It was then that Thomas sought out Elena and suggested a walk. Elena accepted with a polite nod, though she would far rather have remained with her family.
She noticed at once how carefully Thomas watched her, as though gauging her responses to the orchard, the sky, the unseasonal warmth of the afternoon. Though a few years older than she, he was still young and yet polished to a degree that disguised the youth in his features. His hair was a bright, sandybrown that caught the sunlight, and his smile came readily—too readily, she sometimes thought, but pleasantly all the same.
“You’ll find the orchard prettier in summer,” Thomas said as they walked beneath a stretch of budding branches, their pale leaves shivering faintly in the breeze. “The fruit here is the pride of my mother’s household. She insists the soil is enchanted, though I have yet to see any magic besides the sort that comes from good rain and a patient gardener.”
Elena smiled. “My father claims soil is only as miraculous as the manure one puts into it.”
Thomas laughed, a clear, bright sound that startled a pair of finches from a nearby branch. “I imagine your father’s version of magic is rather more... practical than ours.”
“Ye imagine correctly,” she replied, though with warmth. “He has little time for fanciful explanations.”
“I envy him that,” Thomas admitted lightly. “I fear I spend half my time hearing fanciful explanations for things that require plain sense.”
She felt a little guilty, actually, being that she seemed unable to devote her full attention to Thomas, even now as they walked alone. She couldn’t think of one thing to say, had no questions she wanted answered. In truth, something within her remained... suspended. Not quite cold or disinterested, but simply uncertain.
She kept pace with Thomas, nodding and smiling in the right places as he narrated the orchard’s history—his mother’s endless experiments with grafting, the legendary Hamilton apples, the stubborn pear tree that survived three winters when logic dictated it should have died. He spoke lightly, each anecdote polished with friendliness, and sometimes gestured with boyish animation.
And yet, Elena’s mind drifted in and out, unable to attach itself fully to the moment.
She had grown up surrounded by strong, blunt-spoken Highland men, her father, her brothers, Dougal, and other warriors who trained on the cliffs above Wolvesly, and Thomas by contrast felt almost too smooth. Like a stone polished by water rather than shaped by storms.
She found herself holding back, waiting for Thomas to carry the conversation forward, as though she were testing his worthiness through his ability to fill the silence between them, almost as if she wanted or needed him to prove himself.
Thomas, for his part, noticed none of this, or if he did, mayhap he chose to interpret her quiet as the bashful modesty of a Highland girl impressed by the trappings of Lowland civility. He guided her gently around a patch of exposed roots, his hand steady on her elbow, and offered a running commentary now about the castle’s history with a self-deprecating wit that should have been endearing.
Still, she could not deny that many women would envy her match. Thomas had the sort of charm that would please any woman or household, and he carried himself with the assurance of someone who had never questioned his place in the world.
He paused beneath a wide-branched tree and plucked a small blossom that had fallen onto the path. “This one survived the last frost,” he said, offering it to her with an almost boyish flourish. “Perhaps it’s a good sign.”
“A sign of what?” she asked.
He hesitated, not dramatically, but in a way that revealed he was choosing his words with care. “For us,” he said finally. “For our beginning.”
Elena accepted the blossom because refusing it would have been unkind. She twirled it lightly between her fingers and gave him a smile she hoped was not...discouraging. “Ye are very pleasant, my lord.”
“Thomas,” he corrected gently. “Not ‘my lord.’ Not with you.”
There was a genuine sweetness in the request, and Elena felt it settle around her pleasingly. She wanted to answer him honestly, to say that she valued his warmth, even if her own heart was not yet ready to answer it in kind. She would not pretend to feelings simply because they were expected, because they were meant to follow in neat succession—meeting, betrothal, affection.
Her gaze drifted toward the castle, now distant across the rolling ground, its towers reduced to pale stone shapes against the sky, the movement in its yard no more than indistinct shapes across a fair distance from the orchard. Whatever bustle remained there felt far away, muffled by space and open air. When she looked back, Thomas was watching her closely, hope plain in his expression, and Elena smiled and resumed walking.
He would be a good husband, she imagined, kind, attentive, eager to please. Perhaps, with time, she would find her footing beside him. Perhaps affection might bloom slowly, like the orchard around them, needing warmth and patience.
But as her gaze lifted again, it caught on movement beyond the trees.
A lone figure rode across the lower field, cutting a solitary line through the shallow green of new grass. Even from the distance, with the haze of afternoon sun blurring the edges of his outline, the image seemed to strike some hidden, vibrating wire in Elena’s chest. The rider was dark—his hair, his coat, even the horse beneath him—set in bold defiance against the pale, spring landscape. He sat the saddle with a casual authority, as though the land itself moved to fit him and not the other way around.
She recognized him immediately. Jacob Jamison.
He was not moving quickly. The horse’s gait was measured, deliberate, leaving a wake of bent grass in its path. Jacob’s shoulders scarcely moved, his posture loose but alert, and though he did not turn his head in their direction, Elena felt asif he were aware of everything for miles around. A whisper of a shiver passed over her, subtle as the chill that followed a cloud across the sun.
She realized Thomas had asked her something while she stared at the rider, thinking of a boy who was not a boy anymore, and who had never quite left her thoughts, even now when she was meant to consider only the man at her side. She forced herself to look back at Thomas, whose expression was patient but tinged with curiosity before he turned his gaze to where she’d been looking.
He squinted slightly. “Not one of mine,” he said after a moment. “He’s built like a Highlander.”
“That is Jacob Jamison,” she said quietly. “Ye met him last evening. His family and mine have been close since... before I can remember.”
“Ah,” Thomas replied, as if that explained something he had only half noticed. “Your father’s ward, then?”
