“Aye,” Jacob said. “Like as nae.”
“My father could at this very moment, be hunting the very men who are following us,” Elena said quietly. “He willna rest, I vow. And my mother...” She hesitated, then shook her head faintly. “She’ll be worried sick.”
“They’ll ken what my absence means,” Jacob advised her.
She looked up at him. “What do ye mean?”
“They’ll understand that I gave chase, that I meant to reclaim ye,” he said, as if it required no further explanation. “Yer father would ken I wouldnae stop until ye were safely returned. He’d expect nae less—rightly so.”
There was no boast in it. No warmth, either. Just certainty, solid and immovable.
The fire popped softly as Elena turned his words over in her mind, wondering why they left her feeling disturbed. Jacob shifted where he sat, stretching one leg out, unaware of her trouble.
Elena kept her gaze on the flames, watching them lick at the stone, and felt something she hadn’t known she’d been carrying loosen and fall away. Not disappointment, exactly, but more a quiet recalibration, a settling into understanding.
Jacob hadn’t come afterher. He’d simply ridden to her rescue because it would have been expected of him. She didn’t know why that distinction mattered, or why it deflated her just a bit.
Jacob glanced at her once, as if sensing the shift, though he couldn’t possibly guess the reason behind it. “Eat,” he said, not unkindly. “I need ye to stay strong.”
She did, since she was still hungry, truth be told.
“Do ye ever... think about Wolvesly?” She asked at length.
“Wolvesly?”
“The years ye fostered there, and those years while ye served with my father.”
Jacob scooted backward a few feet, far enough that he could lean against the cave’s wall. “Aye,” he said at last. “I do. I spent several of my formidable years there.”
She nodded, encouraged, but didn’t press. “Yer brother dinna take to Wolvesly as ye did,” she announced, having known that from the beginning of Malcolm’s time at Wolvesly. He was a fine young man, as quiet and serious as her own brother, Michael, but she’d sensed he’d never considered Wolvesly as a second home, as she often imagined Jacob did.
“I ken Malcolm enjoyed his time there, but aye, he had nae appreciation for the beauty of Wolvesly,” Jacob concurred.
“But ye did.”
“I did,” Jacob went on. “It seemed to me to be filled with such large personalities. And I did appreciate the landscape.” He glanced toward the dark mouth of the cave, as if he could see beyond it. “And the shore.”
Elena smiled faintly. “The beach,” she mused, knowing she would likely bemoan the lack of a beach at Strathfinnan.
“Aye.” His mouth curved, just barely. “Blackwood has nae sea, naught but the loch. Just stone and heather and trees that crowd too close. At Wolvesly, there was space. Wind. Cliffs, Shoreline. I’d spend as much time as possible out there.”
“I remember you doing that,” she said softly. “Mother used to say if she couldnae find ye, she need only look toward the water.”
“Aye. She spent a fair amount of time down there herself, as did ye. She told me the sea calls to some and nae others. Yer father dinna mind when I escaped there, so long as the work was done,” Jacob said. “And Dougal said a man who listens to the sea comes back thinking straighter.”
“That sounds like him,” Elena said, and felt a warmth of sentiment settle briefly in her chest.
Jacob nodded. “He was guid to me, Dougal was. And, of course, yer father as well.”
Another pause fell, not awkward, but thoughtful. The fire cracked, a spark lifting and dying.
“Those were easier times,” Jacob said, not wistful, just factual. “Before everything became... meaner.”
Elena traced a finger along the edge of Jacob’s plaid. “War, ye mean?”
He nodded and then a grin barely curved his full lips. “Adulthood.”
She smiled in return. “Childhood is much kinder.””
