Beitris walked carefully beside Alasdair, trying to ignore the feel of his heat, the muscled forearm beneath her fingertips, focusing on not tripping or stumbling. Their ride here had been nerve-racking as she tried to keep her balance sitting sidesaddle in front of him, avoiding leaning into him or even bumping into him if possible. No doubt he made her nervous, but she was determined to be brave.

Her stomach roiled, and her head pounded with uncertainty, but she did her best to still the trembling in her limbs. She couldn’t let him see her fear, or he might feed off of it. That or grow impatient with her very quickly. While she felt relieved that he had acquiesced to her desire to have Elspeth continue as her companion, to live under the same roof, she also knew that she would do well not to test his patience or his generosity.

Generosity? While she was grateful for his favor in allowing Elspeth to come live with them, she also knew that nothing was without a price. She had heard much talk about Alasdair over the years, and while he had not yet shown his true character, she knew it would only be a matter of time. The belligerence, the arrogance, perhaps even the cruelty. In a small village such as hers, gossip and rumor were a normal part of life. She knew better than to believe all of it, but with so many people telling the same stories, wouldn’t they have been based in truth?

Even though she couldna see him, she felt Alasdair looming over her. While his size and reputed ferocity should make her feel safe, she felt quite the opposite. She was at his mercy. Wives had no rights, no freedoms. She recalled that except for rare occasions, her mother had almost always silently acquiesced to the wishes and demands of her husband, Beitris’s father. Thoughts of her father prompted a frown. She still couldn’t believe that he had betrothed her, given her away in marriage to Alasdair Macintyre, not to such a man with such a fearsome reputation. Was he that eager to get rid of her? So eager that he had given Alasdair the dowry that his own wife, her mother, had brought into the marriage?

She told herself to stop thinking this way. Alasdair was likely as stunned as she, to come home from war, wounded and scarred, only to find his father dying, to learn that he had been betrothed to a blind woman. She shouldn’t be feeling sorry for herself. She should do what she could to prove to Alasdair that she was of value, that she wouldna be an added burden to him. She couldn’t remember much of the history of this place, as she had only been inside a couple of times. Beside her, Alasdair paused.

“Yer standing in front of the threshold,” he informed her.

She nodded and extended her right arm outward to feel the sturdy support of the doorway, heard the dull squeak of the door on rusty hinges as Alasdair opened the latch and gently pushed the door open. She turned her head to face the large block of shadow beside her, then let go of his arm, feeling for the other side of the threshold with exploring fingers. She stepped inside and, as she remembered, felt thick planking beneath her feet. She tried not to shuffle her walking slippers across the floorboards as she stepped farther inside. It smelled musty and damp, not totally unexpected, as it had been uninhabited for over a decade.

She heard Alasdair enter the main room behind her. Her nose tickled, and she sneezed. She felt her cheeks flush again with embarrassment. The place needed a good cleaning. Swinging her arms in front of her, she turned to her left, exploring, getting an idea of the size of the room. She remembered that there had been a table over in this corner of the room, but there was nothing there now. She paused in the corner and then turned toward Alasdair’s footsteps, exploring the other side of the room.

“There’s not a table here anymore is there?” She heard him pause, the rustle of fabric as he turned toward her.

“Nay, the room is empty.”

She nodded, made her way closer to the wall, and then felt along rough stones, feeling the chinking between them, some of it crumbling beneath her fingers. Alasdair would have to do something about that. She made her way farther into the corner, where a stone fireplace jutted out from the wall at an angle. She crouched, felt the opening, remembered the iron rod from which a cooking pot would hang, then felt along the length of the hearth, her fingers sinking into ashes. Another sneeze, and as she rose, she brushed her hands together, and stopped herself just before she wiped them on her wedding dress.

Her wedding dress.

A flush of heat surged through her body. She was a married woman now. She pushed the thought away and continued her exploration, feeling the stones, the thick and rough timbers along relatively equal distances along the wall, trying to picture it in her mind’s eye. Soon, feeling Alasdair’s eyes on her, she reacquainted herself with the large main room, and then found the short hallway.

