Page 46 of The Highland Laird’s Hellion Bride

Bring swans, she finally wrote, having discarded two earlier drafts that had grown far too explanatory for a request that ought to require none at all. For the handfasting. He has every creature at Ben Cruachan save swans. Daenae ask why. Simply bring them.

She sealed it before she could reconsider the wisdom of the request, and handed it to the boy about to ride south. She told herself that a man who claimed indifference to romance would have to endure a gift chosen with rather more thought than he deserved.

The letter dispatched, she turned her attention to the second matter.

“The most romantic book in the library,” she told Becky, “and I daenae mean the one with the shepherdess, though I’m fond of her. I mean somethin’ that cannae possibly be mistaken for anythin’ but romance.”

Becky, who had spent the better part of the week watching this particular campaign unfold, went to the shelves without argument and returned some minutes later with a heavy, leather-bound volume that faintly smelled of dust and old glue.

“Poetry, me Lady. Nature poems, mostly. Very fine handfasting.” She turned it over in her hands. “Cost somethin’, this one, I’d wager.”

Elspeth took it, weighed it, opened it to a page at random, and found several stanzas concerning larks and dawn light and a shepherd’s undying devotion to a woman he compared at some length to a mountain stream. It was, by any reasonable measure, exactly what she wanted.

If Magnus intended to go on pretending that he had never once kissed her senseless on a rock while dripping wet and half-dressed, then she intended to make his life considerably more difficult in return. A man could not indefinitely ignore poetry that was placed directly and repeatedly into his hands.

She found him in his study that evening, bent over correspondence by the light of a single candle, and set the book down on the corner of his desk.

He looked at it, then looked at her.

“What’s this?”

“A book. For ye.”

He picked it up, turned it over, and read the spine. “Poetry.”

“Nature poetry. I thought, given yer aversion to romance generally, that somethin’ about larks and mountain streams might prove a gentler introduction.”

He opened it. He turned a page, then another, his expression giving nothing away. Elspeth found herself holding her breath.

He eventually closed it, bent down, and wedged the book’s spine under the nearest leg. The desk stopped wobbling.

“Exactly what I needed, thank ye,” he said with a faint, satisfied nod. “It’s been unsteady for a fortnight. I hadnae found anythin’ the right thickness.”

Elspeth stared at the book, now serving as a wedge beneath the desk leg, its fine leather binding pressed flat against the stone floor.

“That,” she said, “is a volume of poetry.”

“Aye. And a fine thickness for the purpose.”

“I didnae give it to ye to prop up furniture, Magnus.”

“It’s doin’ considerably more good here than it would on a shelf.” He straightened casually and returned his attention to his correspondence as though the matter were settled.

Elspeth pressed her fingers briefly against her temple. “Has it ever occurred to ye that a man might learn somethin’ from poetry, rather than simply findin’ uses for its weight?”

“I’ve learned it’s heavier than most books its size.”

“Magnus.”

He looked up.

“If ye only gave it a chance,” she said, gentler now, “it might surprise ye. There’s more to a man’s life than fences and ledgers. Flowers. Poems. The occasional foolish gesture, made for no reason but that ye wished to make it.”

He considered this as though her words were a problem requiring a practical solution, rather than a feeling requiring acknowledgment.

“Vegetables are far more practical than flowers,” he said.

Elspeth blinked. “I beg yer pardon?”