“Whyever not?”
She sounded genuinely confused.
“I’m making sure that everyone is rubbing along well enough,” he remarked. “I find more peace when I’m alone.”
“And where do you go to be alone, then?” she asked him. “Your bedchambers?”
He shook his head.
“I have a study,” he replied, gesturing down another corridor.
“Will you show me?”
He hesitated. There was something about the thought of letting her in there, about the thought of allowing her to see oneof the few places in the world he could truly switch off and relax, that made him feel… vulnerable. Exposed.
But, if she were to make this place her home, he supposed that she deserved to see every part of it. She’d get there anyway, eventually; better to do it when he was there to guide her, than to let her go wandering and allow her to find God only knew what.
She hung on to his arm as he guided her towards the corridor that led to his study. In truth, this place was a sanctuary to him, somewhere he could come when the pressures of real people became too much; though he had far from an impressive library, he had gathered a fair collection of books, most of them covering folk tales from the time he had grown up. He had thought, distantly, that he might read the same stories to his own children one day, though now she was by his side, he supposed that was more real than it had ever been.
As they drew closer, the various portraits that lined the corridor loomed in the corner of his eye. Most of them depictions of the Lairds that had come before him, some of them so faded it looked like they had come from another age entirely. But, closest to the door, there was the image of a woman. Though her pose was demure, her hands folded on her lap, the portrait captured a twinkle in her eye, and he could almost see a small smile at the corners of her mouth.
He realized, all at once, that he had come to a halt in front of the picture. He was staring. He cleared his throat and pushed open the door, before she had a chance to ask him what he was looking at with such intensity.
“Oh, goodness!” she exclaimed, as she glanced around. “Look at all the books…”
She dropped his arm and made her way into the room, and he couldn’t help but smile as he watched her peer through the tomes that he had collected over the years. She skimmed her fingers with an almost reverent touch across the spines, pullingone out from time to time to examine the cover, and then to flick through the illuminated pages. She paused at a picture, in one of the books, a selkie, a beautiful woman shedding her seal form to emerge from the water. It struck him that it wasn’t entirely unlike the way that they had come across each other, when she had climbed from the river, naked before him.
“Do you enjoy reading?” she asked him, and he nodded.
“Aye. And I like keeping these old stories alive.”
“Did you grow up hearing this kind of tales?”
He nodded. Though he still felt a little unsure at her presence in such an intimate part of his life, she was treating it with the utmost respect.
“My mother used to tell my sisters and me stories, when we were growing up,” she murmured, as she carefully replaced one of the books onto the shelf. A soft wind blew outside, humming at the windows.
“Did she, aye?”
He took a step towards her. A strand of hair was grazing her neck, where it had escaped from the braid she was wearing. He longed for nothing more than to reach out and brush it back into place, but he feared his touch might scare her. Even now, after all they had shared, there was still a part of him that felt as though he might harm her if he laid a hand on her, as though she were a relic, so delicate she could shatter under the barest caress.
She turned to face him. She seemed slightly surprised that he was standing so near to her, but she nodded.
“She was an amazing storyteller,” she remarked, a little wistful. “She would make out the shapes of the characters on the walls with her hands, cast these shadows and make it seem as though they were talking to each other.”
The wistful tone to her voice made his chest ache. It was clear that she struggled with being so far from her family. No matterhow long she was here, he got the feeling that some part of her would always miss them, in the same way that he missed his mother, though he’d never have admitted that to anyone.
“Where do you read?” she asked, changing the subject swiftly. Glancing around the room, her eyes landed on a large bench that was propped against one of the far walls.
“Here,” he replied, as she made her way over to it. She ran her hand along the top of the velvet that lined the bench, a smile curling up her lips. His eyes were drawn to the soft outline of her fingers on the fabric, and he could still remember how perfect they had felt against his skin; how, even now, there was a part of him that craved her touch again.
But her brow furrowed as she cast her eye over the blanket and pillow that had been neatly folded at one end of the bench. She glanced up at him, tipping her head to the side in confusion.
“Do these not belong in your bedchamber?”
He paused. He did not want to admit to her that he often slept in this study. He’d read all night, and doze off in the early hours of the morning, when the first rays of the sun were creeping through the window. There were times when his mind galloped too fast to allow him to rest, and on those nights, he’d come down here and bury himself inside a book, reading until he could no longer keep his eyes open.
But it didn’t take long for her to put the pieces together. When she turned to him, her brows were knitted with obvious concern.
