“Aye,” he said quietly.
She stared at him, exasperated and too warm for the hour. He met it with a look she could not name. It had steadiness in it. It had a desire she tried not to see. It had respect that made the ground under her feel more solid than it had all day.
He gestured toward the path. “If ye walk, ye will get warm.”
“So this is about health now,” she said.
“It always is,” he said. “I am a very sensible man.”
“Ye are aninsufferableman.”
“So I have been told.”
She let the fight leave her shoulders. It felt like standing inside a secret no one had agreed to keep.
“A stroll,” Alex said again, voice softer. “I will keep to yer side. I will keep me mouth shut unless ye want noise. Ye set the pace.”
She hesitated. “A stroll…”
“Unless ye have somewhere else ye would rather be.”
She thought of her room and the bed that would not take her. She thought of the passageway and the whispers that made her jaw tight. She thought of the bench and the quiet that had made her head loud.
She looked at him, dripping, ridiculous, solid as stone.
It was a walk. What could possibly go wrong?
After a moment, she nodded. “Fine, let’s stroll.”
They took the outer path, where the hedges grew thick and the old stones showed their age. Alex kept to Erica’s side and let the silence do what it could. He pointed to the low run of wall ahead.
“That course came after the last siege,” he revealed. “We built it too fast for it to still hold this long.”
She peered up at a squat tower across the yard. “So this one was built for watching, and it still fell?”
“Aye.”
“Impressive,” she drawled.
He laughed before he meant to. The sound felt easy in his chest.
They walked on, and the gravel beneath their feet thinned to beaten earth. The rays of the moonlight split the path in strips, but the shadows cut it back again.
He turned to look at her, at the way her face glowed under the night sky and the way her eyes seemed to almost sparkle.
“So, which parts are the oldest?”
“The corner there,” he said. “And the stairs by the east wall.”
“Who chose the colors in the hall?”
“Me grandmaither.”
She nodded. “Of course. That explains everything,” she said, and his mouth curved.
When they neared a thick hedge, he lifted a hand. “Mind here. This path is ken for snakes.”
She stopped dead. “Snakes?”
