Page 64 of The Highland Ghost’s Virgin

He collapsed against her, his full weight pressing her into the furs, his face buried in the crook of her neck.

They lay tangled together, their bodies slick with sweat and his seed, their breathing slowly returning to normal. The fire crackled, casting a warm, steady glow over them.

He shifted, rolling to his side but keeping an arm draped possessively over her waist. He pressed a soft, lingering kiss to her shoulder. In the quiet aftermath, wrapped in his arms and the scent of their lovemaking,

Grisselle felt a peace she had never known. They hadn’t joined in the way of a husband and wife, but they were bound as surely as if they had, their souls tangled together just as their limbs were.

For this one night, they were everything to each other.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The cold had settled into his bones long before the gray light of dawn began to bleed through the high arrow slits of the armory.

Alpin sat on the heavy oak bench, a rag soaked in whale oil held motionless in his right hand. Across his knees lay the iron-tipped spear, its broad blade dull and pitted from years of disuse in the salt air. He did not move the rag. He stared at the dark metal, his thumb resting over the cold join where iron met ash wood.

Beside him on the bench, the air still smelled faintly of dry lavender and warm wool.

He closed his eyes, his knuckles turning white around the shaft of the spear. The memory of her skin beneath his hands—soft, fierce, and entirely yielding—struck him. Her voice from the darkness of his chamber, telling him she was not going anywhere, echoed in the silent hall until his chest felt raw. He had let her in. He had opened his hands, let the walls crumble to ash, and pulled her into the dark where he had lived for twenty years.

And yet, as the high tide began to hammer against the outer sea gate below, the familiar, suffocating weight settled back onto his shoulders, heavier than before.

A soft, rustling sound dragged his gaze toward the archway.

Mòr stepped into the dim light of the armory. She moved without a sound, her heavy dark plaid wrapped tightly around her thin shoulders, her silvering hair pinned neatly at the nape of her neck. In her hands, she carried a small clay mug, steam rising in a thin, fragrant coil from the dark liquid inside. She did not speak. She walked across the flagstones, her soft leather slippers whispering against the stone, and sat on the bench beside him.

She did not sit close enough to crowd him, but the familiar scent of dried rowan berries and crushed pine needles filled the cold air between them, the same scent that had filled his sickroom when he was ten, bleeding and choking on sea brine.

"The wind is coming around from the north, me Laird," she said softly. Her voice was warm. She set the mug down on the timber beside his knee. "The sea will be white water by noon."

Alpin did not look up from the spear. "The tide turns in an hour."

Mòr reached out, her aged hand—gnarled and spotted, but remarkably steady—resting gently over his bare forearm. Her skin was surprisingly warm against his ice-cold flesh. "Ye did nae sleep."

His jaw flexed, the thick scar along his neck pulling tight. "I slept enough."

A faint, sorrowful smile touched the corners of her thin lips. She reached up, her thumb brushing the jagged silver skin at his jawline with the gentle, practiced care of a mother soothing a fevered child.

"Ye carry the mark so heavily today, me Laird. Bigger than yesterday. Bigger than the day ye brought the old Laird’s belt back to the hall."

Alpin’s breath hitched in his throat, but he did not pull away from her touch. He had known this hand since he was a babe; it had wiped the fever sweat from his brow, bandaged his torn flesh, and held his cup when his hands were too weak from shaking.

"I tried to leave it behind," he rasped, the words gravelly and thin. "Last night... I thought..." He stopped, his throat closing around the rest of the sentence. He could not speak Grisselle’s name in the cold morning light. To speak it felt like a betrayal of the peace she had tried to give him.

Mòr sighed, a soft, grieving sound that seemed to carry the weight of the entire keep. She pulled her hand back, wrapping her arms into the folds of her plaid, her dark eyes fixed on the black iron of the spear blade.

"She is a sweet lass, me Laird," Mòr murmured, her tone dripping with a quiet, devastating sympathy. "Fierce and bright as a hearth fire in the dead of winter. It is no crime to want to rest yer head in her lap. Any man would want to forget."

Alpin felt a sharp prick of heat behind his eyes. He stared at the floorboards, his teeth grinding together. "I cannae forget."

"Nay," Mòr agreed gently, her voice barely above a whisper, yet every word cut through the quiet like a bone needle. "Because ye ken the truth of it, deep down where no fire can reach. Yer grandfather is nae resting, Alpin."

The air in the armory seemed to drop ten degrees. Alpin turned his head slowly, his black eyes locking onto her weathered face. "What are ye saying?"

Mòr turned to meet his gaze, her expression open, entirely devoid of malice, filled only with a deep, sorrowful certainty that made his blood run cold.

"Old Alpin was a titan of a man," she said, her fingers lightly tapping her knee. "He built these walls. He held the clan together through three starvations and two feuds. And when the beast came out of the dark water, he gave his breath so that yers might continue. But a spirit like that... a Laird who was torn from the sun before his time... he does nae sleep quietly beneath the salt."

"He told me to live," Alpin said, his voice cracking, the image of his grandfather’s calm, hard eyes flashing behind his eyelids. "He pushed the bow stem."