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’ll look around the cottage for some; there’s a lot of stuff in there.”
He reaches up to indicate the spot, and his shirt pulls tight across his back and shoulders in a way that makes me gawk. I quickly look down at the bench, as if it’s suddenly fascinating.
“And leave the door propped after you’ve worked,” he says, lowering his arm. “An hour or so. The damp gets in and won’t get out otherwise. It’s the way the buildings are here, they all bend to the weather’s ways sooner or later.”
I bend to pick up a length of cord he’s left coiled on the floor, and when I straighten, he’s closer than he was. Not crowding me. Just closer. Half a step into the space my body had thought was mine. I don’t step back. I probably should, but I don’t. He’s looking at the rafters and then at me and then at the rafters again.
“You’re going to need a stool.” He eyes me up and down.
“A stool?” I whisper, aware of how close he is.
“For the rafters. You’re tall, but you’re not quite tall enough.”
“Oh.” I clear my throat. “Right.”
He moves away. The air goes warmer where he was, and the warmth feels almost like a loss.
We work. He shows me where the iron will hold a nail and where it won’t. He hands me things—the hammer, a length of cord, a small block of wood to wedge under the bench’s short leg. Every time his hand comes near mine, he doesn’t quite touch me, and the distance feels strangely like torture.
When the racks are done, he steps back and looks at the shed the way a person looks at a job that’s finished, brushing his hands together.
“That’ll do,” he announces.
He turns toward the door. He stops at the frame with one hand on the wood, the sun coming in across the bay and outlining him.
“You’ll want the place to yourself now,” he says, glancing at me over his shoulder.
“You don’t have to go,” I blurt out.
He turns slightly and looks at me, almost in surprise.
“Iris…”
“Yeah?”
“I think it’s best I don’t come to your cottage again. Not unless you ask me to.”
I stare at him for a moment, feeling slightly off-balance, like everything in the shed has been skewed a couple of degrees. In all the strange things this strange man has said, this one might just take the cake.
“Okay. Well, how can I ask you to if I don’t see you?”
“You’ll come find me when you’re ready.”
“Ready for what?”
He looks at me for a long moment, a strange intensity passing over his face like a cloud.
“You’ll know, Foxglove.”
Then he turns and walks out of the shed, heading toward the road. I’m left in my new studio with my hands on the workbench and the heater humming softly under it and the smell of grass and salt coming in through the open door and I honestly couldn’t tell you what the fuck just happened.
He said I’ll know. Know what exactly, I’m not sure. Ready for what, I don’t know that either.
But it seems I’ll find out soon.
Chapter
Eight
I’ve been at the kitchen window for an hour; the coffee in my hand has gone cold twice. The castle is across the bay in the grey morning. Half-ruined, half not. The same view I’ve had for ten days now, except today it has hooks in me.
I’m proud of what I was able to accomplish yesterday, though. I pulled up my big girl panties and finished up in the boat shed. I cut meadowsweet from the slope and pressed it. I made a passable still life of the rowboat half-hauled on the rocks below the cottage, the kind of painting Effie would have done, and I’ve decided I want it in the kitchen if I can stand to look at it after I’ve framed it—I often can’t.
I also refrained from searching for Alasdair. And by refrain, I mean I only looked twice, and I didn’t even use my binoculars.
I didn’t see him, for what it’s worth. He told me he wouldn’t come, and he didn’t, not even on the shore with his dick out.
I thought that would be a good thing.
But…that was yesterday.
Today, the castle is calling me. There is no other word for it. It’s a thin thread behind my ribs that has been there since I opened my eyes and gotten worse in the hour I’ve been drinking cold coffee and staring at it, feeling it tug.
That said, I’m not actually going to see him. I’m going to go look at the castle, the actual castle, up close, in daylight, and confirm that the man who appeared behind my bedsheets wasn’t lying about where he lives. The cottage is mine for a year, the castle is across the bay, and I deserve to know the geography of my own situation, and who my neighbors really are. Mhairi says it’s empty; so had MacRae. Alasdair says it isn’t. At least one of them is wrong, and I’m a person who likes to settle these things and know who the lying liar pants is.