Page 22 of The Highland Laird’s Hellion Bride

He looked at the closed door, then looked back down at the figures.

He picked up his quill.

Chapter Eight

She woke up with a plan.

It was not a complicated plan. It did not need to be complicated.

The essential architecture of it was this: two weeks was fourteen days, and fourteen days was a finite number, and finite numbers had ends. At the end of this particular finite number, Katherine would come for the handfasting. Elspeth would find a quiet moment and a private corner and explain, calmly and with full detail, exactly what Katherine had delivered her into.

Katherine would help her. Her friend owed her a debt of considerable magnitude, and she knew it.

Two weeks. I can endure anything for two weeks.

She had endured her father’s house for twenty-one years. She had endured seven years of managing accounts nobody thanked her for, a kitchen staff that argued about everything, and a wool merchant who lied about weights and smiled while he did it. She had endured an auction in a pale blue silk dress and a horse with no carriage.

Two weeks was nothing.

She felt considerably better for having decided this.

She reached for the pitcher on the washstand. The water inside was ice-cold. It was the first test of her resolve. She passed it by washing quickly, forcing her mind to think about Katherine’s warm solar, the terrible novel she had left behind, and a hearth fire that asked nothing of anyone.

Then she sat at the small mirror. Her fingers were stiff as she began pinning her hair. The room remained quiet, pale with the creeping early light. She was not content, but she was organized.

The door opened, and Becky walked in carrying a heavy shawl.

Elspeth sat up too quickly, and for one unguarded moment, something in her chest loosened at the sight of her maid, who had brushed her hair since she was a girl. There was one person in this cold stone castle who did not look at her like a ledger entry.

“Good morning,” she greeted, her voice tight despite herself.

“The Laird’s already up, me Lady.” Becky did not meet her gaze as she crossed the room, and she kept the shawl folded over her arm instead of offering it to her.

Elspeth looked at the window. The light was barely there, thin, sharp, and grey. “It isnae dawn yet.”

“Aye.” Becky set the shawl on the bed and smoothed the wool with her palm. “Mrs. McAulay says he’s always up before dawn. Does the doors first, then the grounds, then the animals.” She paused, her eyes glinting. “The goat gets done before the doors, apparently. Special arrangement.”

“Of course she does.”

“He says ye’re expected downstairs.” Another heavy pause. “For the inspection.”

Elspeth met her eyes in the glass.

Becky picked up a bone hairpin Elspeth had set down and pressed it back into her hand. “The brown dress is warmest. And I found boots.”

Elspeth looked at the boots. They were sturdy, dark leather, plain, and slightly too large. She chose not to inquire whose they had been. She laced them up herself, pulling the leather cords until her knuckles ached.

She stood and looked at her reflection.

Two weeks.

Then she went downstairs.

The castle in the early morning was a different creature than the castle at night. The Great Hall was dim, thick with woodsmoke-warmed air. The fires were banked low. The hounds occupied their various territories on the stone floor. Morag the goat was at the hearth, as she had always been. One amber eye was half-open, tracking Elspeth’s passage through the hall.

Mrs. McAulay stood in the kitchen doorway with a damp cloth. She looked like she had been awake for hours. “There’s porridge,” she said, her voice a warm murmur. “And bread from last night. The Laird doesnae eat before the grounds.”

“The porridge,” Elspeth said gratefully.