Elsie’s heart thudded, painfully.
He leaned in.
Closer still.
Her breath stopped.
He leaned down and brushed the lightest kiss on her cheek, close to her mouth, but only just.
She inhaled sharply, dizzy with the almost of it before pulling back and searching his gaze.
Behind them there was a throat clearing. Elsie turned to see Thomas Redfern eyeing them. She did her best to smile at him gently through her thundering heart.
“It’s fer th’ envoy,” Halvard muttered quickly. “Our arrangement.”
For a second there, I thought that… Nevermind. Get a grip, Elsie!
With a hand on his chest, she felt his pulse racing just as fast as her own. But the day had been harrowing enough, and she wasstill reeling from watching him run into that burning cottage. She did not call him on it.
He turned away from her as if the moment meant nothing. Yet, for her it meant everything and she was willing to wager it was the same for him.
“The villagers are gathering,” Redfern said, breaking the moment’s tension. “I came to find you both. Three souls perished in today’s fire.”
“Aye,” Halvard gave the envoy a nod of sober appreciation.
And as they came upon the square, Elsie had expected to see those gathered to be engaged in soft prayer and quiet weeping. It was the mourning she was used to after losing loved ones.
Instead, she was surprised to hear voices rising in a raw and powerful chorus. Songs of grief to be sure, but also of strength and memory. Men, women and children alike lifted their voices, carrying the names of the dead as though offering them to the sky. The sound was beautiful, deep, wild and aching.
It was jarring for Elsie, and overwhelming.
She stood among them, soot-streaked and exhausted, feeling something inside her shift. It was a feeling unfamiliar, it was belonging and honor.
There was a pride in those people, their land, and their leader that made her ache with warmth. She stole a glance at Halvard. His strong jaw moving in tribute with his clansmen. The work and pain of the day clearly etched on his face. He was a stubborn, reckless, infuriating Scot. He was the type of man who walked into fire to save a scared, screaming child, he was the type of man who led his people in both good times and bad. He was the type of man who saved women, even when they were English and difficult.
He was the type of man she could no longer pretend not to care about. And more dangerously, he was the type of man she could fall in love with.
The chamber door shut behind him with a soft thud, smothering all the other noises of the keep. The clansmen had helped all those displaced by the fires return to the keep with them.
Halvard’s body felt as if it had been forged in the flames of the cottage he had pulled that child out of. Every muscle throbbed. His burned arm throbbed with a dull, angry ache. His throat still stung from the smoke.
But all he could think of was Elsie.
She moved about the chamber in silence, her dress torn, her usually perfect hair wild. Her cheeks still faintly streaked with a little of the soot she hadn’t managed to wipe away. She looked nothing like the fine English lady she had been raised to be.
She looked better. Real. His.
As she hid behind the privacy screen to don her nightdress, he didn’t even pretend to not keep one eye in her direction. Then, as she slipped beneath the blankets on the bed. His bed. Halvard turned toward the damn chair. The same chair he had exiled himself to ever since he had brought her there.
“Halvard,” she said softly.
He froze.
“You should sleep in the bed. Properly, I mean,” she paused. “There’s room fer both of us.”
His heart gave a small, hard, traitorous thud.
“Elsie,” he replied, voice low. “I dinnae think…”
