Page 78 of The Laird's Masked Passion

“Dinnae wait fer me.”

That was what Colin had said, as if sleep were a servant she might summon upon command, and as if his absence from their chamber were not a thing the room would notice.

Elspeth had answered him with admirable composure. “I assure ye, Laird MacKenzie, I have nay intention of arranging me dreams according tae yer convenience.”

He looked at her then, with that still, dark attention which always made her feel as though she had spoken too much and not nearly enough. There was blood on his sleeve, though thankfully, not his own. It was merely a grim trace of the day’s violence, the prisoner’s defiance, and the attack that left the castle unsettled from gate to hearth.

Colin needed to question the prisoner again, or watch him be questioned. Or perhaps merely stand in the same room and make silence do what kinder methods could not. Elspeth did notask. She learned that some questions only sharpened his face, and she was in no humor to be answered by stone.

So she had gone to bed alone. It ought to have pleased her. A sensible woman, recently married against her will to a man who looked as if he had been carved for battle and cursed for endurance, should have rejoiced in the privacy of a chamber unoccupied by him.

Yet sleep refused her with an obstinacy equal to her own. The bed was too wide. The fire was too low. The air was too fragrant with lavender and smoke. Beyond the shuttered window, the wind worried at the walls, and somewhere far below a guard called to another in the yard. The castle did not sleep and neither did she.

Elspeth turned once, then again, then sat up with a huff so sharp it might have offended the darkness.

“This is absurd,” she informed the room.

The room, being wiser than most men, did not answer.

She slipped from the bed, dragged her shawl about her shoulders, and stood for a moment in the pale glow of the embers. Her shift clung softly to her skin where the night had grown too warm beneath the covers, and her loosened hair fell over one shoulder in a troublesome spill. She should have rung for Skye, but the thought of waking her maid simply because Lady Elspeth MacKenzie could not manage her own unease was intolerable.

Tea, then.

That was what she needed: tea, and perhaps a book. There had to be books somewhere in this castle beyond Colin’s ledgers, maps,and grim histories of men killing one another over land, cattle, and pride. If she found one sufficiently dull, it might do what sleep had refused.

She took a candle, shielded its flame with one hand, and eased open the chamber door. The corridor outside lay dim and cool, the walls holding the day’s chill though June waited beyond them. Tapestries stirred faintly in a draught, their woven huntsmen forever pursuing beasts that never tired. The stones beneath her feet were cold enough to make her regret not changing out of her slippers.

She had gone no farther than the turning by the west passage when she heard it.

A giggle.

Elspeth froze. It was not the sort of laughter one heard in halls by daylight, when maids moved with linen and men carried messages under other men’s eyes. It was soft, breathless, and quickly swallowed, as though the person who uttered it wished to be quiet and could not quite manage obedience.

Then came a man’s voice, low and teasing. Elspeth’s first thought was that she ought to retreat at once. Her second was that retreating too quickly might make a sound. Her third, and most mortifying, was that she was standing in a dark corridor in her shift and wrap, with her hair down and a candle in her hand, which was precisely the sort of arrangement from which a reputation could be ruined by a servant with imagination and a lady in slippers.

She blew out the candle and darkness folded around her. The voices drew nearer. Elspeth gathered the hem of her shawl and slipped into the recess beside a narrow table, half-hidden by ahanging that smelled of dust and old rosemary. Her heart was beating with foolish force. She pressed herself against the wall and held her breath as two figures came into view at the end of the passage.

A maid appeared first, fair-haired and small, with her cap clutched in one hand rather than upon her head. A young man followed, broad-shouldered, with the easy, loose-limbed movement of someone accustomed to stables rather than polished floors. He caught the maid about the waist. She gasped, then laughed into his shoulder.

“Hush,” she whispered, though she did not sound as if she truly wished him to obey.

“I have been trying,” he murmured.

“Ye have been failing.”

“Aye, but with devotion.”

The maid struck his chest lightly. He caught her hand and kissed her fingers, one after another, with such exaggerated reverence that she made that same helpless little sound again.

Elspeth’s face warmed. This, she thought, was none of her business. It was also directly in her path.

The couple stumbled together toward a small room just beyond the turning. The young man opened the door with a care that suggested practice, and they slipped inside. The door drew nearly shut behind them, but not entirely. A thin seam of warmer darkness remained between wood and frame.

Elspeth waited. She counted ten breaths. Then twenty. Then fifty, because she was nothing if not generous to impropriety when it had the good sense to remove itself from a corridor.

At last, believing the passage clear, she stepped from the recess, but a sound stopped her. It was not laughter this time, but rather a sigh. It was soft and trembling, followed by the young man’s voice, so low she could not make out the words, only the shape of tenderness in them.

Elspeth should have walked away. Truly, she should have. No decent woman, no well-bred woman would creep nearer to a half-open door because a maid sighed behind it.