Page 52 of The Highland Laird’s Hellion Bride

The children, thoroughly soaked and equally delighted by the whole adventure, had gathered near the hearth to dry off, trading loud accounts of who had done the most important work during the storm preparations, each version growing more heroic than the last.

Someone had produced more blankets and distributed them with cheerful disregard for those they had originally been meant for.

Elspeth found a spot near the fire and sat, feeling the ache in her arms from hauling firewood and blankets and calves’ worth of bedding, and accepted a cup of hot cider from Becky with genuine gratitude.

Magnus settled nearby, not quite beside her, but close enough that she felt the solid warmth of him even through wet wool.

Neither of them said anything at all. They settled there, observing the fire and the noise and the general, contented chaos of a household that had weathered the worst of the storm together and come through it laughing.

“Ye worked hard today,” Magnus said finally, low enough that it did not carry beyond the two of them.

“I told ye I could.”

“Ye did.” He was quiet for a moment, watching the fire rather than her, though she caught, out of the corner of her eye, a trace of consideration crossing his face. “I willnae doubt ye again.”

Outside, the storm beat hard against the shuttered windows, wind howling around the stone walls it could not reach. Inside, the fire crackled, the children argued cheerfully over the last of the bread, and Morag snored contentedly in her corner.

Elspeth wrapped both hands around her cup and let the warmth settle into her, and thought, not for the first time, that this cold, chaotic, animal-crowded castle had begun to feel considerably more like home than she had ever expected it to.

Chapter Fifteen

The candles in her chamber had burned to stubs, and Elspeth had gone looking for more rather than sit in the dark listening to the storm rattle the shutters.

She took the back stairs down, one hand trailing the cold stone wall for balance, and reached the lower corridor just as a crack of thunder split close enough overhead to make her flinch.

The flash of it lit the corridor white for a split second, long enough to reveal a shape standing further down, still and silent before a row of portraits she had never noticed on any of her previous trips through this part of the castle.

Magnus.

He had not moved at the thunder. He stood with his back half-turned to her, one shoulder against the stone, looking up at the paintings as though they might say something back to him if he waited long enough.

She approached slowly, her candle stub throwing barely enough light to see by, and he still did not turn. It seemed as though he did not register her arrival until she was nearly at his elbow.

“Ye’re creepin’,” she said, mostly to break the silence.

He grunted, which told her nothing and everything at once.

“They’re starin’,” he said after a moment, nodding once toward the portraits.

Elspeth moved closer, holding her candle up. The nearest painting showed a woman with soft eyes and a gentle, private smile, her dark hair pinned in a style Elspeth did not recognize from any current fashion.

Beside it, there was another portrait of a boy of perhaps ten, sturdy and serious even at that age, standing next to a broad-shouldered man with dark hair and eyes that matched the boy’s.

She stared at the boy’s face before the resemblance registered.

“Is that yer family?” she asked.

He did not answer at first. When he did, it was only a single nod, his eyes fixed on the portraits rather than on her.

She studied the paintings again, more carefully this time. They did not have the look of things aged thirteen years in a cold Highland corridor. The colors were too vivid, the canvas too clean, none of the fading or cracking she had expected to see in something that old.

“These were done recently,” she said slowly. “Werenae they?”

Another silence, longer this time.

Rain hammered against the high window at the corridor’s end, and somewhere below, a shutter Duncan had apparently missed banged once against its frame.

“I commissioned them,” Magnus said finally. “Some years back. From memory. There was nothin’ left of the old ones.”