She sensed him hovering in the doorway to the hallway. “I believe some of the chinking throughout the house will need repairs,” she said, then caught herself. This was not her father she spoke to; this was her new husband. Perhaps he wouldn’t appreciate being told what to do. She froze, half expecting him to come into the room and scold her, maybe even slap her for her insolence. He did neither.

“Aye, the place does need a little bit of work. How long has this land belonged to yer father?”

She continued her exploration, and then moved back toward the doorway. She found an open window, lacking any covering. “It was my mother’s dowry to my father,” she answered, feeling her way along the wall. “It hasn’t been lived in for a long time, since I was a little girl. A friend of my father lived here for a while, but he went away.”

Alasdair offered a grunt. Not very talkative.

Her exploring hands suddenly touched fabric, and she realized she was in the doorway again, touching Alasdair’s solid frame, hands splayed now on his impossibly broad chest. She quickly snatched her hands back to her side as Alasdair took a step back, away from the doorway to the hall. A surge of frustration rose within her along with yet another flush of heat in her cheeks. She wished she could quit doing that. She turned down the hallway, arms sweeping, fingers touching, her gaze taking in the shadows, the deeper shadows, the dim visages of light dispersing those shadows from somewhere. She found an open doorway on the left that led into a bedroom, prompting another flush of her cheeks. That room, like the main room, was empty. She felt a draft coming from a corner of the wall and tilted her head. “Is there a small fireplace in here?”

“Aye,” he replied.

She quickly explored the empty room and then moved back into the hallway, feeling along the walls, both of which she felt with her arms out to her sides, until she found the second doorway she remembered. Another room, slightly smaller than the one she had just left. It would make a suitable nursery—

Nay, she couldn’t think about that. She refused to think about it. The thought of lying with Alasdair filled her with a sense of dread. She pushed the idea out of her mind and focused on her task of memorizing the floor plan and the general size of the rooms. After exploring that room, she entered the hallway again and heard Alasdair off to her right at the end of the hallway. She frowned. Was there another room? She didn’t recall. She stepped in that direction, then noted his footsteps as he backed away, clearing the way for her. Her hands found an open space, framed in wood. A window. That’s right, there was a window at the end of the short hallway. It also lacked a covering.

She frowned then looked upward, knowing that she couldn’t see it, but wondering nevertheless. “Is the roof in good condition?”

Alasdair said nothing for several moments. “It also needs some repairs, but I will worry about that.”

His footsteps moved down the hallway back toward the main room. She followed, albeit at a slower pace.

“There’s an upstairs,” he said.

Upstairs? She didn’t recall an upstairs.

“A set of wood steps… rotted in several places, but I looked up there yesterday. There’s a small space with the slanting roof over it. A short wooden railing separates the length of it in half… Looks like it’s been used for storage. Elspeth can stay up there if she wants. If she doesn’t, she can stay at her cottage and ride over here when ye need her.”

She said nothing. Would Elspeth mind sleeping in a small, stuffy nook under the roof? She was used to her own home, her own space, the master of her own actions. Living with her and Alasdair, she wouldn’t have the privacy she enjoyed now…

“I will bring some furniture here from my father’s house,” Alasdair mused. “Same with the farming equipment. Only to make some repairs that yer father or perhaps the previous dweller began…”

She said nothing but nodded, suddenly feeling more self-conscious than she had when standing beside Alasdair in front of the preacher. An awkward silence filled the space until Alasdair cleared his throat.

“Would ye like to take a short walk around the house, down to the lake? Get yer bearings?”

“Yes, thank ye,” Beitris said, pleasantly surprised by the courtesy. She was still surprised that he had let her explore the house on her own, hadn’t taken her elbow and guided her around the moment they stepped over the threshold like her father had that time years ago. Occasionally, Elspeth would gently clutch her elbow, warning her of something in her way, but Beitris knew her own home… her past home, and the yard so well that she navigated it without any trouble. The same for Elspeth’s small cottage and for the most part, the village.

