Page 38 of A Highland Rogue to Ruin

She extracted them. Unfolded them. She’d packed them in hopes of finding a bookseller or clansmen who might enlighten her.

She dropped to her rug and lay out the first document, bringing the candle close.

“Owen MacLeod agrees to wed Marjorie MacDonald,” she read softly. “To bring about a union… The Great Peace. The Great Peace.” She mulled that over. Continued reading, forehead crinkling. “When an heir produced, their issue will fulfil the obligations, and will be bestowed with the Earldom of Stornoway, uniting the Hebrides…”

She tapped her lips. “Their issue will fulfill obligations.” Her eyes widened as she enunciated each thought aloud. “When Owen died, all was forfeit. Forfeit.” Kept tapping, when the candle, at the end of its wick, flickered and snuffed. Darkness cocooned her. “Did he die before he could sow an issue with Marjorie? And thus the title was forfeit?”

They’d been told Marjorie was barren. What had truly happened to her sister, if Owen wasn’t to blame? Tormund had said the two had been traveling to Court when she’d been snatched. Why? Did it have to do with these documents?

Sitting in the dark, she lost track of time when a rustling sound outside her tent roused her from her thoughts. It was faint. An animal shuffling the grass? A wee hedgehog, mayhap? Her tent fabric wavered at the sound again. She stilled. Strained to listen…

Soft footfalls were slowly crunching.

Her pulse jumped, thudding loudly in her ears. It was a person. Someone eavesdropping? Or was it Tormund hoping to sneak in again, silent and calculated? If she called for help and it was Tormund, she’d unleash her brother’s guards upon him unwittingly. But what if it wasn’t him?

“Angus?” she called to her cousin who’d taken watch tonight and lay outside by the fire.

Her tent ropes shimmied. She jumped. Bounced to her feet and clenched the documents to her chest as footfalls rustled, receded. Whoever had been outside her tent had scurried away at the sound of Angus approaching.

“Aye, cousin? What’s wrong?”

She scrambled to lock the documents back inside her trunk, twirled her tartan around her more snugly to hide the marks Tormund had left upon her chest as the wildness of loving had overcome them. She pulled open the front flap, affixing her smile, though her blood galloped like Sunshine in a jaunt.

“Nothing. I wondered if I might join ye by the fire. I can no’ sleep.”

He nodded and slung his arm around her, walking with her toward their ale cart and fire, as she glanced over her shoulder into the woods beyond her tent, into darkness.

“Brighde,” Angus asked. “Why’s yer hair wet?”

“Oh, the rain earlier.”

Angus arched a brow as he poured her a tankard of ale and brought it to her where she’d nestled to sit. “What rain?”

…

Day Three – Lughnasadh.– The First Fruiting

The next morning, Brighde slipped out of her tent and walked a circle around it. Inspecting the ground, the fabric, the grasses—a tent stake. She squinted and squatted down, noticing a tiny red wool fiber.

Hmm. Was this from last night? Or just a remnant from one of her clansmen’s kilts from when the men had erected the tents? It wasn’t MacLeod yellow.

Rolling the fiber between her finger and thumb and wondering who might have been nearby, she yawned, having not slept well. She slipped back inside and let the flap shut. Now that her brother was rustling awake, she felt settled enough to sleep and untucked her tartan to hang loose—

“Angel,” crooned a deep, husky voice.

She yelped in surprise, whirling around.

“Wheesht.” Tormund’s face split into an easy grin in the predawn shadows that revealed that chipped tooth. The first easy grin she’d seen him wear, a pleased reaction, not a deliberate decision.

He clapped a palm over her mouth, his shoulders jolting as he chuckled silently.

Entranced by how handsome the grin was, how the stress lines in his brow dissipated whenever his gaze softened on hers, she smiled back. Mayhap it truly had been him last night! Mayhap he’d not been ready to leave her, as she’d not been ready to be left after cuddling so close for so long beneath his doublet, lulled by the rocking of the water and the misting of the rain, and the dancing late into the night while the world thought she slept.

His hand dropped as she regained composure, ease loosening the pinch that had resided in her chest ever since she’d sensed a lurker. Tormund had already demonstrated that he had no shame sneaking where he didn’t belong.

“What are ye doing here?” she whispered, blinking out of her lovestruck stupor, eyes darting around as if MacDonald guardsmen might charge forth from the tent fabric.

He was dressed in full MacLeod regalia and prepared for a fight. Studded brigandine spanned his chest. Blades tucked around him like an assassin. Dangerous. Proud yellow kilt, thick leather belt holding knife sheaths, obsidian brooch at his shoulder engraved with his motto, Hold Fast embedded in polished silver. It pinned his mantle ceremonially, and his wrist guards strapped about each arm spoke of a man prepared to leave. A proud laird with his hair freshly braided and his talon on display through his ear. A target for a MacDonald blade if she’d ever seen one, in the heart of the lion’s den!