I’d been watching Agnes earlier that night.
Not in a creepy way—at least, I hoped not—but in the way a man watches a woman he’s loved for the better part of a decade. I knew her tells. The slight tension in her shoulders when she was overwhelmed. The way she twisted her bracelet when she was too anxious to say what was on her mind. The laugh she used when she was deflecting…sharper and more performative than her natural laugh.
It was like hearing someone hit a wrong note on the piano.
The men had been banished to the games room while the women had their gathering in the library, which suited me just fine. Lachlan had put a rerun of a Scotlandvs. Denmark football match on the big screen, and Munroe had brought up a few bottles from his distillery, so we weren’t exactly suffering. But my mind kept drifting downstairs, wondering what Agnes was doing and what she wasn’t telling me.
Or anyone, really. Agnes always took care of everyone else but herself.
“You’re distracted tonight, mate.” Lachlan, one of my very best mates, straightened from where he’d just neatly pocketed the eight ball to win. Sighing, I handed him my pool cue and rolled my shoulders back to ease the tension creeping up there.
“Aye, can’t be helped, I suppose. A touch on edge these days.”
“Aren’t we all?” Ramsay asked from where he scowled at the cards in his hand, sitting across from Munroe.
“It doesn’t exactly help that our women are constantly throwing themselves in front of magickal beasts,” Owen muttered.
“Ahem, nothing wrong with some magickal beasts.” Luch, who I’d just recently learned was secretly a wulver, shot him a glowering look.
“Nothing to be done, though, is there? We can’t stop them.” Munroe shook his head as he laid down another card. “Not that I’d ever really try. This is what they were born to do, and us lads are just lucky enough to be by their sides, aren’t we?”
The men murmured their agreement, but I drew back, stopping to crack a fresh beer, before wandering over to the window to look out over the loch.
I didn’t have a woman to worry over.
Which was an absolute lie, even to myself, but it annoyed me more than I wanted to admit that I one hundred percent did worry over one Agnes Wright, no matter how hard she tried to push me away.
It had been years since we’d dated,years, and still every rejection felt like slicing open a freshly healed wound. I’d tried to distract myself through the years, but it turned out, there was no other woman like Agnes.
I was for her and she was for me, if only her stubborn arse would let me in.
I stared out at the lights of Loren Brae twinkling in the backdrop of the dark hills as the men debated the merits of trying to stop their partners from jumping into the magickal fray to protect Loren Brae, when I caught movement down below.
Agnes emerged from somewhere in the back of the castle, her coat already on, her bag clutched against her chest like a shield.
Was she leaving on her own?
Already annoyed, I put my beer down and crossed the room, grabbing my coat on the way.
“Where ya off to, lad?” Finlay called, glancing up from his darts game with Lachlan.
“Agnes is walking home on her own.”
“Bloody hell,” Lachlan said, stepping forward. “Has she learned nothing?”
“I’m going, I’m going. Night, lads.” I waved them away and was out the door, hurrying down the stairs to catch her before she got too far.
She was being stupid, and I planned to tell her just that as soon as I caught up to her. Annoyance mixed with fear,and I picked up my pace, so by the time I reached her across the wide expanse of lawn in front of the castle, I was almost at a run.
“Damn it, Graham!” Agnes whirled, her hand at her heart, as I reached her. “What in the hell are you doing running after me like that? You’re going to give me a bloody heart attack.”
“I would say the same of you, darling.” I gripped her elbow lightly. “What are you doing walking home alone?”
“What I do most days of my life.” Agnes’s chin went up, and color dotted her cheeks. “Navigating the world as an adult woman who takes care of her needs. On her own, Graham.”
My brain short-circuited for a moment as my thoughts went to Agnes taking care of herverypersonal needs on her own, and she was already several steps ahead of me when I recovered the ability to think straight.
“Agnes! Wait, damn it.”
