Page 102 of The Laird’s Wrong Wife

Ceana remembered crossing that line to challenge him over the children. When he had dismissed his men, he had watched her so intently that she had forgotten to move until everyone in the yard had disappeared.

She searched the nearest stones, running her fingers over them as steadily as she could.

“The current mark willnae help,” Oscar said, crouching near the last stone. “Here.”

Ceana kneeled beside him and found a waxed fold inside a narrow recess. She worked two fingers into the gap, though the covering refused to shift.

Oscar drew his dagger. “Hold the edge.”

Their knees touched as he fitted the tip beneath the wax. His shoulder pressed against hers while he lifted the covering, and she caught the paper and drew it free.

“There we go,” she whispered and rose to her feet.

Before she could steady herself, her shoe slipped.

Nay.

Oscar’s arm closed around her waist, his palm settling on the curve of her hip. He held her until she regained her balance. A streak of mud covered the wrist below his leather guard, and she brushed it away with her fingertips. The tendon flexed beneath her touch.

She stepped out of his reach and lifted the paper. Paisley’s words appeared above a crooked animal with pointed horns.

“Find the goat that never eats in the room where Faither tells the old stories,” she read.

Oscar studied the drawing, a smile spreading across his face. “I wonder what that could be.”

Ceana laughed.

His answering laugh was low and brief, and she hurried inside before he could claim the lead. She entered the story room first. While Oscar checked the carved figures near the fireplace, she went straight to the shelves bearing the children’s treasures.

“There.” The wooden goat stood above her reach. “Tommy once tried to feed it oats.”

“I can pull it down.”

She shook her head. “So can I. It isnae somethin’ serious.”

Before Oscar could respond, she pulled the low step beneath the shelf and climbed. He stood close behind her, his hands hovering beside her waist. When the step shifted, one hand closed around her side.

She caught the wooden goat, though one leg had lodged behind a box. Oscar reached above her. His chest brushed against her back as his arm extended past her shoulder. Then his fingers covered hers on the figure before he worked it free.

They stepped down together. A clue was tied beneath the goat.

“We could ask Tommy whether we have interpreted his drawin’ correctly,” Oscar suggested.

“If ye ask for Tommy’s help, husband, he will never let ye live it down.”

Oscar’s hand paused on the knot.

Ceana realized what she had said too late. She opened her mouth, ready to correct herself. But then she looked into his face and closed her mouth.

His eyes remained on hers. “Then we daenae ask him.”

They bent over the clue.

Beside Tommy’s crooked arrows sat the small watermark Muriel left on her healer’s notes, and a faint herb stain marked the paper.

“At the loch, find the shore stone with the oldest MacKane mark. Take three steps into the water. Find the stone that doesnae match.”

“The loch.” Ceana folded the paper into the map.