Page 32 of The Highland Ghost’s Virgin

Alpin watched them. Greer's list, Isobel's laughter, Grisselle's hands moving over fabric, the whole table a chaos of color and argument and easy, unhurried warmth that filled the hall in a way he hadn't heard it fill in longer than he cared to count.

This is what it looked like.

The thought arrived on its own, unbidden, and he didn't fight it off the way he usually fought off thoughts that led toward the past.

Before. When me mother ran this hall and me father was still a man who laughed, and there were always women at this table arguing over something that mattered more to them than it did to anyone else, and the whole keep felt alive because of it.

He remembered his mother's voice from somewhere far back, arguing this same argument about a different wedding — whose, he couldn't recall now, only that she'd stood exactly where Grisselle sat now, sunlight catching the same table, laughing at something his father had said from the doorway before he'd had the sense to make himself scarce.

Whatever this was — this ordinary, unremarkable afternoon of cloth and lists and easy laughter — belonged to them for the moment. He had no wish to be the thing that made it stop, made Grisselle straighten her spine and remember herself, made Isobel's laugh go careful and considered the way it always did the instant he entered a room these days.

He turned before any of them could look up and see whatever his face was doing. He walked back toward the stables, though his mind remained pinned to the scene in the hall—the way the firelight had traced the curve of Grisselle’s neck, the soft rise and fall of her chest beneath the tight linen bodice, and the way her dark hair had loosened from its pins, brushing against her bare collarbone.

A sudden, sharp heat flared low in his gut, a sudden, fierce craving to step up behind her, wrap his hands around her waist, and press his mouth against the warm skin of her throat until her quick wit dissolved into a ragged gasp.

Alpin swallowed hard, his jaw locking as he forced his stride toward the stalls, with no memory afterward of the distance between the hall and the horses—only the sight of her body etched behind his eyes and the sound of her laughter following him the whole way there, settling into his chest like a coal that hadn't quite gone out.

Supper was a quiet business most nights, the four of them - Alpin, Grisselle, Isobel, and Greer - scattered along more table than four people needed, but that evening Isobel kept up a steady stream of chatter which suited Alpin well enough.

He reached across the table for the bread, and the candle at his elbow caught the pale ridge of scar along his forearm where his sleeve had ridden up, throwing the old white line into sharp relief against his skin.

Grisselle looked.

Not long. A beat, no more, her eyes catching on it the way anyone's might, but he felt it land the same as if she'd reached out and touched it herself. His hand pulled the sleeve back down, breaking off a piece of bread with more force than the task required.

"Something wrong with the bread?" Isobel asked.

"Nothing's wrong with the bread."

"Ye're glaring at it like it's insulted ye personally."

"I'm nae glaring at anything." Alpin set the bread down and reached for his cup instead, aware of Grisselle's eyes elsewhere now, studying her own plate. He found he couldn't decide which was worse, that she'd looked, or that he'd noticed her looking.

Alpin pushed his plate back, the wooden legs of his chair scraping sharply against the flagstones.

"I have ledgers to review," he grunted, making no effort to mask his sudden urge to clear the hall.

"Now?" Isobel asked, her spoon hovering halfway to her bowl, a faint, knowing twitch touching the corner of her mouth. "The sun is barely down, Alpin."

"The accounts willnae balance themselves," he replied, already rising to his full height.

Grisselle didn't look up immediately. She calmly set her cup down, her dark eyes gleaming with a sharp, dangerous spark of amusement as she leaned back against her chair.

"Is it the ledgers, Laird MacLeod?" Grisselle murmured, her voice smooth, perfectly dry, "or are you running from a discussion about table linens? I assure you, napkins will not bite."

Alpin paused, his hand resting heavy on the back of his chair, his jaw locking hard. "The clan’s grain debts take priority over piece-work and silk ribbons."

"Naturally," Grisselle replied, her lips curving into a slow, deliberate smile that drew his eyes straight to the mouth he had been thinking about all afternoon. "Though a Chieftain who flees at the sight of a fabric swatch makes one wonder how he fares against actual steel."

Across the table, Isobel covered her mouth with her napkin, her shoulders shaking with silent, delighted laughter as she darted her eyes between the two of them.

Alpin glared down at Grisselle, a sudden, heavy heat flaring in his chest at her quick, unyielding defiance. He stepped away from the table, his voice low and gravelly as he turned for the corridor. "The ledgers will be finished tonight."

He sat in his study a long while after, the heavy account books open on the desk before him, and not a single figure of it entered his head.

It's an old scar. She's seen it before.

She had, in fact, seen the whole of it, that first day at the East Tower, and made no particular remark on it then beyond the ordinary curiosity anyone might show a stranger's history written on his skin.