Page 31 of A Highland Rogue to Ruin

She gripped the sides as it rocked violently beneath his tilting weight, knuckles whitening.

“What if it should capsize?” she fretted.

“It’s sound, I examined it.”

“But what if it does? I cannae swim!”

He settled opposite her. His knees splayed, and boyishly, he tapped her bare foot with his outstretched boot. “Then I’ll save ye. But the ocean is gentle this eve.”

He eyed her hands gripping holes into the wood, that rusty chuckle huffing out of his throat. “Relax. How are ye to sail to France if ye cannae learn to trust yer captain to conquer the swells?”

A humorous sentiment coming from him, for he trusted about as easily as a rabid wolf.

“My captain.” She marveled at how easily he managed the vessel, how he settled astern and adjusted the yardarm to work with the breeze. His sleeves were rolled to the elbow, revealing those tattoos of sea monsters and ships and waves undulating on his rolling muscles, like his mask. In hindsight, he hadn’t really hidden behind his mask. He’d worn who he was on his face, and it was everyone around him who hadn’t looked deeply enough to see the clue he’d given away for free.

She touched one of the designs, daring to let go of the boat. This time, when she touched his skin, he didn’t yank away as he had this morning, though his gaze flashed to her and his muscles jumped beneath her finger.

“What do these mean? Yer body, it’s like a piece of art.”

He shrugged. “A tradition Owe and I started.”

“Why?” She smiled at his fond nickname for his brother.

He didn’t answer as he picked up the oars, wedged them into the oarlocks, and began rowing backward over the incoming swells until they were beyond the break and the surface evened out. His broad shoulders torqued up his neck, as he cranked the oars in opposite motions, turning the vessel to sail along the shore.

He maneuvered the sail. “Look.”

He gestured with a head nod behind her. She turned—

The skies, painted with crimson and lavender, wavered like heat from a fire. The hot summer sun kissed the tips of the mountains and slowly began to sink, casting the underbellies of the clouds striating the sky in grays and blues. The scene reflected in the water, as if the hills continued without stopping into a shimmering mirror below.

Relenting her death grip to face the brilliant sunset, ease settled over her with the boat’s steady, powerful lurches from Tormund’s rowing. The breeze ruffled her hair and pebbled her skin with gooseflesh, and she closed her eyes. Savored this stolen moment.

“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” she breathed, chest heaving, as she pivoted all the way around, fluffing her skirts aside. “What think ye?”

The energy of the water intensified as currents pushed and pulled upon the vessel. And yet, she took a deep breath. Admittedly, a tiny part of her had worried when he’d led her with no explanation to his horse in the woods. But it was growing clearer, that a man who would toil as a crofter all day to pay for the use of a boat for her, to help the villagers, who would catch her as she slipped in her saddle, was a man she could trust, contrary to James’s worries.

“A bonny sight,” he murmured softly, voice gravelly. Whatever had afflicted his throat, the ragged scar traversing his neck that she now realized was outlined with those silvery patterns, had affected his tone.

She glanced back, a smile on her face as her wisps tangled in her eyes, expecting him, too, to be absorbing the magnificence of the heavens. But he was looking hard at her.

Those damned butterflies. It was as if his intense gaze commanded they flit through her belly and burn tendrils of heat in their wake.

She bit her lip. “Demon of the Seas, did ye call me bonny?”

That unexpected laugh of his, a soft rumbling that seemed to catch him off guard, softened the hard angles of his face and twinkled in his eyes glowing bay and chestnut in the setting sun. He scoured the back of his neck, his biceps popping, and chewed his cheek. Sakes, he was embarrassed again. That this afeared warlord who’d attacked their castle upon a vicious battle cry could be so gentled by her was a marvel.

“Look in the bag, vixen.”

He hitched his chin toward the sack beneath her seat. Didn’t answer her question. Which seemed suspiciously like a yes.

As he rowed into a narrow inlet where the waters stilled, she pulled a roll of fabric, a flaxen purse of some sort of trinkets, as well as another parcel from the bag. She pried open the parcel strings and found dried berries and wedges of cheeses, a flask containing—she pulled out the cork—sweet wine.

Her eyes lifted carefully to Tormund, who wasn’t watching her, but was gauging the wind and glancing at the emerging stars. Beneath his armor seemed a quiet man that the world spat upon, who was forging ahead against the tide of enemies trying to knock down his sails at every turn. What were they doing here?

I told him about wishing to sail, told him how I longed to do so. And he was giving that to her.

She dipped her fingers into the water and iciness whitened their tips and shot chills up her arm. A lump in her chest seemed to thicken her throat at the same time it sent pangs through her.