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“Ye make the promise prettily enough.”

That wins a quiet huff of laughter from him. “Ye bonnie wee tyrant.”

“Poor, grievously wounded man.”

“Aye, and see how tenderly ye use it against me.”

I answer by sticking my tongue out at him, childish as you please, and that only gentles his expression further—as if coaxing even that much from me is enough to put him at ease.

“Saints above,” he murmurs, almost to himself. “Ye’ve no idea what you do to me.”

“Nor do you.”

Before I can think what to do after my admission, he steps back, not far, but enough to make the choice for me.

“Go on, Ellen,” he says, and there’s something unbearably soft in it. “I’ll come in soon. I promise.”

I don’t trust myself to answer straightaway. I only nod.

His gaze holds mine one moment longer, as if fixing me to memory, and then I turn before he can see too plainly what this conversation has made of me.

I make it halfway back across the field before I begin replaying the entire exchange.

Ye’ve no idea what you do to me.

Nor do you.

By the time the castle comes fully into view, I have already tormented myself eight different ways—over whether I sounded too cold, too sharp, too ready, whether I should have said less, or more, or perhaps nothing at all. Whether he heard the wanting beneath my refusal. Whether I had been wise to set him that challenge.

A challenge I’m suddenly certain I no longer want him to fail.

PART V

ENTRY THREE

THE JOURNAL OF A YOUNG DREAMER

Keiss, Scotland, 16 August 1798

It is unlike me to allow so much time to pass between entries. Two weeks have slipped by since Mannie stood at our table and fractured the shape of our lives, and only now do I find myself willing to sit with what followed.

Whether that delay speaks to busyness or avoidance, I cannot say with certainty.

Perhaps both.

I had once believed this house accustomed to strange things. There’s a collection of accidental pairings under the Sinclair roof, blended so well into the family that has taken us all in. I had thought the peculiarities of our living arrangement would be the strangest feature of our lives.

I was wrong.

Mannie returned to the site of the attack before he left us. He searched the ground where blood had soaked into soil and found little for it. Whatever had crossed there left no mark he could trace, no scent he could follow. Even for him, the edges of that event remained blurred.

That unsettles me more than certainty would have.

He said he must travel. That there were threads to follow elsewhere. That he would return when he could. He took the relic with him.

No one protested.

I have not yet decided whether that silence was born of trust or relief.