When could she stop going round and round like this?
What was she to do?
At the very least, perhaps a day spent with Mrs. McKay would help clear her head.
But she found only Kieran in the great hall.
“I gave Mrs. McKay the day off,” he said by way of greeting. “Her daughter is visiting from Aberdeen.”
Her eyebrows flew up at his high-handed comment.
If he was nonplussed, it did not show.
“So given that there is no true chaperone inside the castle,” he continued, “I wonder if you would care to join me for a walk?”
“A walk?”
“Aye. ’Tis far too glorious a day to be spent indoors.” His grin was endearingly lopsided. “The cliffs are lovely. The sun is shining. And I promise to flatter ye with the purplest of prose.”
The idea of spending such an afternoon sounded . . . thrilling and upsetting and cheering andworryhappysadsad—
In short, a jumble of contradicting emotions, each of which tugged at her. Eilidh was still unsure if she wished to court them.
Numbness was simpler. It required nothing from her. It simply . . . existed.
But this . . .
All thefeelingthat Kieran pulled from her, the way he coaxed her to actively pursue comfort . . .
It hurt, but within the pain, she could also sense hope.
And hope had been too long gone from her life.
“Very well,” she swallowed, “as long as the prose is the purplest, I cannot refuse. Let me fetch my bonnet and pelisse.”
The wind tuggedat Eilidh’s bonnet, coaxing her to lift her face to the sun.
Kieran had not lied. The day was glorious.
A blue-sky, puffy-cloud, you-cannot-help-but-smile kind of day.
Sea birds whirled and spun along the sandstone cliffs, chattering in their nests, the cacophony melding with the crash of the ocean on the rocks below.
She and Kieran walked along the clifftop path. The North Sea furrowed in blue waves to her left, while grasses mimicked the undulating expanse to her right.
It rendered the world an endless rippling flow and made everything feel so very alive.
Shefelt alive.
Newly born and scrubbed raw.
Last night’s emotional storm had whipped away her cloak of numbness as surely as the sea wind currently threatened to tear off her bonnet.
“Will ye attempt to remember anything more with the fuse?” he asked.
“No.”
He said nothing more, but she nearly heard his unsaid words regardless—
