips parted. He had long ago lost most of his teeth and those that remained were crooked and yellowed. But when he smiled at Alasdair, his intentions were so pure and his happiness so clear, there was no mistaking the look of pure joy on his face. “I only walked with ye so I might tell ye to yer face that I’m proud of ye.”
“Proud?” Alasdair parroted.
“Aye,” Fergus replied. “The Elders saddled ye with a decree that surpasses understanding. But ye have persevered. Ye have found a way to appreciate that lass of yers and I look forward to calling her the Lady of Dunalasdair.”
Alasdair lifted his hand and rested it on Fergus’ bony shoulder. “As do I.”
Chapter Twelve
“Ye spend too much time in here alone.”
She startled. One moment, she was alone in the library with the folklore volume open across her knees. The next moment, she was not, and the quality of the air in the room had changed entirely. The book slid half off her knee, and she caught it badly, fingers fumbling, and she hated that, hated that Laird MacRaeh had managed to catch her off guard.
A full week had passed since she had twisted her ankle and she was fully recovered. Isobel stretched her legs in front of her and turned her toes from side to side, just because she could. He snorted and she deliberately turned the page first, then looked up.
He was closer than he should have been. He stood just beyond the arm of her chair, with his coat still on and his grey eyes on her face. The afternoon light caught the hard line of his jaw and the scar along it. He looked, as he almost always did, likesomething carved out of the landscape of this place that would outlast everything around it.
Her pulse jumped at the base of her throat.
“I do it,” she said, and her voice came out almost entirely even, almost, “to stay out of trouble.”
He looked at her, his grey eyes shifting from her face to the book and back, saying nothing. The candlelight caught the line of his jaw and the breadth of his shoulders, making the room feel smaller than it had a moment ago.
She turned another page. She had no idea what was on it.
“Ye’re nae readin’,” he said.
“I am reading.”
“Ye havenae looked at the page.”
She had not. She had been staring at his hands—the width of them, the way they hung loosely and confidently at his sides. She had been thinking about the way he had handled her ankle, laid a kiss on her injury, then carried her back home to safety.
She had been staring at the same paragraph for the last thirty seconds, and the fact that he had noticed this was its own particular problem. “Lunar customs,” she said, holding up thespine briefly. “Old ceremonies. The full moon rituals.” She set it back down. “Jane told me about them. I wanted to know more.”
He closed the distance between them entirely and leaned forward, implying that he was reading over her shoulder.
She did not lean back. She tipped her chin up and held his gaze and felt her pulse in the base of her throat and her collarbone and somewhere considerably lower than that, and she was not going to think about that.
“There is a restricted section,” he said. “At the back of the room. Behind the locked door.”
She knew about the door. She had pressed her palm flat against it on her second day and wanted very badly to know what was on the other side. “What is in it?”
“Books on alchemy,” he said. “Old Highland legends. The kind of knowledge the church spent two centuries tryin’ to burn.” His eyes did not move from hers. “The kind of thing ye’d like.”
The fire ticked. Outside, the rain had begun, slow and steady at the high windows.
“And you have the key,” she said.
“Aye.”