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As spring days in Scotland went, it was a fairly mild one. The rain had been chased away by the first soft rays of the sun that filtered through the clouds to where my secret swimming hole was. Most people wouldn’t dare dip their toes in such frigid waters, but I loved it. I dove beneath the surface, the icy water making my skin burn, and relished the spike of adrenaline that rushed through my body. While these cold plunges weren’t for everyone, I always felt invigorated after, and the shock always managed to help me clear my mind in times of trouble. I had been coming to this swimming spot since I was a wee lad, and the familiarity of it soothed me.
Surfacing, I brushed my sodden hair out of my eyes and took several deep breaths. The music of the river, the water racing gently over the rocks, and the wind shifting through branches of the trees, brought peace in a way that nothing else could. I floated on my back and looked up at the sky, letting my thoughts drift for a moment.
A voice at the riverbank jolted me upward, and I turned, treading water as I looked toward shore. There, one Sophie MacKnight stood, her arms crossed over her thin jumper. I could see her shivering from here.
“Can I help you?” Immediately, I thought of one way I wanted to help her which was to peel those threadbare leggings off and bury myself between her thighs. Despite the frigid water, my cock twitched, and I was grateful that my body was hidden from sight beneath the surface.
“Have you lost your mind? How can you possibly be swimming in this water?” Sophie asked. “You won’t catch me in a pool unless it’s above eighty degrees.”
“Eighty degrees and we’d all be dead,” I poked at her, knowing full well that she meant Fahrenheit even though we tracked temperature in Celsius here.
It took her a moment, and then her eyes narrowed on me. I couldn’t help it. My lips twitched as I realized that I quite enjoyed poking fun at Miss Sophie MacKnight. Perhaps she wasn’t aware how her emotions played across her face, but she was wildly interesting to watch and, despite myself, I drew closer to the river bank. There was only so long I could stay in this frigid water anyway before I would start to shiver myself.
“Is this how you bathe?” Sophie stared dubiously at my pile of clothes on the rock. “I’m fairly certain the castle has indoor plumbing. At least in my apartment it does.”
“Och, the showers are only for the fancy folk. Ushelpmust bathe in the rivers like the livestock.” I affected a deep Scottish accent, and it took Sophie a moment to work out what I was saying. When she did, indignation flooded her face along with a bonnie pink flush. I bit back my smile.
“Well, that’s positively barbaric. I’ll see to it this morning that you have use of the showers. This is no way to live and allow me to apologize on behalf of my uncle if this is how you’ve been treated,” Sophie said, tightening her arms across her chest.
I realized quickly that she had taken me at my word. Even though the thought of me washing regularly in this river during the height of a Scottish winter made me laugh, I kept it to myself.
“Sophie. I have a shower. I just do this on occasion when I need to clear my head.”
“I’m certain there has to be a less painful way to clear your head,” Sophie said. I could think of one such way, but I suspected the thought would send her running. Sophie’s coltish nature made me want to both poke at and protect her, and I truly wasn’t sure how I wanted to proceed around her. I hated that she had the power to now direct the future of this castle and this town, and at the same time, apparently, she also held the power over my arousal. I stayed in the deep water even though the cold was starting to get to me, in order to hide myveryvisible reaction to Sophie.
“There is nothing wrong with a bit of cold water. It’s a good shock to my system, and I find it invigorates me in a way that coffee just doesn’t,” I said, my eyes on hers. She continued to huddle into her jumper, her eyes darting everywhere and, for a moment, she looked so lost and alone that I wanted to go to her and cradle her into my arms and tell her that everything was going to be just fine. Following that urge, I met her eyes.
“I’m sorry about your Uncle Arthur. I know it’s not easy to grieve.”At least it wasn’t for me.
“And I’m sorry about your mom,” Sophie said, and my stomach twisted.
“I guess you were bound to hear about her death,” I said, shrugging one shoulder awkwardly. “It was a long time ago.” There wasn’t much else I could say.
“I don’t know that time is relevant when it comes to love,” Sophie mused. “It’s just there, isn’t it? It doesn’t go away. It just becomes woven into the fabric of your soul.”
I paused, stuck on her words, realizing that she phrased grief for me in such an eloquent way while at the same time not making me feel embarrassed for missing my mother.
“Tell me one of your favorite things about her.” Sophie surprised me with her question.
“She talked to birds.” I had no idea where the memory had come from or why that popped out of my mouth but, nevertheless, that was the first thing that rose to my mind. “She would have full conversations with them. Particularly the crows. They used to bring her little gifts. Shiny bits and bobs. For a long time, I thought she was a magickal queen of the forest or something of the like. Talking to her crows, feeding all the other birds. They’d follow her around, as well. I still have a coin that one of the crows brought for her.” My hand went to where I had threaded the coin onto a leather cord around my neck. It was a whimsical part of my mother that I’d always carried with me, and now I had to question when I had stopped letting whimsy and wonderous moments into my life. After her death, I had shouldered the burden of trying to take care of everyone else, barely allowing Hilda to step into the role of mothering me. There’d been no time for childhood games as I learned the role of taking care of the castle.
“I love it,” Sophie declared. “I’ve watched videos on that. On the crows, that is. They’re meant to be really smart, and I’ve always wanted to see if they would really bring you gifts if you fed them.”
“Well, we have plenty here. No one is stopping you,” I pointed out, and Sophie’s mouth dropped open.
“Are you saying that I could train a crow army?”
This time, I did laugh.
“I don’t know why the thought of you leading a crow army terrifies me but, yes, I suppose you could attempt to train the crows to fight your battles for you.” I smiled openly at Sophie. “Tell me a favorite thing about your Uncle Arthur.”
“His love of the ridiculous,” Sophie said immediately. “When he finally found his last wife, Lottie, I think he really felt comfortable enough to embrace his eccentricities. She’s such a creative spirit that she leaned into it as well, and you’d never know from one day to the next what oddball thing Arthur would bring home or news story that we’d be discussing over dinner. Like the one time he took up a campaign to knit sweaters for some penguins that needed them. I can’t even remember where or why now, but there we were, all learning to knit these tiny little penguin vests for a good six months until the organization finally wrote to Arthur and said that they had more than enough.” The memory brought a wide smile to Sophie’s face, transforming her from coltish and uncertain to beautiful. Her smile was like the sun coming out from behind a cloud, and my breath caught. I wanted her to look at me like that.
“He doesn’t sound quite like the evil overlord that I was making him out to be in my head,” I said, a shiver working through me as the cold water started to numb my body. “I apologize for thinking dark thoughts about your uncle. I thought he was just maybe another rich man coming in and snapping up a piece of our heritage with no care for the history held within.”
“I imagine that probably happens a lot here, doesn’t it?” Sophie looked at the forest where the castle jutted proudly over the tree line. “It’s hard not to visit somewhere like this and wonder if you couldn’t have the fairy tale for yourself too.”
“Unfortunately, this fairy tale comes with its challenges, and potentially some very real danger,” I said. There, I had brought it up. I acknowledged the truth of what I’d spent years avoiding.
