[H] Stranger in a Strange Land

[Alistair Campbell]

It hardly mattered if he was or not; the idea of eating, however quickly, while Eppie sat and waited was an unpleasant one. So, he shoved the last bite of toast into his mouth, chased it with the last few swallows of just-barely-cool-enough tea, and nodded. "I am." Wiping his hands upon his napkin, and then wiping his mouth well (how embarrassing would it be to go an entire morning with a bit of jam stuck to his lips?), he stood – and then reflexively moved to help Eppie stand, though she no doubt had little need of his help.

"I had imagined it was some particularly fine vintages that Duke was speaking of, but now you mention stones and leave me very intrigued." Of course the home was an old one; country estates often were, whether they were ancient in entirety or merely built upon the ancient bones of another castle. Inveraray was similar, in its way; the lower levels were the same as they had ever been, since the first cornerstone had been laid. The upper levels had changed, been added to, burned, and rebuilt, but that was to be expected.

Having had the night to think about it, and some hours between their last awkward interactions, the Scottish lord also found himself hoping that today would be easier. They were not quite so new to each other, at least in person; surely it was a reasonable hope. "Lead the way, Eppie. You'll find I'm a very diligent tourist."

[Hepzibah Innes-Ker]

Eppie stared at the proffered hand a tick and then accepted it. Were it anyone else — And by anyone else, she meant D — she might have batted it away with a protest that she was more than capable of standing from a chair. But this was not anyone else, although with the way Alistair's skin felt like a branding iron against her own, she might have wished it was.

"Oh— Well," she began, and huffed out a discomposed laugh. On her feet now, her hand remained in his as she stared back, tense and prettily flushed. "I think he must have some exemplary bottles down there, but I wouldn't know."

At the directive, she drew in a deep breath that lifted her chest, and then nodded as she withdrew her fingers at last. "Yes, let's. D was quite right, you know. We often find the same sort of things to be enamored of, you and I, and this is my favorite aspect of the place." Her easy smile faltered with another gulping breath and she spun on heel to march from the room.

As they passed down the service stairs, the staff peered at Alistair but only nodded politely to their mistress, well enough used to the owners traipsing wherever they pleased at odd moments of the day. "I do not think the servants much care for my being down here," Eppie whispered back to Alistair once they were walking alone down a long stonework hallway. "It isn't strictly my realm." Her expression pinched, abashed.

At the far end of the hall, a heavy, iron-banded door was set into the wall. With a little effort, Eppie pushed down on the curling metal handle and shouldered it open into a cool, inky darkness. "We haven't any gas down here," she explained as she squinted into the dim beside the door. "D won't allow it, and I suppose I can understand it, even if it's half-suspicion."

She reached out, and after a moment of fumbling and a faint rattle, light erupted before her face with the soft hiss of a struck match. Another moment's fumbling and the tinkle of glass, and she was shaking out the match as she passed a hurricane lamp Alistair's way.

[Alistair Campbell]

It was a genuine surprise that she played along, taking his hand and allowing him to treat her like the lady she was – at least in that brief moment, before they were setting off and he was left to follow like a schoolboy trailing after the schoolmarm. (Not the most apt comparison, but one that did make him swallow a laugh.)

"We do, don't we?" It was a polite confirmation, though also the truth, or near enough to it. Their specific tastes certainly diverged over some things, but when it came to the old and musty corners of the world, they had certainly found kindred spirits in each other. A thought that put a bit of pink into Alistair's ears, but at least would be hidden behind Eppie's back as she led the way.

The staff were disregarded without effort; for all that he had been away and become accustomed to a life quite different from his upbringing, Alistair was still the son of a duke. The servants weren't needed for this tour, and thus could be entirely ignored as far as he was concerned. It was kinder to them, anyway, rather than making a big to-do of the whole thing. "I don't think most servants care for anything out of the norm at all," Ali noted with a boyish grin – words prompted by more than a few scoldings by irate cooks and footmen during his younger years.

The door she had led them to was reminiscent of those that held the dungeon of Inveraray behind it, which merely served to excite him further. "I understand his hesitations. You could have a leak and never even know it, until the entire bottom half of the place disappeared under your feet." Or rather, erupted up through your feet, but that imagery was a bit gruesome to begin with so early in the morning.

Taking the hurricane lamp, he lifted it high out of habit, eyes already trying to pick out details from the darkness about them. Alistair had never been afraid of the dark, nor the quiet and still places of the earth – even man-made such as this. There was only interest on his features, and the seemingly omnipresent awareness of Eppie by his side... And the utter lack of anyone else for quite some distance. "It's just as well I don't suspect you of being cross with me. This seems the ideal kind of place to disappear a disappointing guest," he joked, raising eyebrows at the woman by his side.

[Hepzibah Innes-Ker]

"He would use that excuse, but he's more worried it will contaminate the bottles," said Eppie as she motioned for Alistair to follow her. "Or so he has said. It's possible he is in jest. I think he enjoys seeing me worked up."

Beyond the door, which swung slowly closed under its own weight, were rows of sturdy shelves lined with bottles of wine and spirits of all sorts, impossibly dustless as the circle of light passed over their gleaming glass. Eppie led Alistair down one such row and to the furthest corner of the room, at which point she took hold of his wrist without thinking and directed the lamp down toward the floor.

"There," she said, and fell immediately into a crouch, eyes bright in the lamplight. "There was a safehold here long before the house. They used whatever local stone they could find for the foundation." She pointed to faint scratches across the smoothest parts of the stone lined along the floor. They might have seemed mere defects from any distance, but closer inspection revealed runic symbols. "They're Celtic, but dating them to a tribe has proven difficult. I suspect the Atrebates. You can see here the Eadhadh, which is the yew, and I am fairly certain that is Ruis, the elder. Both to do with transition and the afterlife. D agrees they must have been funerary, which is a terrible shame, that they were moved."

