Page 83 of Bonetide

His face is very still, waiting patiently for my answer.

There was always only one answer.

“Yes.”

Chapter

Seventeen

Alasdair looks at me for a long moment, the candlelight flickering on the sculpted planes of his face, before he stands and offers his hand.

I stare at his palm for a moment, wondering what will change forever if I take it. Because if I take it, there is no going back. I am going upstairs to be ruined by this man.

And I’ve never wanted to be ruined like this before.

I put my hand in his and it suddenly feels like I’m entering into something I’ll never properly come out of, like a physical but still binding contract.

He brings me up out of the chair, being extra careful with me, and does not let go of my hand. He leads me out of the dining hall and up the stone spiral staircase. With the stone walls circling us, I have a strange sense of being back in time. It’s not hard to imagine what it was like back then, not in this place.

The corridor at the top level is dim. The candles in the sconces are lit, every single one of them, the flames small and steady. The light moves on the stone as we pass, making shadows dance.

We enter the bedroom and it somehow looks different than yesterday. The fire is built higher. The candles on the mantel are full and lit. The four-poster has been turned down, the heavy quilt folded back, the linen sheet beneath it crisp and white. The heavy red curtains at the corners of the bed are pulled back and tied with gilded rope. The leaded glass of the long window is fogged at the edges with the heat of the room and the cool of the rain outside, and the rain has settled in now, hammering steady on the glass.

If I wasn’t so nervous about what’s about to happen, I’d think it was epically cozy and comforting.

He closes the door behind us, and the sound echoes across the walls. It feels final, like we’re locked inside, like there’s no turning back, and I have to fight the urge to panic.

He turns me to him and gently cups my face in both hands.

“Iris. There’s something I want to ask you.”

“Okay.”

“You have been with…how many?”

I blink. I hadn’t expected the question. I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t that.

“One,” I admit. “Just Ryan.”

“Your husband.”

“Ex-husband,” I correct. “But yes. Just him.”

It was one of the things I’ve been annoyed about since the divorce, actually. All throughout my teens and twenties I could have been sewing my wild oats, but instead I settled with him and there were barely any oats sewn at all. Sure, there had been a high school boyfriend I fooled around with before Ryan, but Ryan is the one I officially lost my virginity to. Feels like I wasted so many of the “good years” of my life, even though I know that’s nonsense.

“Aye,” Alasdair says. The expression on his face gives me nothing.

“I have an IUD,” I add, because the question has put me in the headspace where I am telling him things he might want to know. “I’m not going to get pregnant. I have no interest in getting pregnant, believe me. That isn’t a thing you need to worry about.”

His expression softens for a moment.

“Aye, foxglove. Thank you for telling me.”

“And…” I clear my throat. “I’m clean. Sorry, that’s a terribly outdated thing to say. I mean, I don’t have any STIs. Only been with the one person and it’s been over a year and I hadn’t been with anyone else. I mean he was with someone else, that rat bastard was cheating on me, but when I found that I got tested and…”

“I understand,” he says, giving me a placating smile that says I don’t need to keep on blabbering.

“And you?”