Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 146289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 731(@200wpm)___ 585(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 731(@200wpm)___ 585(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
I bring the heater in first, planning to haul it to the shed later. Then the groceries, in three trips—I wanted to do one trip like you wouldn’t believe, but my body simply won’t let me do that anymore. The kitchen smells like warm bread by the time I’m done because I’ve left the door open and the sun has reached the woodsmoke in the curtains and let it loose. The cheese and milk go in the fridge. The cereal and crisps go on the shelf. The clementines go in the bowl, because that’s where clementines go to die.
I put the kettle on to make myself a cozy cup of tea with loads of oat milk and sugar, my afternoon treat. Then I remember the laundry.
I left my clothes and some sheets on the line yesterday before the binoculars happened and forgot about them in the catastrophe of myself. The line is strung between the cottage and a rough wooden post that points beyond the herb garden. The sheets have been getting sun and breeze for twenty-four hours straight. They will be the cleanest sheets in the Highlands.
I take the wicker basket from the mudroom and walk out into the back garden, humming a song that was on the radio earlier. The mint has the sun full on it and the smell of it is everywhere. I duck under the line. The first sheet comes off the pegs easily. I fold it against my chest, warm and stiff, and breathe in the scent of the detergent, like a I’m in a commercial. Once again, I’m delighting in romanticizing my new life, even if I’m not even close to being a domestic goddess. I just play one on TV.
I reach for the second sheet, and, as I do so, glance at the ground.
At the strange shadow beneath the sheet.
I lower my hands and crouch down to look at the hem.
There are a pair of legs underneath it. Black trousers. Dark boots.
I stand up slowly. My mouth goes bone dry. I’ve got one hand on the corner of the sheet and the other on the line-pole, and a part of me thinks, Iris, what you are about to do is the most stupid thing a woman in a horror movie ever does. Then I do it anyway, because it’s sunny, because the bay is bright, because I’d rather know than not.
I pull the sheet down off the pegs.
He’s standing right there.
Alasdair. In daylight. In dark trousers and a plain grey dress shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, his hair dry for once and falling dark to his jaw, his hands at his sides like he’s been waiting and trying not to look it. The sun is full on him in a way the dusk last night was not. He is, in this light, less impossibly beautiful and more—
—more human.
Which is its own kind of problem because why would I ever think he was anything but?
“I was at the front,” he says by way of explanation. “You didn’t answer. I came round.”
I blink at him, my pulse hammering along in my throat.
“I called out. Twice. I’d half-decided the cottage was empty, and then I—” He glances at the line, at the sheet now in my arms. “—well, you came out. Seemed worse to slink off then.”
“So you stood behind my laundry?”
“Yes.”
“A man hiding behind my laundry. Which is worse than slinking off.”
He has the grace to look briefly embarrassed. “When you put it that way.”
A breath comes out of me that’s halfway to a laugh. “Jesus Cripes.”
This man lacks more social skills than I do.
We stare at each other for a moment, at an impasse of sorts. The sheet is in my arms, smelling of sun and grass and Effie’s detergent, and it seems so damn wholesome compared to this darkly handsome, possibly dangerous man standing across from me.
The same man who…
Images flood my brain at the most inappropriate moment. Last night. The window. The binoculars. The smile. That fucking smile, the one the wolf might give before it devours the lamb.
I can tell he’s not going to mention it, and I’m certainly not in hell going to mention it. Which means it’s permeating the space around us until there is nothing else.
“Was there something you needed?” I inquire, my voice coming out steadier than I feel.
“No,” he replies plainly. “I was out walking. I thought I’d come by and see how you’re doing.”
“Walking…”
“Aye. It’s a thing people do.”
“From the castle.”
“And around the bay.”
“That’s not a short walk.”
He looks up briefly at the sky, squinting at it, and I take a moment to study his jawline and the fullness of his mouth. “It’s a fine afternoon for it, isn’t it?”
He says it like someone who’s prepared to stand in a back garden and discuss the weather for as long as I want him to. I look past him at the bay. The water is a hard blue under the sun, making it look like an ordinary loch and not whatever else it is at dusk, a place of dark thoughts and drowned wives.