Page 110
“What,” she asks carefully, “has just occurred?”
I clear my throat. My mouth has gone bone-dry, and the urge to flee is near physical.
“It appears,” I say evenly, “that ye’ve been abandoned.”
Ellen’s eyes narrow further. “They’ve abandoned me with you.”
I try—Gods help me—not to smile.
“It appears so,” I murmur, humour tugging at my mouth, my tone suggesting I’m not suffering from it.
Colour comes up in her cheeks, quick and unwilling, whether from annoyance or something else I’m not bold enough to name.
She gestures around the room, as if presenting evidence in court. “Suspiciously.”
And then she truly looks at me. Not past me. Not around me. At me. And it catches.
It stops at my shoulder.
My chest.
Drops, slow as a hand trailing down linen, to the swing of tartan at my hip.
Ellen blinks once, as if her own eyes have betrayed her.
“And you,” she says, voice laced with more suspicion, “are in yer best Highland dress.”
I glance down as if I’ve only now remembered what I put on. Sinclair tartan laid careful and heavy across my body, the kilt pinned and belted, sporran polished, hose pulled high, my old jacket sitting sharper on my shoulders than my usual work-worn clothes ever do.
“Aye,” I say, deadpan. “It would appear I’ve committed to the crime.”
I won’t remark on her beauty, not aloud. It’s plain enough that Ma heard the need in my voice when I asked her, begged her, to see that Ellen came dressed in her finest today.
She’s wearing a dress that looks like it belongs in a painting someone meant to keep for generations. Simple, but never plain. Soft fabric gathered high beneath her plump breasts, sleeves fitted neat to her arms, a shawl drawn close, and a ribbon tied at her throat like a finishing spell. She’s pinned her hair up, black as night, with a few loosened strands at her temples catching the light like ink gone glossy.
And when she looks at me again—
There’s a flicker. A bare, honest thing. Hunger, swift enough it could’ve been my own wishful thinking, except it drops low in me and lights a slow ache there that I’ve no business wanting right now.
For a single breath, she takes me in as if she means to devour the sight.
She schools it far too quickly.
“Well,” she says, after a pause that rather undermines the nonchalance she’s aiming for, “ye look… decent.”
Liar.
I take one step closer. Not too close, but close enough that the space between us feels chosen rather than accidental.
“I was hopin’—”
Ellen lifts a brow. “That’s a dangerous start.”
“Aye,” I admit with a quiet huff of laughter, because it is.
I try again, voice steadying. “A fortnight ago, ye told me that if I meant to ask ye anywhere, it needed to be a proper request,” I say. “So I’m askin’ again. Properly, this time. Will you come with me for a walk and a picnic?”
Ellen’s expression hardens into defence by habit.
