He was quiet for a moment. “I met him in Inverlochy.”
He met MacRae? Ismay blinked her eyes. “What? Ye met him?”
Did MacRae tell him who she was guilty of killing? That she was a MacPherson?
“What did he tell ye?”
“He told me ye had a viperous tongue and that ye beguiled men oot of their senses.”
Was that all? MacRae didn’t tell him she was a MacPherson?
She pouted her lips. “Ye didna believe those things, did ye?”
“I believed every word,” he replied succinctly.
She lifted her head off his chest and stared at him in the dark. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“My precious flower,” he elaborated softly, deeply. “Ye have indeed bewitched my logic—”
She sat up and took a swipe at him. “What is the matter with yer logic now?”
“It has abandoned me and set ye in the place of everythin’ else.”
She felt her hackles settling. Was he telling her she came before everything else?
“In that case,” she told him, leaning in close to his lips, “ye have bewitched me, as well. “But, Constantine, he didna tell ye anything else?”
“What else is there?” he asked.
If the MacDonalds at Tor found out the truth about her, they would likely want to kill her.
“Nothing else,” she lied.
“Dinna fret over him any longer,” he reassured in hisdeliciously deep voice.
Trusting him, she snuggled close against him and listened to the sound of his heartbeat in her ear.
He stroked her hair and back until she grew too tired to keep her eyes open. But she wasn’t asleep. Her mind was too fixated on what was happening to her heart. Even now in this moment of listening to his breathing coming slow and steady, her heart was swelling with affection for him. How was it possible that he had infiltrated all her defenses, tore down walls she had erected beginning when she was almost too young to remember why she needed them?
Despite her father rescuing her from the MacDonalds, it had taken her years to learn to trust him. Nae, it had not happened overnight. She trusted Constantine early on though. Was it because he had passed her father’s test and kept his word? There were other signs her father taught her to recognize a good man. Did Constantine have good people around him? People who loved him?
His kin loved him for certain. They gave him their respect—not a meager offering coming from a Highlander. And why shouldn’t they respect him? He had made them rich with cattle. No one in the entire region wanted for anything. He kept them all fed, housed, and busy with work. He made the Camerons of Lochaber a name to be revered.
She hadn’t let a villain into her heart, but a good man, who knew how to water it and keep it blooming. She smiled against him and whispered into his chest.
“Thank ye fer finding me, Constantine.”
*
Constantine lay awakein rays of filtered sunlight coming through the trees. Beside him, Ismay slept, set aflame in the dawn. She took his breath away. He was ready to die for her, but he would rather live with her.
He pulled his plaid up around her delicate shoulders. Delicate but strong enough to drive a pitchfork through a man’s arm.
His heart warmed on her for the dozenth time this morning. She was soft on the outside and so strong on the inside. She was fashioned for the Highlands. Fashioned for him. What was he going to do about it? He didn’t want to think about the future but this moment. When she slept in his arms, treasured in his eyes.
But it was time for them to go. Until Hugh was found and questioned, being out in the open wasn’t wise.
He knew how he wanted to wake her, and so leaning in, he pressed his lips to hers and kissed her briefly, then moving on, he kissed her closed eyes, her temples, and buried his face in her tresses.
