Page 41 of The Highland Laird’s Hellion Bride

“Long enough to see a man who trusts no one to touch a single thing that matters to him,” she said, “because he’s convinced himself it’s safer to carry the whole weight alone than to risk handin’ any of it to someone who might drop it.”

His jaw tightened, a muscle jumping once beneath his scarred skin. For a moment, she thought he might argue further and dig in with the same flat certainty he brought to everything else. Some reckless part of her almost wanted him to, wanted the fight to keep going rather than end here in the cold and the shadows with barely a foot of space between them.

Instead, he stepped back.

“Ye ken nothin’ about me,” he said again, quieter this time.

There was something underneath those words she could not quite reach. The meaning was gone before she could even try.

“I ken enough to recognize stubbornness when I see it,” she said.

He held her gaze a moment longer. Then he turned and walked out of the pantry, leaving her alone among the jars and the low guttering lamp, the cold settling back into the space where he had been.

* * *

The stillroom smelled of crushed mint when she arrived the next morning, and Mrs. McAulay was already there, sleeves rolled, humming something under her breath as she worked through a fresh crate of dried goods.

“Mornin’, me Lady.” She didn’t look up. “Come to torment more feverfew?”

“I thought I might finish what we started.”

“No need.” Mrs. McAulay nodded toward the shelves, already restored to a precision Elspeth had not managed the day before. Jars aligned by size, bundles hung in tidy rows, the crate that had sat half-sorted now empty. “The Laird was through here before dawn. Put everythin’ to rights.”

Elspeth stood very still. “Before dawn?”

“Aye. The Laird doesnae sleep past it, and he doesnae leave a mess sittin’ if he can help it,” Mrs. McAulay said matter-of-factly. “Ye’ll find that the household runs that way. Somethin’ goes wrong, and he’s already fixed it before the rest of us have finished noticin’ it was broken.”

Elspeth moved further into the room, running her eyes over the shelves he had apparently rearranged. She reached the back shelf, the one where she had shoved the old wooden cup aside the morning before in the interest of tidiness.

It was there.

Not shoved behind the jars where she had left it, and not carried off in triumph to sit beside his ale at supper. It sat squarely at the front of the shelf now, alone, nothing crowding it, nothing hiding it. It was set apart deliberately, in a manner that made it plain someone had considered exactly where it ought to go and had chosen this.

She reached out and touched its rim lightly, as though it might still carry some trace of the argument they had had over it the night before.

“That old thing,” Mrs. McAulay said, following her gaze. “His father’s, that was. The only thing that survived the fire. He doesnae speak of it, but Duncan told me the Laird’s carried it from room to room for thirteen years wherever he slept, or hid it in the most unbelievable places. The servants ken to leave it be. Has done so since before I joined the household.”

“He didnae tell me that.”

“He wouldnae.” Mrs. McAulay plainly stated a fact without meaning offence, while she tied off a bundle of dried thyme. “The Laird doesnae hand out his reasons easily. Ye’ll get the fact of a thing from him long before ye get the why of it, if ye get the why at all.”

Elspeth said nothing. She stood there a moment longer, her fingers resting against the worn wood, and thought of Magnus crouched in the narrow pantry the night before, rummaging through the shelves rather than sending a servant to search, his jaw set, saying nothing of what the cup meant until she had all but dragged it out of him with an accusation.

He had put it back exactly where it belonged. He had not said a word to her about it. He had come before dawn, while the household slept, and set it right quietly, expecting no one to notice and certainly no one to thank him.

She thought of what she had said to him in the pantry, about carrying the weight of everything alone rather than risking handing it to someone who might drop it. She found the words settling differently in the morning light than they had in the dark the night before.

She had meant it as a fault. Standing here now, looking at the plain, careful space he had cleared around the one thing in this castle that still mattered to him, she was not sure fault was the whole of it.

“He does most things himself,” Mrs. McAulay said again, gentler this time, watching her face rather than the shelves. “Doesnae mean he wants to.”

Elspeth looked up at that.

Mrs. McAulay only shrugged, tying off the last bundle, and went on with her work as though she had not said anything worth remarking on at all.

* * *

Magnus had been expecting the MacKinnons for an hour, perhaps less. Land taxes were not a subject that required an afternoon.