Page 48 of A Highland Rogue to Ruin

His mother’s screams.

Memories lanced him with pain as if in a joust, pummeling him as he crashed into Brighde and hoisted her over his shoulder like the reaver he was, running her upfield and out of the melee.

“What the hell, man! He was coming for ye!” Reaper seethed, but his men’s objections faded to the edges of his thoughts as he felt her safe in his arms, felt her cling to him in return.

In his periphery, he could sense that his men had slowed. Could hear James shouting at his men to stand down, too. He slid Brighde to her feet but still curled her in his arms, shrouding her head to his chest with his palm, out of harm’s way. Heart racing, hers pounded an echo against him.

“Christ, lass, ye could have been maimed. Trampled,” he snarled, face buried in her hair as he pressed a vicious kiss to her crown, gripped her hair so tightly it likely pulled on the roots, and felt her fingers clench his nape.

“I nay want ye to fight,” she sobbed.

Fok, she wasn’t just crying. She was keening. He clenched her harder, voice gruff. “I’ll nay do it again, sweeting. I’ll take his blade for ye if I must.” She nuzzled against his scars, chest convulsing.

Yet moments later, she was yanked from him as James’s eyes blazed with fury and he shielded her behind him. Tormund itched to steal her back and balled his fists, but he’d just shown a chink in his mail and instead, stood firm.

She peered around her brother, tears marring those bonny blues. Shame assailed him again in tidal waves, tumbling him in stormy seas of his own making.

“Stop this!” she beseeched James.

She looked between them like a mother ashamed of wayward children, back and forth, biting that lip, as his heart still raced at the sight of her among the weaponry. Had she been hurt… Christ, how had Owen lived for a whole month with that anguish of never knowing his wife’s fate? Tormund had barely endured a minute of such peril, which had brought him to his proverbial knees.

“Ye’re better than this, Jamie,” she begged more softly. “There are bairns here. Ladies. Please. Brother, cease this aggression.”

The crowds that had fled were slowly inching back onto the market lane.

“I told ye to stay away from him, sister,” James said, but she circumvented him and took both their hands.

“And I disobeyed. Shake wrists and show solidarity,” she demanded in a maternal voice that brokered no argument. Both Tormund and James balked, James’s face a mirror of his own fury. “Before we’re evicted from this royal faire and banned from ever returning.”

“This bastard attacked our castle,” James fumed.

“And ye burned his crops! Jesu, brother, ye ken the people who suffer the most from that are we’ans and peasant folk!”

Owen had been right. James was too hotheaded to ever understand that he’d been wrong. But the MacLeods needed Tormund to rise above this rivalry. So did she. It didn’t matter that James had started today’s altercation. He could end it.

He squeezed her hand. It would taste as rancid as spoiled meat to touch this man, but he’d do it for her.

Nodding to her, he basked in the relieved smile that lifted her lips, shining through the tears on her cheeks as she squeezed his hand in return. “Thank ye…demon.”

He heaved a deep breath to muster his mettle, then thrust his hand out to James, as the crowd hushed. James inspected it as if it were crawling with maggots, but upon a glance at his sister, his eyes dropped to her chest. Where her talon rested. Darted to Tormund again, to his ear, where his talon still pierced the flesh, then down to his chest, where her hair clipping was wedged, piecing the clues together. Then at his sister’s gaze, which was firmly trained on him with her smile and the strain of desperation torquing her neck muscles.

Her smile. Aye… A different sort of mask. Perhaps a facade that kept the pain at bay. He’d wondered at it yesterday as he lay beneath her cot. He saw it now for the biggest lie she’d ever told.

“All is well, angel,” Tormund murmured, hoping to placate her, watching her bite that lip and feeling that unfamiliar ache that told him he was drowning in an ocean as water crashed over his head for her.

His hand, still outstretched, was finally met with James’s, and together, the callused paws took wrists. Shook. Sized up each other’s wrist guards and the wee blades stored there. The crowd murmured in disbelief. “’Twill never last…” Claps arose as warriors returned to the sidelines. Except Ghost, who cursed and stalked off as soldiers escorted Brighde off the field.

James growled, now that she was gone. “What’s going on betwixt the two of ye? What have ye done to her?”

“Nothing she hasna’ wanted.”

James’s face tightened at his smug reply and hitch of the chin, lips whitened, jaw jumping as he barely contained his desire to rethink sinking his blade into Tormund’s ribs.

“I swear on all that is holy, bastard, if ye’ve dishonored her, I will stop at nothing—”

“She’s honorable.”

James paused. Dissected his response. Let James think what he would from it, Tormund had seen his angel blossom into her full self, using his company and his body as willing tribute. There was more honor in one strand of her golden hair than in the air Tormund breathed, and not a whit of that honor had anything to do with virtue.