Neither of them pulled away, and for a minute, Erica wondered who would be the first to do that. She felt the steadiness of his hand, the roughness at the base of his thumb, a mark earned from a blade or a rope. Her pulse ran ahead of her senses, and she curled her fingers around the stone and made herself breathe evenly.
For a brief moment, the silence between them was heavier than the Highland rocks. Erica wondered what could possibly happen in that brief moment, but she swallowed and opened her mouth to speak.
However, voices rose near the bread stall, breaking into her thoughts and speech. They both turned at the same time and watched the scene.
Two men stood nose to nose, and a woman stood between them with her arms crossed and her jaw set. Erica could see it on her face before she even spoke. She looked tired to the bone.
“What in the world—” Alex muttered before rising to his feet. He stepped forward without a hurry and without raising his voice. “What is the issue?”
The first man launched into a speech about promises and fairs and who had spoken first. The second man swore the other was a liar. Names followed. The woman held her tongue.
Alex listened, hands easy at his sides. He asked the first man to say his piece again with fewer words. He asked the second to stop swearing. A while later, he turned to the woman.
Erica could hear every single word from the two men. She understood how it felt when a man believed he had a right to a woman just because. It was what she had to run away from in the first place.
She watched Alex listen attentively and heard her own thoughts before he spoke.
Let the woman decide.
Alex nodded once, as if she had said it out loud. “Seems to me the only person who should choose is the lass.”
The woman looked at him, then at the men. “I am going with neither,” she declared. “I am going home. I am done listenin’ to ye fight over me.”
A low ripple moved through the onlookers, while the men found their mouths shut. Alex only tipped his head and let the three of them walk away, the woman first.
A small jolt went through Erica, clean and sure.
We think alike.
Bettie and Katie ran back with their prize and split it neatly. Sugar dusted the front of their dresses and their lips. Erica wiped the worst of it with the corner of her handkerchief.
“Be careful nae to smear it on Grandmamma’s sleeves when we get back to the castle,” she warned.
They nodded, unconvincing and happy.
They moved on further when the crowd thickened. The lanes narrowed, and the stalls were beginning to thin at this point. She must have spent at least a few hours in the market by now.
Her eyes remained on the laundry that hung from a line across the passage and dripped on the stones. She was so focused on the wet clothes that she didn’t see when her foot met a slick edge of a rock.
She slipped.
A sharp gasp escaped her lips as the world tipped. However, right before she could fall, Alex’s hand closed around her waist, hard and sure. The other came up by her arm and met the wall with a slap. He pulled her back into him before she thought to fall, his chest a solid stop, his breath warm against her temple. She landed against him with a soft sound she could not swallow and felt her shawl shift. Her cheek brushed his shirt, and the scent of clean skin and lye tickled her nose.
Her face tilted up without permission. His was inches from hers. Close enough to see the rough edge of his scar, to see the way his mouth tightened when he held still.
The image of the moon on water flashed through her mind again, and she tried to blink back the memory. She couldn’t.
Alex did not move. She did not either. Instead, she felt the thud of his heart against her ribs where they pressed together. Her gaze flicked to his mouth and back to his eye, which seemed to hold hers like a hand closing over a hilt.
“Easy,” he murmured.
“Aye,” she breathed. “I am fine.” Her words came out thin. She tried again. “Thank ye.”
For a beat, he did not let go. His hand wrapped around her arm as if it had been made for that place and purpose. Heat climbed in a slow line from where he touched her to the hollow at the base of her throat.
She thought of tilting up that last inch. She thought of the taste of him and just how his body might feel beneath her palm.
He released her too quickly, as if he had thought the same thing as well and refused it. His jaw set, and his hand dropped to his side. He took a half step back and looked down the lane where the girls had run on and then circled back, still in sight, counting a row of carved posts like a game.
