Page 22 of Bonetide

“And what do you do for work?” I go on.

“This and that,” he repeats what I said earlier.

“Family money, then.”

A small pause. “I had a great deal of it once. I’ve learned to make it last.”

“And you’ve been here a long time, I gather?”

“Yes.” He pauses, his brows coming down. “I won’t lie to you, Iris.” He uses my name the way he used it the first time, all gruff and low and smooth all at once. “But I’m not going to tell you everything tonight.”

“Uh, okay. That’s a hell of a thing to say.”

“Aye.”

He doesn’t make excuses for it. He doesn’t say anything that might explain why his conversational skills are upside down and sideways.

I stare at him, trying to figure him out. The sun has dropped another inch behind the castle and the light through the window has gone from gold to a deeper, more burnt-honey color, and the breeze has picked up enough that I can hear it moving through the herbs in the kitchen garden behind him.

“You knew Effie then.” I think of her letter, of her words, her warning.

“I did.”

“Did you know her well?”

“Well enough.”

“What does ‘well enough’ mean?”

“It means I knew her for a long time. We weren’t friends, but we had an understanding.”

“What kind of understanding?”

A thoughtful look crosses his face. “She kept her wards up. I respected them. She was superstitious to the bone, kept to herself, kept her doors locked, kept salt at the windows. There are people in this country who still live that way. I’m from the kind of family that knew not to take offense.”

The kitchen has gone properly dim behind me. The salt line on the sill is a thin pale ridge in the failing light. He said wards without any irony or contempt for an elderly woman’s irrational behavior.

“All right then,” I say, because I’m not sure what else there is to say. I don’t dare mention the letter, I feel that’s a dangerous admission itself.

Meanwhile, Alasdair has stopped being lit by the gold of the sun, and started being lit by the bluer, colder light of dusk. The planes of his face have shifted in a way I’m finding it hard to keep looking at directly. He’s starting to look less like a man and more like something else. Something…ancient.

“I think you’re going to love living here, just as she did,” he adds. “The loch goes phosphorescent some evenings, in late summer, any day now. When the plankton bloom. A hand trailed through the water comes back blue.”

As blue as your eyes?

“Sounds magical.”

“It’s nature, not magic.” He gives me a stern look, as if he thinks I might be as superstitious as Effie.

The breeze drops. The kitchen behind me has gone fully dim. I’ll have to turn on a lamp soon, but I don’t want to let him out of my sight. The doors are locked and I can’t imagine this very still, seemingly polite if not strange man, breaking in and doing me any harm, even though there is a small knot of dread in my stomach that does say, in a quiet voice, he could very well do me harm, and might even like it.

“It’s late,” he suddenly announces.

He doesn’t follow it up. He doesn’t say I should go or I should let you get some sleep. He lets the statement sit between us like a hand laid on the table, palm up. The wait is the thing he’s offering.

I almost say you don’t have to go.

I feel the words rise in my throat, distinct, fully formed, you don’t have to go, and I close my mouth around them and swallow them back. I can feel him watching me not say them.