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“Primula scotica,” I murmur, leaning in close. “Far prettier than the name suggests. And,”—I raise my voice into a ridiculous high-pitched imitation of my gran—“‘they’ll settle you, lad, better than any tonic if you’d only stop squirming long enough to smell ‘em.’”

“Aye, well,” a voice says behind me, sharp as a dropped pin, “you sound like a man who’s been left too long talkin’ to himself.”

I damn near leap out of my skin.

I straighten too quickly and nearly lose my footing on the bank. My boot skids across the wet grass. “Gods above—” I snatch for the nearest birch trunk, heart hammering hard against my ribs. “Ye damn near frightened the soul out of me.”

The figure steps around the trunk then, moving into the pale morning light, and I go still. For the space of a heartbeat, I forget how to close my mouth.

Ellen MacGregor.

Once, I might have thought of her only as Patrick MacGregor’s practical, pricking-needle of a daughter—the sharp-eyed girl who spent my growing years correcting me, besting me, and looking entirely too pleased whenever she did. That’s not been true for a long while now.

For years, I told myself I enjoyed sparring with her because she gave as good as she got. Because making her roll her eyes felt like a victory worth claiming.

But somewhere along the way, I started wanting the smile after. Then the glance. Then the sound of my name in her mouth.

And before I had the sense to stop, I was looking for her everywhere. Across rooms. Across fields. Catching the way she softened for my mother. Watching how the grief of losing her mother and sister, braided tight with pride, had forged her into something formidable, beautiful, and impossible to forget.

Through Ellen’s grief, my mother found something like the daughter she had always hoped to have.

Her hair isn’t in its usual severe arrangement; her black curls have come loose, wild strands slipping free and clinging to her temples and neck. It isn’t the tidy fashion women wear most days, but something softer—unruly, radiant—and it near robs me of sense.

Long dark lashes. Colour in her cheeks from the cold. Sharp hazel eyes, always.

She’s always had a beauty unmatched, but now I understand why men are driven to carve women into stone—so they can look upon it whenever the wanting turns unbearable.

The thought strikes clean through me. Not simply that she is beautiful beyond measure, but how badly I could lose myself in the looking. In the wanting. In her.

And now my mind is doing something traitorous.

I’ve caught myself staring—proper staring—and try to drag my eyes away, but it’s like asking my lungs to forget how to breathe.

She tilts her head, lips tight with amusement. “Too captivated by yer floral audience to speak, Sinclair?”

“Captivated?” I echo once I trust my tongue not to tangle. “Hardly. I’m tryin’ to breathe life back into my body after you near scared it out of me, ye quiet wee sneak.”

Her mouth twitches—just once—before she forces it still. She levels an intense, measuring glare at me, the sort that says she knows exactly where I’m meant to be this morning… and that this birch grove is not it. And I’m making it far too clear I’m struck by her, while she’s doing her best not to let that anywhere near her face.

“Well…” she says, voice crisp. “Some of us are busy wi’ Bealtaine duties. Others apparently sneak off to whisper sweet nothings to the undergrowth. Best ye be off now. Do yer best to resemble a respectable member of society.”

I try not to grin. She tries not to stare at me too long. We both fail.

I glance at the basket on her arm again, noticing more this time: curls of fresh fern, a spray of gorse, a tangle of young birch twigs, and a neat bundle of rowan. Her hem is streaked green from the grass, and her fingertips shine with dew—signs of the morning’s work I’m currently avoiding.

“Dew gathering?” I ask, trying for casual and failing by a long stretch.

She gives me a small, exasperated nod.

“And bringing in the green… appears you’re already ahead of half the tenantry.”

Her chin lifts a fraction. “Someone has to see it done properly, and I prefer the work done right.”

“Aye,” I say, “and that’ll be you.”

She narrows her eyes, and I look back as if willing her to see I’m being earnest.

She steps past me then, down toward the primroses, the grass giving under her bare feet. She goes carefully, but she doesn’t mince her steps, just plants her feet sure and certain, like a woman who knows where she’s going and what she’s about when she gets there.