Page 74 of The Highland Ghost’s Virgin

"Let me speak," he interrupted gently, raising his other hand to cup the side of her jaw. His palm was warm, his thumb resting against her cheekbone. "I am done living in the shadow of what was lost. I am done being the ghost of Herston Keep."

He leaned in, bringing his face down until his dark eyes consumed her entire field of vision. The hard, icy distance that had defined him for years was entirely gone, burned away by a raw, naked sincerity.

He slipped his hand down from her jaw, taking both of her hands into his broad grip. He stood tall, anchored firmly to the cold stone floor of his home, looking down at her.

"I am asking ye meself, Grisselle," he said, every word weighted with absolute certainty. "Nae for the council. Nae for the clan elders. I am asking ye—as Alpin, the man who stands before ye—to be me wife. To stay here, in this keep, as the Lady of me heart. Will ye have me?"

Silence stretched through the high-ceilinged room, broken only by the crackle of the peat fire in the corner and the distant sigh of the tide against the rocks below.

Grisselle was looking at a man who had sat by her bed for three days without sleep, who had held an abandoned babe with clumsy, reverent care, and who had turned his back on the sea because he loved her alive more than he loved his own grief.

A slow, radiant smile broke across Grisselle’s face, warming her eyes until they shone in the firelight. Her fingers tightened around his, her grip fierce and unhesitating.

"Ye are an arrogant, stubborn man, Alpin," she whispered, a soft laugh bubbling up from her throat.

"Aye," he agreed, the ghost of a grin touching his own mouth. "I am."

"And ye expect me to sit at your table and help you fight off MacCarron bailiffs for the rest of my days."

"I expect nothing less from me Lady," Alpin said softly, his hands pulling her an inch closer.

Grisselle let out a breath, stepping past the small gap remaining between them until her chest pressed against his. She reached up, wrapping her arms around his broad neck, her fingers tangling in the thick dark hair at his nape.

"Then me answer is yes," she said, her voice steady and clear. "Yes, Alpin. I will be yer wife."

Alpin didn't answer with words. He pulled her flush against him, his arms wrapping around her waist with a tight, fierce strength that lifted her bare toes off the stone floor. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, letting out a long, shuddering breath that sounded like a man who had finally come home after a lifetime at sea.

When he lifted his head, his mouth found hers—not with the dark, desperate urgency of the stormy night on the shore, but with a deep, certain warmth that tasted of promise, of hearth-fire, and of a future built on solid ground.

Outside, the sea continued its endless rhythm against the cliffs, but inside the high stone walls of Herston Keep, the storm had finally passed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The Great Hall was cold, the central hearth fire doing little to cut the draft seeping through the high stone arches.

Every head turned as Mòr stepped through the main doors. She walked at a measured pace, the hairless cat, Sgàil, draped heavily across her stooped shoulders like a mantle. Her expression was entirely unreadable—no pale twitch of the cheek, no quickening of her stride. She moved like a woman who believed her age and her decades in the keep rendered her entirely untouchable.

Isobel sat stiffly by the hearth, her knuckles tight against her skirts. Greer stood beside her, her arm braced on the wood of a carved chair. Near the wall, Dougal kept his chin low, refusing to look up.

Mòr stopped in the center of the hall, letting Sgàil slide off her shoulders. The cat landed with a soft thud against the flagstones, settling at her skirts.

"Ye called the hall, Laird," Mòr said softly, her dry voice cutting through the silence. "Is the girl's fever returned?"

Alpin stood at the head of the raised dais. He didn't answer right away. He stepped down off the wood, his heavy boots striking the stone with slow, deliberate weight, until he stopped ten paces from her.

"How long?" Alpin asked.

Mòr tilted her head, her faded eyes watching him closely. "How long for what, me laird?"

"How long have ye been pointing the Herston men toward the sea?"

The room went dead silent. Isobel drew a sharp breath. Greer’s jaw clenched so hard a muscle throbbed in her cheek, but no one spoke.

Mòr didn't flinch. A faint, hollow smile touched the corners of her mouth. "The Herston men ken the sea. They daenae need an old woman to find the water."

"They needed someone to tell them when the tides were right," Alpin said, his voice flat, dangerously quiet. "They needed the same voice that told me father he had to go back to the water to lay his own father to rest."

Mòr’s hands stopped where they rested on her apron.