Isla squealed in delight and fled. Davina laughed so hard she nearly fell backward.
“Leave the poor bairn alone, Baird!” Davina cheered.
“She threw first blood!”
“I threw first blood!”
“Aye, and I punished ye fer it! She’s next!”
He chased Isla three steps before she ducked behind Iain, who took a mud ball to the shoulder on her behalf and groaned dramatically. “Me laird… ye wound me…”
“Lady Kincaid!” Gregor shouted from behind a tree. “Aim fer the laird!”
Davina howled, scooping mud with a warrior’s precision. “Gladly!”
Someone hit him directly in the stomach.
Baird gasped. “Who dares?!”
“All of us!” the children cried in unison.
And that was it. The clan’s respected laird, feared by rival families and known for strategic brilliance, launched a full assault that ended in two gardeners caked in mud, three children shrieking with wild joy, the lady covered from shoulder to hem in messy brown streaks and the laird himself looking like he had fought a war in a peat bog.
Finally, breathless, muddy, and entirely undone, Davina pushed a wet strand of hair from her face and looked up at him. Her eyes sparkled. Her cheeks were flushed. And Baird knew he had never seen a more mesmerizing woman before.
“Ye’ve mud on yer face,” he said, though she quite obviously had mud everywhere.
“So dae ye,” she replied, stepping closer. Her dark eyes sparkled with mischief. “More than I, I think.”
“Aye?” He lifted an eyebrow. “I doubt it.”
“Ye shouldnae,” she said, tilting her head as she examined him. “Ye’ve a streak right… here.”
She lifted her hand to his cheek, brushing her muddy thumb along his skin. The touch was light, merely a swipe of mud and nothing more, yet his breath caught all the same.
He wished she would pull away. And he wished that she wouldn’t.
A faint blush rose along her throat. He noticed it before she seemed aware of it herself.
“I thought ye were meant tae be leading the charge,” he murmured. “Instead, ye’ve let the bairns best ye.”
“They surprised me,” she said, pulling her hand away, and despite everything he shouldnotbe feeling about that woman who was supposed to marry his brother and now was married to him, he mourned the loss of her touch.
“And also, they had help,” she added mischievously.
He arched a brow. “From me?”
“Aye, from the laird who pretended he didnae see the handful flying toward me back,” she told him. “I saw ye laugh.”
“I didnae laugh.”
“Ye did.” Then, she reached up with her other hand and smeared a bit of dirt on his jaw. “Just like ye’re daeing now.”
He wasn’t laughing, although the desire for it was overwhelming.
“Ye look…” He paused, because the right word, as always, refused to come easily. Beautiful felt too bold, radiant too soft, and alive too intimate. “Happy,” he settled for the simplest, yet deepest one.
Davina blinked at that. “Dae I?”
