Page 69 of Bonetide

I do the same and I’m in for another surprise. The sweet tang of honey hits my lips, exploding on my tongue.

“Mead,” he explains, seeing my wide eyes. “Wine the way we do in the Highlands. Comes from heather honey. Very good. Might give you a headache if you’re not too careful though.”

It’s too late for that; I’ve already downed the heady liquor. He promptly refills the small glass.

“So, Iris. Tell me what you’ve been doing today.” He asks this like he’s genuinely curious, and is not just saying it to be polite and make conversation. By now I can tell he’s never one to talk for the hell of it.

“I drew sage,” I say before I take another bite of the bread. “Two studies. The first one was bad. The second one was less bad.”

“Will you show me, one day?”

“If you want. I mean, you’ve already seen my sketches on the kitchen table.”

“I meant, I want you to show me how you work. I want to see all of what you make, Iris.”

“Alright,” I agree shyly. “But I think we need to continue the tour.”

The afternoon goes along with certain ease. He shows me other rooms. A small chapel that has not been used as a chapel in a long time, the altar gone, but the cracked stained glass still in the windows, casting blue and red on the flagstone floor. A music room with an old piano, and a harp and bagpipes in the corner that he tells me he has not played in years—and I’m unsure if he meant the bagpipes or the harp. A small study with yet another fireplace and a polished desk stacked with books and papers, maybe the most chaotic part of the castle so far, and one room that seems recently used. I wonder what kind of work Alasdair does at the desk. I don’t see a computer in sight. Actually, I haven’t seen any technology at all.

By late afternoon, we are back in the main room with the tapestries and hearth. He pours me whisky now because the mead is finished, and we sit in the leather chairs across from each other as talk about this and that. Plants. The loch. The books he has read recently. Everything he says, every piece of information about himself he offers me, I take it like I’m starving, eating every piece of him up.

He tells me a story about a winter when there was so much snow he couldn’t leave the castle for days. He tells me about a fox that lives in the wall on the east side of the keep that I will probably see if I come often enough (though I really hope it’s not missing a jawbone). He tells me about the loch in October, when the light goes copper-bronze and the herons come down to fish before the season turns, and how he thinks it’s the most stunning time of year.

In exchange, I tell him about Colorado. I tell him about my mother and how she’s only texted me once since I got here. I tell him about my stepfather Frank and how much I dislike him. I tell him how much I miss my father. I tell him about Ryan, just enough that he knows I’m recently divorced. I tell him I miss having a dog—I had one with Ryan—Princess Buttercup—but she died a few years ago from kidney disease and I haven’t had the heart to adopt another since. I tell him I haven’t laughed properly in a year and I think I’m laughing again, here, today.

As we talk, the light goes amber, then bruised, then dim. The candles do more of the work. He gets up at some point and lights more of them around the room, moving from sconce to sconce with a long taper. The fire is built up. The room is warmer than my cottage has ever been.

I look around, trying to see if there are any actual lights. There is electricity in this place, isn’t there?

He comes back but he doesn’t sit down, just stares at me for a long second until I squirm a little in my seat.

“Iris,” he announces, as if he’s about to announce something serious. “I would like to take you upstairs.”

I don’t pretend not to know what he means.

“All right,” I say in a small voice, that apprehension coming back.

He leads me out of the room, across the front hall, and up a stone spiral staircase I’ve not been on before, the steps worn in the middle from centuries of feet. At the top of the stairs is a long corridor with doors on either side. He leads me to the one at the very end and opens it.

It reveals a massive bedroom with a very high ceiling. The bed is a four-poster of dark wood, hung with heavy curtains in the same deep red as the velvet blanket downstairs. There is a fire in the small fireplace, already going. There are candles lit, as if they were waiting for us, and a long window with the bay outside it, the late dusk just visible through the leaded glass.

He closes the door behind us then turns me toward him. He cups my face in both hands and I’ve never felt so dainty and small.

“Foxglove?”

I swallow hard. “Uh huh,” I squeak.

“Tell me what you want.”

He’s going to make me spell it out? “I told you yesterday,” I say.

“Tell me again.”

So he is going to make me spell it out.

I take in a deep breath. “I want you.”

“Aye.”