Page 71 of The Highland Laird’s Hellion Bride

“Then it can drown expensively.”

The two of them dissolved into something that was half argument and half laughter, Katherine brandishing the hat, Elspeth backing away from it with both hands raised in open refusal.

Somewhere behind them, Mrs. McAulay had appeared in the doorway with a basket of linens forgotten under one arm, watching the whole spectacle with an expression that had gone soft and unmistakably damp at the edges.

“Mrs. McAulay .” Magnus crossed to her, frowning. “Are ye weeping?”

“Nay.” She dabbed at her eyes with the corner of a linen anyway. “It’s only that there are ladies in this castle again, me Laird. Proper ladies, with hats and ribbons and nonsense, carrying on the way ladies are meant to carry on.” She sniffed decisively. “It’s been a long while since these walls heard that particular sort of laughter.”

Magnus opened his mouth to point out that Elspeth had been living within these walls for going on two weeks now and had been, so far as he was aware, laughing rather regularly the entire time, but then decided against it. Some battles were not worth fighting.

A small figure darted past his knee at speed, chestnut-brown braids flying, and he turned in time to see a little girl make a beeline for the stable yard rather than any of the trunks or hatboxes her mother had just spent a quarter hour unloading.

“Agnes,” Liam called after his daughter without much real hope of being obeyed. “Agnes, come and greet the Laird properly.”

“Is Morag still here?” Agnes shouted back, already halfway across the yard. “The goat, nae the other one. I ken there’s two of them now. Is the goat still here?”

“She’s here,” Magnus called after her, and watched the girl’s face light up with satisfaction before she vanished around the corner of the stables at a dead run.

“She’s talked of nothing else the entire ride,” Liam said, not without fondness. “Yer goat has apparently made quite an impression.”

“The goat makes an impression on everyone. Usually by eating something they daenae intend to offer her.”

Behind them, Katherine had abandoned the hat in favor of holding up two lengths of ribbon against Elspeth’s hair, debating their merits aloud.

“The blue,” Katherine said, holding a ribbon against Elspeth’s hair with one hand and studying the effect with her head tilted. “Nay, the green. It brings out something in yer eyes the blue doesnae.”

“I like the blue,” Elspeth said, playfully batting at Katherine’s hand.

“Nobody asked ye, Elspeth.” Katherine swatted her hand right back, not looking up from her comparison.

“It’s me hair.” Elspeth crossed her arms, fighting a smile she didn’t quite manage to hide.

“It’s yer handfasting, and there should be a difference.” Katherine swapped the ribbon back to blue, frowned at it, swapped it again. “Mrs. McAulay , come and settle this. Blue or green?”

Mrs. McAulay set her basket down without being asked twice and crossed to inspect the matter. “Green,” she said, after a moment. “Blue washes her out, something terrible against that stone behind her.”

“Thank ye.” Katherine cast Elspeth a look of pure vindication. “See? Green.”

“I never said I disliked green. I said I liked blue.”

“Ye cannae like both, Elspeth. That’s nae how ribbons work.”

“It is precisely how ribbons work, Katherine. I daenae ken what ye think I’m meant to do with only the one color for the rest of me life.”

“Green for the handfasting. Blue for after, if ye insist on being difficult about it.”

Katherine was already winding the green ribbon into a braid before Elspeth had finished agreeing to the terms, Mrs. McAulay leaning in to offer an opinion on the plait itself now that the matter had been settled. The three of them fell into another debate over pins that Magnus lost the thread of within a few words.

He watched everything. The trunks still being hauled past him, the purple hat now abandoned on a barrel where it had apparently lost the argument for good, Duncan already helping himself to one of the sweets from an open crate.

He felt something in his chest that he did not have a ready word for, and had no particular wish to go looking for one.

“I preferred the goats,” he muttered, mostly to himself.

Duncan appeared at his elbow, another sweet already vanishing into his mouth, grinning widely enough that Magnus knew before he spoke that whatever came next would not be sympathy.

“Nay, Cousin.” Duncan clapped him once on the shoulder. “Ye’re simply outnumbered now.”