Page 40 of The Highland Laird’s Hellion Bride

Magnus said nothing, which Elspeth was beginning to understand was an answer.

A servant set a plain pewter cup at his elbow and moved on to fill Duncan’s ale without a second glance.

Elspeth set her fork down very quietly.

Magnus’s jaw tightened. He nodded once and said it was fine, though the tight set of his mouth suggested it was very much not fine. He spent the better part of the next twenty minutes with his ale untouched, eyes drifting again and again toward the kitchen door as though the missing cup might wander back through it if he waited long enough.

Elspeth observed him from across the table and felt something cold settle in her stomach.

She knew precisely where that cup was. She’d found it that morning, buried at the back of a shelf in the stillroom, tucked behind a row of jars with no apparent purpose.

It was an old, worn wooden cup, plain and unremarkable, the sort of thing she had assumed had been shoved aside and forgotten. She had moved it without a second thought to make room for the herbs she had been sorting and set it on a different shelf, in a different room, because it had seemed like clutter and nothing more.

She watched him turn the pewter cup once more in his hands, his teeth clenched, his eyes distant, and realized with a sinking feeling exactly whose fault this was.

She waited until the meal ended and Duncan had wandered off with a remark about checking the horses. Magnus rose from the table and made for the corridor that led toward the kitchens and the stillroom.

She followed him.

She caught up to him in the pantry, a narrow stone room lined with shelves and barrels, lit by a single low lamp that threw more shadow than light. He was crouched before a low cupboard, pulling out jars and setting them aside with more force than the task required. He did not look up when she stepped through the doorway.

“Magnus.”

“I’m busy.”

“I ken where the cup is.”

That got his attention.

He straightened, turning to face her, and in the narrow space among the shelves, there was suddenly very little room between them.

She could smell woodsmoke on his shirt and feel the warmth radiating off his body in the cold stone room. She found it considerably difficult to keep her mind on the matter of the cup and not on the matter of his mouth, which two days past tasted of brackish loch water and raw longing.

“Where?” he asked.

“I moved it this mornin’ while I was helpin’ Mrs. McAulay sort the stillroom. It was shoved behind some jars, and I didnae ken that it was yers or that it was in its spot.” She stopped, gathering herself. “I didnae ken it mattered. I set it on a different shelf.”

A shadow crossed his face, quick and sharp, gone before she could name it. “It’s me father’s cup.”

“I didnae ken that.”

“Nay, ye wouldnae.”

The words landed harder than they should have, delivered flat and cold in the narrow, dark pantry. Elspeth felt her spine going rigid in response.

“I would have ken if ye ever told a single soul in this household anything at all, instead of expecting the rest of us to read yer mind like it’s printed somewhere plain.” She jutted her chin, daring him to argue the fact. “Ye daenae ask the servants for what ye need. Ye daenae ask me. Ye walk about assumin’ everyone will divine the rules ye keep locked away in that head of yers, and then look wounded when we fail to guess correctly.”

“It’s a cup, Elspeth.”

“It isnae just a cup, and we both ken it, or ye wouldnae be standin’ in a cold pantry at this hour tearin’ through cupboards for it instead of using the pewter cup like any sensible man.”

She took a breath. “Ye do this with everythin’. The doors. The chimneys. The lambs bein’ born at two in the mornin’ with no one to help ye. Ye fix it all yerself, and ye tell no one what ye need, and then ye stand there lookin’ wronged when the rest of us fail to guess it.”

His eyes darkened. “Ye ken nothin’,” he said.

“I ken enough.”

“Ye’ve been here a fortnight.”