Page 4 of The Highland Ghost’s Virgin

Niall watched him over the rim of his wooden mug, his eyes narrowing as Alpin’s face went completely still. The Laird didn't blink. His breath stayed trapped in his chest, his eyes moving back to the top of the page, reading the words three, four, five times until the ink seemed to burn into the paper.

"What is it?" Niall asked, setting the mug down with a small click. "A tax from the Edinburgh courts?"

Alpin didn't move a muscle. The letter was a love song to a phantom, praise meant for the old man who had gone under the grey waves twenty years ago, yet every line of it felt like an iron collar locking around his own throat.

Niall let out a short snort, lunging across the table before Alpin could draw his hands back. His large fingers snatched the paper away with a loud grin. "Let us see what has the great bear of Herston looking like he’s seen the kelpie."

"Give it back, Niall," Alpin said, his voice dangerously soft.

Niall ignored him, his eyes scanning the page. He was the only man who could ignore the lethal command of his Laird and come out unscathed. The grin on his face faltered, his jaw dropping open slightly as he read the words aloud in a low whisper. "Rowing out alone... the beast... my God, Alpin. Who is Grisselle Hunter?"

"I have never heard the name in me life," Alpin said, his hand closing into a tight fist on the table.

"Well, she seems to think she's promised to ye," Niall said, a loud, barking laugh breaking from him as he shook the paper. "She’s written a love letter to a man she thinks is a hero out of the old songs. Look here, she calls ye her betrothed!"

"It means nothing," Alpin muttered, reaching across to tear the sheet from Niall’s fingers. "The woman is either mad or writing to a ghost. The deeds she writes of belong to me grandfather."

"A man who means it doesnae let his porridge go stone-cold while he stares at the ink," Niall retorted, leaning over the table, his amusement fading into sharp curiosity. "She signs her name to it, Alpin. A viscount's daughter from London. How does a girl in the south get hold of yer grandfather's stories?"

Alpin didn't answer. He folded the letter back into its creases, his thumb rubbing against the broken wax crest. The hall around them was silent, save for the crackle of the green wood in the hearth.

The heavy latch on the kitchen door lifted, and Isobel walked in, her arms laden with fresh wool ironed from the drying racks. She stopped three paces away, her eyes sliding from Niall’s face to the tight, white-knuckled fist Alpin had clenched over the paper.

"What is it?" she asked, her voice dropping the lightness she usually kept for the mornings. "Has something happened at the shore?"

"Someone in London," Niall said, his mouth twisting into a strange smile as he pointed at the letter, "thinks she's going to marry yer brother. And by the look of it, she knows the heart of him better than his own council does."

Isobel set the wool down on the bench slowly. She didn't look at Niall; she kept her eyes on Alpin’s face. "Alpin?"

Alpin didn't look at her. The words from the council room were still bouncing off the stone walls of his head.

A Laird without a lady is a Laird without a future. Come back to the living.

And here, in his fist, was a lady who had already given her name to his. A woman who wanted a legend, who had bound herself to a dead man’s memory, costing him nothing but the time it took to cross the border. No courting, no drawing-room games, no soft words by the fire. A contract signed in ink by a girl who didn't even know he was breathing.

He stood up, shoving the letter deep into the pocket of his heavy coat.

"Ready a horse," he said to Niall.

Niall blinked, his laughter completely gone now. "Alpin, the south road is mud from here to the Tweed. The horses will be ruined before ye hit the border."

Alpin didn't look back as he reached the door. "Then ready two."

CHAPTER THREE

It began as one line tossed at Clara over a pot of chocolate, meant only to take the sting out of Penelope's insult — a name, a place, a small embellishment born in the privacy of her own bedroom.

But Clara had a cousin, and the cousin had a mother who took tea with Lady Danbury, and by the third telling the joke had grown legs Grisselle had never meant it to stand on.

She'd repeated it herself twice more after that — once out of pride, once because taking it back would have looked worse than telling it — until the story stopped being hers to call off.

It circled from drawing room to drawing room, picking up detail, until it reached the morning papers wearing a face she no longer recognized.

The silver-plated tea urn on the sideboard gave a small, wet hiss, the sound loud enough to make Grisselle twitch.

She kept her fingers locked tightly around the handle of her teacup, though the porcelain was hot enough to bite into her palm. Across Lady Danbury’s drawing room, three feathers on Miss Penelope Asquith’s turban dipped as the girl tilted her head, her gaze sliding over the crowd like a hawk hunting mice in the stubble.

"The story has three different versions in the morning papers, Gris," Clara whispered, her lips barely moving as she pretended to inspect a plate of lemon wafers at Grisselle’s side. She was standing closer than was strictly fashionable, her skirts overlapping Grisselle's old white muslin to hide the scuff on Grisselle’s left slipper. "The Duke of York’s man asked my uncle if your Scotsman had five thousand acres or ten. You cannot simply stay silent anymore."