He waited.
“God go with ye, Jacob.”
He inclined his head to her—a courtesy, nothing more—and stepped back. Moments later he swung into the saddle, settling there with the ease of long habit. He did not look back as the horses moved out, hooves striking stone and then earth, the sound fading as they passed beyond the yard.
Elena stood where she was long after they were gone.
At last she reached up and drew her mantle closer around herself, smoothing the fabric where his hand had nearly been. The motion felt foolish even as she made it.
But the truth was unavoidable. Nothing had changed.
JACOB SAT ON THE EDGEof the narrow bed, shirt discarded, the damp weight of freshly washed hair still clinging to his neck. The chamber smelled faintly of soap and crushed herbs—Meggie’s doing, as always. She had insisted on the bath herself, had all but chased him toward the tubs before he could argue that he was whole enough to wait. And once he’d returned, clean and marginally less road-worn, she had taken charge again, fetching linen and thread and settling him beneath the lamplightwith the quiet authority of a woman long accustomed to seeing men come back from danger. Her touch was firm but careful, practiced in ways that spoke of years tending scraped knees, split brows, and worse.
“Be still,” she murmured now, fingers deft as she worked the needle through the torn skin along his upper arm. The cut was shallow, already clean, but she stitched it neatly all the same, as though precision itself might keep harm from lingering.
“I am still,” Jacob said mildly.
Meggie made a face. “Still, mayhap, but so tense. This scratch is nothing compared to what I've mended on you before. Whatever's got you wound so tight—it's not my needle you fear.”
Jacob rolled his head, making a show of loosening the tension. “'Tis naught.”
“You did well, Jacob,” she said after a moment when he failed to address her remark. “Bringing her home. And though I worried—that is my role—I had no doubt she was in good hands.”
He shifted slightly. “Aye.”
“I wonder,” she continued, “even if you hadn’t actually witnessed her abduction, if we’d have been able to hold you back.”
His brow drew down a bit, but he said nothing, knowing from his mother’s careful tone that this was said with intent, but he wasn’t sure what she was trying to impart—or fish from him.
She elaborated a bit. “Your father had to force Liam back to Strathfinnan twice for fresh horses—he was an absolute beast, as you can imagine. But I wonder if there would have been anything in the world that would have kept you from pressing forward to find her?”
The implication settled between them. Jacob felt exposed, as if she'd peeled back his skin more thoroughly than any Englishblade could have. He knew his mother missed little, but had thought himself careful.
"What exactly are ye getting at, Mam?" he asked, his accent thickening with discomfort.
She shrugged as she continued to sew his arm. “Naught, but that I know that you hold a place in your heart for Elena, that you care for her.”
Jacob clenched his jaw and stared straight ahead.
His mother was not done, but dug her knowing knife a little deeper. “I’ve known for years, Jacob. That your eyes followed her differently than they ever followed any other lass. That whenever the MacTavishes visited, you stood a little straighter, listened a little closer. That you softened around her without realizing it.”
His gaze dropped to the floor, realizing there was no sense in denying it, nor keeping it from his own mother. “I kent I hid it well.”
“Oh, you did,” she said lightly, bending closer and squinting a bit at the wound she continued to sew. “From most. But your mother has eyes, and a mother knows her son. Even when they try their best not to be known.”
He let out a slow breath, the exposed tenderness of the moment leaving him oddly unmoored. “It was nothing,” he said, though the words rang thin even to his own ears. “Just... familiarity—or foolishness, mayhap.”
Meggie smiled faintly. “It may have begun as that. But nothing you have felt for Elena is foolish, Jacob. And it’s ‘is’ and nae ‘was’ and tell me I’m wrong.” When he did not, she added, “It is simply... inconvenient at the moment.”
That drew a quiet, humorless laugh from him. “Aye, it is that.”
“Tell me what troubles you most,” she said gently. “Not the part you think you’re supposed to say. The truth beneath it.”
He hesitated but knew his mother well enough to know she’d wheedle it out of him eventually, if she truly wanted to know.
“I’m trying to put her from my mind,” he admitted. “I ken what she means to her family. I ken what this alliance means. She’s betrothed, and it’s nae my place to... interfere with that. And after all that’s happened, it feels wrong to even...” He broke off, unable to untangle the knot of longing and honor pressing in on him.
Meggie waited without urging, until he found his voice again.
