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Charming.

“I meant no insult to your bannocks.”

“To be sure,” she snapped. “Nor to my cottage.”

Perhaps he’d been a bit beastly about the sheep cote.

He cleared his throat. “Your father pays his rent.” He put his shrug in his voice, because he couldn’t move his shoulders. “If he permits you to reside in the hen house, it’s all the same to me.”

He didn’t need the fury in her face to tell him his words weren’t exactly the olive branch he’d intended.

“It’s hardly the same to me,” she said, and then, under her breath: “I’ve shared a room with a chicken before and didn’t much care for it.”

Memory stirred. “Dierdre’s little rooster?”

How old must they have been? Eight? Nine? And Isobel’s sister Dierdre no more than four or five. The girl had discovered a runty, malformed chick pecked half to death in the nesting box and tended him in secret. Isobel had beckoned him behind the byre while their fathers talked turnips and whispered the story, folding the tale into a wager.

He’s a dirty, ugly wee beastie, but Dierdre loves him like a bairn. This morning, Mum heard the cheeping, and she’ll tell Da, and he’ll wring the poor beastie’s neck. Dierdre will be so verra sad and sorry. Swear you’ll take him to Selchskerrie. We’ll run from here to the barn, and if I get there first, you’ll take him.

He’d sworn, and they’d raced, and she’d reached the barn first, but his father had called him back—bemused—when he’d tried to sneak with her into the farmhouse proper to collect his wee beastie. The next day, when she’d come with her mother to the inn to deliver butter, each pound wrapped neatly in a kale leaf, he’d offered to try again—A Pemberton keeps his vows—but she’d only shaken her head.

“What ever became of him?” he asked.

“You remember Pinkie.” Isobel’s voice sounded strangely flat. Her fury had changed to something less legible. She seemed ready to say more, but then she pressed her lips together.

Her mouth often drew his attention, but because it was open, issuing challenges and boasts. He’d always taken pains not to notice the lush shape of her lips, their vivid color.

Proximity—horizontal proximity—proved a complicating factor. A bizarrely extended factor, he realized, now that he’d begun to unscramble his thoughts. Shouldn’t she have jammed one of her pointy elbows into his ribs and shoved off? Why so motionless?

“I say,” he said. “Have you injured yourself?”

Her eyes narrowed. Her eyes—they were gray as the winter sea, framed by long, straight black lashes that made her every glance seem to fly directly at you, like an arrow.

“Injured myself? That’s a tickle. You broke the branch.”

“Our combined weight broke the branch. I bid you stay on the ground.”

“You should have heeded your own advice. Or learned how to captain your wee flying ship.”

He didn’t excuse caddish behavior, no. But she’d test the patience of a saint.

He tried to look down his nose at her, a failure given their present positions. He succeeded only in crossing his eyes, as he announced, with considerable hauteur: “I am an accomplished aeronaut.”

“Are ye now?”

“I am. On one occasion, I attained the altitude of twenty thousand feet. Twenty thousand feet—that’s the height of the highest peak in the Andes Mountain range. Five thousand feet higher than Mount Blanc. About four miles above the surface of the Earth. I’ve voyaged all over Scotland, without mishap.”

“Without your trousers, more like.”

“Before today I never so much as loosened my tie.” He spoke crisply. “Today represents an anomaly. I encountered an unexpectedly cold current of air. The cold air chilled the gas and caused a precipitous descent. I staved off disaster by discharging ballast, but no sooner had I ascended than a bird punctured the balloon. Hence, my seeking an expeditious landing.”

“Attacked by a bird,” she mused. “You make enemies everywhere, don’t you? Even among our feathered friends.”

“You’re jealous.” He gave her his most obnoxious smile. “Don’t be. None of my enemies compare to you.”

“In any case,” she sniffed. “I am entirely uninjured.”

“Then I fail to understand why you’re on top of me.”