Page 38 of The Highland Ghost’s Virgin

Mairi laughed, delighted, and called something over her shoulder toward the open door. By the time Alpin had seen to the horses, three more women had appeared from neighboring cottages, drawn by the sound of it, and Grisselle was learning names faster than he'd have managed in a year of trying.

"Ye'll want to watch Fenella there," Mairi said, low, tipping her head toward a stout woman crossing the lane. "She'll talk yer ear clean off about her hens if ye let her start."

"I like hens."

"Ye say that now."

They walked the length of the village that way, Grisselle stopping at nearly every door, asking after children by name once she'd been told them a single time, remembering which cottage belonged to which family with an ease that unsettled Alpin somewhat, given he'd known most of these people his whole life and still occasionally confused the MacKay boys for one another.

"That's yer smithy's wife," he murmured, as they passed a low stone cottage near the well. "Una. Husband's Fergus."

"The one who proposed to the officiant."

"Aye, that Fergus."

"I've heard a great deal about that Fergus." Grisselle was already crossing toward the cottage, and Una emerged before she'd reached the door, wiping flour from her hands, blinking at the sight of her Laird's intended standing uninvited in her own dooryard.

"Me Lady."

"Just Grisselle, please. I'm told yer husband once proposed marriage to a priest mid-ceremony."

Una's face went through several expressions in quick succession before settling on resigned amusement. "Aye, well. He'd had a fair bit of whisky by then, and the priest does have a kind face."

"I would very much like to hear the whole story someday, from someone who isn't Isobel."

"Isobel tells it with entirely too much embellishment. Come in, if ye've a moment. I've bread just come out."

Alpin lingered near the well while the two women disappeared inside, watching the lane fill up slowly with people finding reasons to pass by. A boy walking a pig that didn't need walking, two girls suddenly very interested in a puddle they'd otherwise have ignored.

He'd walked this same lane a hundred times as Laird, had every one of these faces nod to him with proper respect, correct distance. None of them had ever once dropped a wet shirt in the mud at the sight of him.

She's done in an hour what I havenae managed in ten years.

He was still turning that thought over when a scream cut through the ordinary noise of the lane, not fear, just the raw, furious pitch of an infant.

A young woman came hurrying around the corner of the smithy, the bairn red-faced and thrashing against her shoulder, her own face gone thin with the particular exhaustion of someone who had already tried everything she knew.

"I'm sorry," the girl said, to no one in particular, bouncing the baby with increasingly desperate rhythm. "She's been like this since dawn, I cannae stop her."

Grisselle appeared in Una's doorway at the sound of it, took one look, and crossed the lane before Alpin had even fully turned toward the noise.

"May I?" She was already reaching, not waiting for the answer, and the young mother handed the bairn over.

Grisselle settled the baby against her own shoulder in one smooth motion, turning her hip into a slow, rocking sway, one hand cupped firm against the small of the infant's back, murmuring something too low for Alpin to catch over the crying.

The screaming didn't stop at once. It hitched, faltered, caught itself twice more. Then, within the space of perhaps a few minutes, it dissolved into hiccups, and then into nothing at all, the small red face going slack against Grisselle's shoulder, one fist uncurling against the wool of her cloak.

The whole lane had gone quiet, watching.

"There," Grisselle said softly, still swaying, entirely unaware, it seemed, of the small crowd that had gathered to witness it. "You just needed a soft hand and a bit of quiet, didn't you?"

She smoothed her palm down the mare's dark velvet nose, letting out a small, relieved breath as the horse rested its heavy head against her shoulder.

The young mother stared at her like she'd performed something closer to sorcery than comfort. "How did ye do it?"

"I don't know." Grisselle looked down at the sleeping bairn, a softening moving across her face that she didn't seem to notice happening at the corner of her mouth. "I've never done that before in my life."

She handed the baby back, carefully, reluctant in a way her hands communicated more plainly than her face did, and the young mother took her weight back with considerably more ease than she'd carried her away with.