Page 110 of Outlaw Ever After

Anticipation brimmed within. He had to know.

“Wrong about ye .”

“How would ye ken that?” he pressed, tilting his head to look into her eyes, desperate to hear the exonerating words spoken from her lips.

He might die a happy man if only he could hear someone else say the truth.

She picked at his tunic as if a thread was frayed. “Because I saw wh-what my sire did. To yers. Because I saw what happened, before ye ran to yer sire, screaming. Because I saw ye wrongfully being hauled away…” Her words shook as badly as her fingers.

Jesu. She’d been but a wee bairn. She’d seen such horror and lived with it all these years?

They were forever bonded in their witnessing of that fateful day. He pulled her against him. Engulfed her in his hold. Buried her in his embrace and sank his forehead to that soft spot at her neck that smelled of rosewater. He hated to press her, but he had to ken.

“Did ye see who did do it?”

She shook her head against him. “A dark-haired man with his knife, ’tis all. He wore a signet ring of a flower. I was too frightened to watch more, and covered my eyes.”

Sweet lassie that she’d been.

“Wheesht,” he said soothingly, palming her head to him.

Except at Court… Bale wore the Luther rose and cross, the signet of a Protestant, which had always struck Alex as odd because King James V’s administration had been staunchly Catholic and opposed to heretics. Odd that he got away with it, too, after James V had appointed him. King James had persecuted heretics. What clout did Kendrew’s brother have? “Ye’ve been strong, all these years.”

She deserved her cottage on the shore and her quaint, quiet life, destined to never have it with her marriage linked to this estate.

“I should be consoling ye ,” she said, looking him in the eyes. “I should have done more for ye, should have tried harder to clear yer reputation—”

“A wee lass believed in me when no one else did. She fated me to live.” He rested his forehead down to hers and wrapped his hand around the posy in her grip, pressing a kiss to her tear-dampened eye. “So we would meet again,” he whispered. Pressed a kiss to the other, the saltiness soaking on his lips. “And again.” Kissed her thrice, on her lush lips.

The draft wavered the tapestries. Bent the torch flames.

“Someone left a door open,” she murmured, twisting his beard on her finger, and his eyes pinched closed at the perfect sensation.

He caressed down her cheek with his knuckle. “Those fickle fae.”

A soft laugh caught in her throat and she squeezed tighter. “I’ve felt so connected to ye and I could never understand why—”

“And I ye—”

“Because thrice we’ve met and…” She yanked back but didn’t let go of him, as a joyous burst of sheer happiness just like he’d seen on her face in the greenwood split those plush lips wide, and she gripped his bruised skin and crushed her mouth to his. “Thrice…the oat stalks nay lied.”

He grinned and kissed her harder. “Nor the crab apples.”

She giggled against his mouth. That sweet, girlish sound that reminded him this poised, sophisticated lady was only a lass of three and twenty, having been forced to grow up much too young.

“It means Jossy was right—”

“Say that again,” he gruffed, leaning into her, but his skin was alight with sparks and his body firing at her exuberance in a way it only ever did when they brushed with fate.

Her brow furrowed playfully. “The oat stalks nay lied?”

He grinned. “Nay, Joslyn’s name.”

Her smile softened. “Jossy.”

“It’s what my people call her when they love her, and she loves them back. It means ye’re one of mine .” He gripped her hair at her nape, giving it a soft, purposeful grip. “And that ye belong to us.”

He kissed her. He arched her backward and let go. He curled her into the crook of his elbow as his other hand grasped her hip and anchored her against the wall of the stairwell, leaning over her, pushing against her. In a world where he’d felt forgotten, she’d always remembered.