Still, Alasdair didn’t know her, didn’t know that she preferred to be as independent as possible, preferred not to rely on others to guide her around or do things for her. She appreciated his standing back and letting her explore her new home without intrusion, although she doubted that it was simply out of courtesy. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to. Maybe he had wanted to see if she would walk into a wall, stumble over her feet, maybe even fall.

She realized she wasn’t being fair, but she couldn’t help it. She still couldn’t understand why he had agreed to marry her, in spite of the contract between his father and hers. He could have refused. A man like Alasdair wouldna care one whit what people thought of him. Who would want to marry a blind woman? Even if Alasdair was scarred, it couldn’t be that bad, could it? He still had the use of his hands, his feet, his eyes, and yet he was now saddled with her. She tried not to feel sorry for herself, but at times, she did succumb to moments of self-pity. This being one of them.

Once again, Alasdair took her hand and placed it on his forearm. He walked perhaps twenty paces from the front door and paused. She heard his horse blowing impatiently off to the right as he described everything in this direction, turned a quarter turn, and repeated the process for each direction. Finally, facing east, he told her they were heading for the lake and to count her steps. By the time she heard the gentle lapping of water against the shoreline, she realized he had only been off his estimation by fifteen steps. She felt the soft breeze on her face, enjoying the sound of the water, and off in the distance to the left, a squawk of geese. She smiled.

“Ye hear the geese… greylag geese,” he said. “Off to the right and a little farther out is a flock of wigeons, medium-sized ducks. They have small heads. The head and neck of the males are a light brown or chestnut color, but their foreheads are a yellowish color, and their bodies grey. One is taking off now. They have white bellies… probably good fishing here. Ye like fish? Likely plenty of brown trout in that late, maybe some pike, perhaps even greyling, or perch. We shall have to find out, won’t we?”

She turned to him. “Ye’d take me out on the lake fishing?”

“Aye,” he said. “After ye learn how to swim though, and not before. Ye can cook fish?”

She nodded. She had learned how to clean fish and had fried them since she was a child. “I’m a good cook. At least my father thinks so.”

Alasdair said nothing as they continued to stand by the shore. He let go of her arm, and she heard the sound of pebbles shifting near her feet. A few seconds later, movement, fabric brushing against fabric, and then she heard the gentle plop, plop, plop of a stone skipping across the surface of the water.

She frowned in surprise. She had never even considered that Alasdair might have a playful bone in his body. She grinned up at him and held out her hand. He said nothing, but a moment later, she felt a smooth, flat stone placed in her palm. Tilting her head and turning a bit sideways, she listened, oriented herself, and then her arm swung back and then snapped forward. Plop, plop, plop, plop.

Alasdair chuckled. “Impressive.”

She nodded and turned her face toward his voice. “I’ll venture to say that I can do a lot of things that would surprise ye,” she said.

“I dinna know how to be a husband.”

The words were unexpected, once again surprising Beitris. This man with a reputation for being so arrogant, so… well, he kept surprising her.

She offered a slight shrug. “I dinna know how to be a wife, either.”

They said nothing for several moments, just standing side by side, a brief yet shared camaraderie between them.

“I know that Elspeth doesn’t trust me to provide for ye, to care for ye.”

“Elspeth… She can prove slow in trusting people,” Beitris admitted. “But she’s loyal and kind, doesn’t treat me like… like I am less than any other woman.” She turned her face toward the lake, where the shadows and her vision were a bit lighter, wavering a bit more. She felt the sun on her face, the breeze in her hair, the aroma of the water, a cluster of cattails and reeds growing nearby. “I’ll try not to be a burden to ye, Alasdair,” she said simply. She meant it.

He grunted, and then, without a word, clasped her hand and placed it once again on his forearm. Before he took a step, she placed her hand over his and removed it from her arm. “Ye lead the way. I’ll follow ye.”