[Alistair Campbell]

The explanation drew a laugh from Alistair. So far the conversation had been much more easy, with none of the missteps and pregnant pauses of the day before. It was all too easy to forget himself; to forget that it had even happened, and might happen again. Undoubtedly that was why he replied, tone teasing and without thinking, "I can hardly blame him. It must be quite the sight." An innocent enough jest, he could tell himself, but certainly not how he meant it.

It was just as well that they quickly moved into the room, and the tiles of the floor provided an excellent distraction from his impropriety. Squinting at the places she pointed, obediently moving the light much closer, the viscount leaned down without thinking, careless of any dust or dirt that might place itself upon his fine suit. Frowning slightly in thought, his fingers ghosted above the markings. He knew better than to touch them directly, the better to keep them preserved.

"I think you're right, at least to the meaning of them. This looks like úr, and again here." From where he had knelt on the cold floor, he grinned at Eppie; a part of him distantly noting how closely they had come together, bent over the runes as they were. "Would you allow me to make some rubbings of these? I'm not much of a scholar of the old ways, but my father has always had a fondness for them. Maybe he'd be able to make better meaning from the runes."

[Hepzibah Innes-Ker]

Glad for the cloak of the room's dim, Eppie bit her tongue: Alistair had seen her quite worked up only the day before, but had perhaps been too uncertain of himself or the tension of the moment to recognize as much. Belatedly, she became aware of how close they two were, and of the fact that she'd put them so — Springing to her feet, she nodded, although it wasn't as if he could possibly see the gesture.

"Of course, yes," she blurted. "They ought to have something down here, perhaps in the kitchen." This was a guess; Eppie had only been inside a kitchen thrice in her life, and then only a few inches beyond the door. But they must have a need to wrap and label things — Foodstuffs and ingredients and whatever else preparation dictated, yes?

Hand outstretched, Eppie located the edge of the closest shelf and began feeling her way back toward the door in the thin light. Pleased that she reached her destination without tripping even once, she felt of that big, iron handle and pushed, only to find it stiff and unyielding. She attempted to rattle it loose without success and then called back over her shoulder toward the pool of light.

"Alistair, I believe I may need your manly strength," she said, and then winced at her phrasing. Manly strength? Who said that?

[Alistair Campbell]

He watched, bemused, until the dark took her – the woman feeling her way through the darkness, when she might as well have asked him along, or simply borrowed the lamp. It was enough to prompt a quiet sigh; clearly things were to be, if not as bad as the day prior, still an awkward endeavor.

Alistair had, quite purposefully, turned his attention back to the flagstones while Eppie stepped away. Hearing her voice again, especially with what she had to say, raised both of his eyebrows, even as he had to smile at her choice of phrase. Abandoning the runes, he made his way - with much more ease than she had - to the door.

"It didn't seem so securely closed when you opened it at first," he noted in mild confusion, offering the lamp to Eppie before pushing at the door. He didn't feel it budge so much as a millimeter. "Well, now you're sure to think more poorly of me," Alistair joked, though there was a worry nibbling at the back of his mind. Many of the heavy doors at Inveraray had locking mechanisms; an attempt to twist the handle on this door provided some movement that stopped quite short of what he was certain would be its full range.

"Eppie," Alistair started as casually as he could manage, "Is this door usually left locked?"

[Hepzibah Innes-Ker]

"No, not that I'm aware of," Eppie was quick to reply, shaking her head in the upward glow from the lamp. "I've come down here more times than I could count, and— Oh." This last word was more enraged breath than properly-formed sound, and her nostrils flared as stepped back to the door and pounded the side of her fist in a flurry against it.

"Marmaduke Innes-Ker!" she hollered, and drummed against the wood again. "You open this door directly, you scoundrel!" As expected, there was no reply; D had likely given the staff instructions as well. Eppie let her forehead fall against the door with a low thunk, eyes squeezed closed. She could feel the heat from the lamp shivering up against her chin.

"He means us to sort this," she explained, not certain if she could bear to look back to Alistair again.

[Alistair Campbell]

Alistair was slower to realize the machinations of his host; still, he'd come to the correct realization before Eppie clarified, and was quite at a loss of words. In retrospect, the behavior itself didn't surprise him. Duke did not seem the type to do things by half, or have much patience for foolishness.

The bigger question was what he intended them to sort out.

"Well, at least we know that we aren't abandoned down here permanently," Alistair remarked with false cheer, rocking back on his heels a bit as he thought. It had been his assumption that Eppie was merely unaccustomed to guests, and she had often commented on her lack of social engagements. Perhaps it was that, and nothing else.

(He knew the likelihood of it, and hoped it anyway.)

"I suppose we might as well find a way to get comfortable, unless you've thought to smuggle in lockpicks." Gently he reached for her elbow, intending on leading her away from the door and any unhelpful servants (or dukes) lurking beyond it.

[Hepzibah Innes-Ker]

The touch to her elbow jerked Eppie free from her mortification, and she spun with a swing of the light with her, its arc picking out bottles and shelves and stone before it settled again on Alistair. What was it that D hoped for them, she asked herself again. Certainly he'd not press his ear to the door for the sounds of lovemaking before he allowed them out... Would he? Oh god.

Face hot from more than the lamp, she stared up at Alistair and blurted, "Did you mean it? In the letter?" and then promptly wanted to sink into the ancient stone of the floor. "Only, I— I thought—" Lips parted and faltering, she looked away and shook her head. "Of course not, I'm— Ignore me!" Her eyes rounded as she blinked at the middle distance and then huffed out a tense titter of a laugh.