Jacob glanced down at her, surprised into silence by her very matter-of-fact manner, which seemed to him to be too advanced for her years.
“Your brothers have gone,” he said after a moment. “Left ye here alone.”
“They always do,” she said without concern, dipping her finger into the shallow pool to turn the fish right-side-up. “But I’m nae alone—ye’re here.”
They stayed there much longer than he’d planned. Eventually the wind picked up, gusting hard enough to raise gooseflesh on their arms and legs. Jacob shifted his weight, stretching out his knees, but Elena seemed immune to the cold. Only when the thin sun slipped behind a bank of clouds did she finally straighten, rising on bare feet and shaking the sand from her skirt.
He expected her to race up the slope, as she always did, but instead she lingered, stooping to collect a piece of curved driftwood that had washed up at the edge of the pool. She inspected it closely, then struck it against the palm of her hand. “This is a guid one,” she declared.
Jacob raised a brow. “Guid for what?”
Elena shrugged. “I’ll ken when I need it.” She tucked the stick under her arm with the solemnity of someone storing away a valuable weapon.
“Ye’re an odd little thing,” Jacob said, as if just coming to that realization.
She shot him a white-toothed smile. “So my mother says.”
"D'ye collect them, then? The sticks?"
Elena nodded. "I do. Each one has a different purpose."
"And what might those be?"
"This one's for pointing at things in the sky. That's what the curve is for." She demonstrated with a sweeping gesture toward the clouds, squinting as she traced the edge of one in particular. "The others are for drawing maps in the sand, scaring away the bad dreams, and poking at things I'm not supposed to touch. I have one whose only purpose is to kill spiders."
Jacob laughed. “That one sounds more necessary than the others,” he decided.
Let her keep finding magic in tide pools, he thought with a strange bit of generosity. Let her stay barefoot in the cold and collect driftwood for purposes only she understood. Without fully acknowledging the wish, he hoped that the sea would always draw her to its edge, bare-toed and unmindful of the mean world around her.
He didn’t say any of that, of course. He only nodded, brushing the lingering sand from his hands, and started up the slope. “Come on,” he called over his shoulder, “before yer mother sends out Dougal with a search party.”
Elena followed him, barefoot and unhurried, leaving a trail of small, perfect footprints behind.
They walked the last stretch together in silence, Jacob shortening his stride to match hers.
ELENA LAY STILL BENEATHthe canopy, staring up at the shadowed beams, as she’d done since her father had sent her back inside. She’d tried to sleep, but had no success, unable to push so many tangled thoughts from her mind.
She had sought out Jacob at dawn, still half-asleep and thoughtless, roused by the muffled sounds of her father readyinghimself in the next room, the clink of his sword belt and her mother’s soft murmurs as she helped him dress for the day's journey.
Not her best decision, to have run belowstairs so carelessly, her concern for Jacob overriding all good sense.
Och, and then she’d made it awkward—more than it had been—by what she’d nearly done. Her body had moved before her mind could stop it, arms lifting as though she had any right to cross the gulf of space between them.
What had she been thinking?
She pressed her palm briefly to her eyes, willing the memory away.
It was finished now, but she still saw how Jacob's face had frozen, his eyes wide with disbelief before narrowing into something harder. Her father's nostrils had flared as they always did when his temper sparked, his voice dropping to that dangerous quiet that promised storms to follow—neither reaction had been unwarranted.
She'd been a fool to mistake survival for intimacy, to believe that what had bloomed between them in the shadows of the forest could withstand the harsh light of day and the judgment of others. And Strathfinnan—order, proper Strathfinnan—was no place for such mistakes.
Still, she had only been concerned for him, only yesterday returned from their adventure, wounded, ill-nourished.
She had wanted him to stay, didn’t want him to leave, had simply wanted to know he was safe.
Grumbling with annoyance at herself, she swung her legs from the bed and reached for her shawl just as a knock sounded at the door.
Her mother, she presumed.
