Page 25 of The Highland Ghost’s Virgin

Grisselle's hand flew to her mouth.

Isobel was already laughing, and gone.

Alpin found Niall on the practice yard, running a whetstone down the edge of a blade that didn't need it, and dropped onto the bench across from him.

"Ye're up early," Niall said, not looking up from the stone.

"So are ye."

"Aye, but I have an excuse. Somebody has to keep this place standing while ye go wandering the shore at all hours." Niall turned the blade, checked the edge against his thumb, set it down. Only then did he look up properly, and whatever he saw made him go still. "Ye look different."

"I look the same as I always look."

"Ye daenae." Niall leaned forward, studying him. "Ye came in off that shore last night looking less like a ghost than I've seen ye in ten years, Alpin. What happened out there?"

"Nothing happened."

"Ye're whistling these days too. Isobel told me. Said she nearly dropped a tray."

"I dinnae whistle."

"Ye do now, apparently." Niall's grin spread, slow and wide, the particular grin he wore right before he made something worse.

Alpin stood, reaching for a blade of his own from the rack. "Mind yer own business, Niall."

"That is me business. I've spent thirty years minding it." Niall stood too, still grinning, unbothered by the flat look Alpin gave him. "Ye ken I'll only keep asking."

"Then I'll only keep saying nothing."

"Fair enough." Niall picked his own sword back up, settling into a ready stance across from him. "I'll get it out of ye eventually. I always do."

They sparred through the better part of an hour, and Alpin worked harder at it than he needed to, driving Niall back across the yard with a force that earned him a raised eyebrow and no further questions, which suited him well enough.

He found Grisselle in the stables that afternoon, though he hadn't gone looking for her.

He'd meant to check the grey mare's shoe, the one Tam had mentioned needed resetting before winter. Instead, he found the stall door open and Grisselle already inside it, running a brush down the mare's flank in long, even strokes while Tam held the halter and offered commentary.

"Ye want to go with the grain of the coat, me Lady, nae against it."

"I am going with the grain, Tam."

"Aye, mostly."

Alpin stood in the doorway and watched her a moment longer than he meant to.

She'd tied her hair back with a strip of leather that had clearly come from the tack room rather than her own belongings, and there was a smear of something — grease, or dirt, he couldn't tell which — along the side of her jaw that she seemed entirely unaware of.

The mare leaned into the brush strokes, ears loose, tail swishing lazy and content, the same mare that had near taken Tam's arm off three days past.

"She doesnae usually stand for strangers," Alpin said.

Grisselle startled, the brush stopping mid-stroke. "I didn't hear you."

"Ye were arguing with Tam about brush direction. Ye wouldnae have heard a cannon."

"I wasn't arguing."

Alpin stepped into the stall, and Tam, sensing the shift in the air the way stable boys always did, muttered something about checking the water trough and made himself scarce.