“L-Laird!” the boy stammered, nearly tripping over his own boots as he straightened.
Elsie turned. Her smile faltering just a touch as she met Halvard’s gaze. “I was asking young Ruairidh here about the northern forest paths,” she gave in way of explanation, though Halvard noted no guilt in her tone, he saw that she was softening to keep him in check. “He has been explaining a folly, how the guards read the map on their patrols.”
The guard swallowed hard. “Aye, m’laird.”
Halvard didn’t trust himself to speak directly to the lad, and he knew Elsie spoke the truth, but he was unable to let go of the sight of her ease with another man, when it should have been with him.
Before the awkwardness could stretch further, the great hall doors burst open. A small boy stumbled inside, cheeks smudged with soot, eyes wide with terror.
“Laird! M’Laird!” he cried. “Please come, there’s a fire in Braemore! So many houses are burnin’,”
Any moment of personal jealousy Halvard was feeling evaporated. He felt Elsie place a hand on his arm in alarm as she let out a gasp.
The young guard took off at a run as Halvard looked down at the boy. “How long, lad?”
“Maybe less than a quarter hour, laird,” he said, breathless. “I ran fast as I could.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Elsie stepped forward at once, kneeling beside the boy, hands steady even though her breath shivered against the smoke drifting from the open gates. She pressed two fingers lightly to his throat and looked up sharply.
“We have to go immediately.”
“Nay,” Halvard began, the refusal sharp and instinctive, a growl pulled from somewhere deep. “Ye’ll?—”
She rose in one swift motion, lifting her chin with a resolve that punched straight through his ribcage. “I’m going. You’ll need hands for water, bandages, someone who can help keep the wounded alive.”
She wasn’t wrong, and that was the damned infuriating part. She stood so small and fierce before him, and yet she faced danger as though she had been born for it. Something inside him twisted—ugly, savage, protective.
Within minutes they were all ready to leave. The boy had been seen too and Halvard was walking toward the horses. Sten appeared beside him, face grim. Behind him came Thomas Redfern, still a little pale from illness but definitely better and determined, as though he dared the sickness to hold him back from the stables.
“We’re ready, me laird,” Sten said.
Halvard exhaled once, steadying the roil in his chest. “We ride.”
He stepped closer to Elsie—close enough that her breath brushed his jaw, close enough that only she heard the warning rasp low in his voice. “Ye stay at me side, lass. If I say move, ye move.”
She did not flinch. She only nodded. “Understood.”
The simplicity of her answer pierced him with something sharp and unwelcome.
Halvard tore his attention back to the task and raised his voice. “Mount up!”
Within moments the courtyard erupted into controlled chaos—men pulling reins tight, saddles thudding, blades clinking as they strapped on steel. Elsie mounted behind one of the men, skirts gathered so she could swing up without hesitation.
They thundered out of the gates, hooves pounding the earth in a heartbeat rhythm. The smoke plume that had been a distant smear now rose thick and dark, curling upward like a beckoning hand of warning.
Halvard did not slow. If anything, he urged his horse harder.
The air thickened long before they reached the village, acrid smoke turning breathing into a struggle. By the time they crested the final ridge, the devastation struck like a blow to the chest. Three cottages stood half-collapsed, their frames glowing red in dying pockets of flame. The stench of charred timber clawed at Halvard’s throat, but worse were the sounds—the hacking coughs, the cries, the ragged breaths of children too young to understand what was burning before them.
The villagers were ghosts against the haze—faces streaked with soot, eyes wild with fear and exhaustion. Men hauled buckets long after strength had deserted them; women crouched around crying bairns; older folk stood dazed, staring at the ruins of their lives.
Halvard swung off his horse before it fully stopped. “Sten, the well,” he barked. “Get more men on it. Double the line.”
Elsie was already running, skirts gathering soot as she reached a woman clutching a sobbing child. She knelt, murmuring something calm, and Halvard saw the faint tremor of her hands even as she steadied the girl. Redfern joined two men straining to drag a fallen beam from the main path, coughing hard as he heaved until the beam shifted.
Halvard strode into the wreckage, boots sinking into wet ash, each step releasing fresh heat from the smoldering earth. When he reached the first cottage remains, his entire body went rigid.
