Page 54 of A Virgin for the Icy Highlander
“People.” Ellie shrugged. “Here. At the other castle. Both.”
“Good things?”
Ellie covered her mouth as another snort came out. “Nay.” She shook her head to add insult to injury. “Oh, one did! At the other castle!”
Hunter found that incredibly hard to believe, seeing as every person at her grandfather’s castle despised him viscerally. It was a miracle nobody had spit on him or tried to kill him when he’d finally claimed his daughter back, although there hadn’t been too many people left, in truth.
“What did they say?”
Ellie stroked the kitten’s tail. “That it’d be nice to get to ken me faither. So, ye. I liked him. He was nice to me. I trusted him.”
“And who said that?” Hunter pressed, bewildered.
“One of me uncles.” Ellie squinted. “I cannae remember his name.”
Hunter could, but he wasn’t inclined to tell her that the man she thought was so nice wasn’t very nice at all. Instead, he meantto let her believe that she’d had at least one friend back at her grandfather’s castle. Where was the harm, when she was never going back there anyway?
“Well, I’m glad there was at least one person who spoke kindly of me,” he said with a forced smile, hoping she couldn’t tell the difference. “Now, ye have totrustSnowflake here. He’s loyal to ye already; he willnae let ye down, but ye mustnae force him, alright?”
Gently, he peeled the white ball of fluff from her shoulder and set it down on the ground. The kitten gave a halfhearted hiss in his direction before bounding over to Ellie and rubbing himself against her ankles, all while weaving in and out in a figure eight.
“See!” Ellie cried. She scooped the kitten up and cradled him close. “He likes me! He just wanted me to chase him. He likes playin’, just like me.”
Hunter rocked back on his haunches, letting out a resigned chuckle. “Aye, there’s always that possibility too.”
“Goodnight, Faither,” she said abruptly, still grinning from ear to ear, with her precious, fluffy prize in her arms. “Sleep well!”
“Goodnight,” he replied, watching fondly as she took off down the hallway, running all the way—no doubt—back to her room.
The kitten knew what it wanted, apparently, but would Grace, once she heard what Hunter had to say about the past?
He had a feeling it wouldn’t be nearly as simple or as cheerful an outcome, no matter how much he wished otherwise.
“And you know, just by the weight, if it is the right amount?” Maddie asked, scribbling furiously in her notebook.
Ailis chuckled at the woman’s enthusiasm. “I’ve tried for years to get anyone interested in me work here without a bit of luck. I didnae realize I needed to look south of the border to find a willing listener for all the knowledge locked up in me wee skull.”
Across the healer’s chambers—a surprisingly airy set of rooms in the east wing of the castle, with tall windows that let in the hazy morning light—Ailis’s apprentice coughed loudly.
“Nae includin’ ye, Judith!” Ailis shouted while flashing a guilty grimace at Maddie and Grace, who flanked her at one of the large, timeworn workbenches.
They had spent an hour, after breakfast, going through her tremendous collection of herbs, tonics, tinctures, salves, oils, and everything in between. Rather, Ailis and Maddie had been going through them, talking at length, while Grace had been staring dreamily into the distance, thinking of last night.
Lilian, meanwhile, had retired to her bedchamber after breakfast, complaining that she hadn’t written a single letter since she arrived. She didn’t want to worry her father andbrother, who had no idea where she was, and would be kept in the dark about it, too.
“If I do not write, they will become suspicious, and… heavens, they might visit,”she’d said in a panic, before shooting off upstairs to pen the letter that would hold them back.
“And this, you said, is useful for sleep?” Maddie prodded one of the little burlap sacks, cut and sewn from a larger sack.
Ailis nodded. “Valerian. That’ll knock ye out in nay time at all. That’s one to be careful with, I’ll warn ye now.”
“Would you say that sleepiness could be counted as an emotion, or would it be deemed more of a… physical state?” Maddie asked, and the words snapped Grace out of her trance.
The healer pursed her lips, then tilted her head from side to side as if that might help her to decide on an answer.
At the same time, Grace leaned over and whispered, “That experiment is over, Maddie. He figured it out.” She blushed a little. “I meant to tell you last night, but… you’d all gone to bed by the time I returned. And I simply forgot my entire brain this morning. Truly, it is still in my bedchamber, tucked beneath my pillow, or lost down the back of the bed somewhere.”
“We didn’t think it wise to stay at the dining table with two gentlemen,” Maddie replied with a wink. “The odds weren’t in our favor—people might have gotten the wrong idea, thinkingthat this was some manner of boarding school excursion for getting Horndean girls married off. Now, tell me, how were the fireflies?”
