Page 22 of The Highland Ghost’s Virgin

Cait appeared within minutes, hair still half-pinned from her own bed, blinking at the sight of Grisselle already sitting upright with her nightgown straightened and her hands folded like a woman waiting to be scolded.

"Me Lady." Cait stopped in the doorway. "Is something amiss? It's nae even light yet."

"I couldn't sleep. I thought I might as well be dressed for it."

Cait crossed to the wardrobe anyway, pulling out a plain wool gown and setting to work on the laces without further comment, though her eyes kept flicking to Grisselle's face in the looking glass. "Rough night, was it?"

"Long one." Grisselle held still while Cait's fingers moved briskly down her back. "The wind kept me up."

"Funny. I dinnae hear a breath of wind meself." Cait's mouth pulled sideways, not quite a smile, as she reached for the hairbrush next. "Though I did hear the east door go twice past midnight. Once out, once in."

"Did you?" Grisselle kept her eyes on the glass rather than on Cait.

"Aye. Wondered if it might've been the Laird, restless as he gets. Or a ghost." Cait began working the brush through Grisselle's curls, gentler than the observation deserved. “We have plenty of the second kind in this keep, whatever else is short."

Grisselle said nothing, and Cait, to her credit, didn't push further, twisting the last of her hair into a simple knot and pinning it with quick, practiced hands.

"There," Cait said, stepping back to survey her work. "Though I'll say, me Lady, ye look beautiful today."

Grisselle stood, smoothing her skirts before Cait could study her face any longer than she already had. "Thank you, Cait."

"Aye, well. Mind ye eat something this morning. Ye look pale as a MacKenzie sheet."

Grisselle went down to the great hall hoping the ordinary business of the castle might crowd the thought of the kiss out of her head. It didn't.

Alpin was already at the high table, a cold trencher in front of him, untouched. He looked up once, held her eyes for the length of a single breath, and dropped his gaze straight back to the bread he wasn't eating.

"Good morning," Grisselle said, because someone had to say something.

"Aye." He didn't look up again.

She took her seat across from him anyway. Neither of them said another word, and the silence stretched long enough that Isobel, three seats down, finally set her spoon aside and looked between them both.

"Terrible wind last night," Isobel said, entirely too brightly. "I could hear it clean through me shutters."

"Aye," Alpin and Grisselle said, at the same moment, in the same flat tone.

Isobel's eyebrows went up. She looked from one of them to the other, then back again, her spoon forgotten halfway to her mouth.

Grisselle reached for the bread at the same moment Alpin did, and their hands closed on it together. His knuckles rough against the back of her fingers, his grip not quite letting go before hers did.

Neither moved for a second longer than the loaf required. Then Grisselle pulled her hand back first, wrapping it around her cup instead, and Alpin set the bread down on her trencher without a word, as if that had been his plan all along.

"Well," Isobel said, drawing the word out until it filled the whole silence they'd left behind, "Good, I wasn’t the only one that noticed the wind."

No one answered her.

Alpin finished his ale in three long swallows, stood, and was out the door before Grisselle had buttered her bread.

Back behind the line, then.

She watched the door swing shut.

Not a word about why he crossed it in the first place.

She pushed her bowl away half-finished and went looking for something to do with her hands before her head did something worse. She settled for the kitchen which smelled of yeast and woodsmoke, and Senga was already elbow-deep in dough thick enough to fight back.

"There ye are," Senga said, without looking up. "Well, daenae just stand there hovering, me Lady, roll up yer sleeves and wash yer hands if ye mean to help. I'm nae precious about who kneads the dough."