Page 60 of Outlaw Ever After

“Nay true in the least,” Elizabeth admonished. “Ye’ve always been bonny. ’Tis why so many suitors are drawn to ye. Remember all the callers over the years?”

“Remember how they all withdrew their offers when they realized I had no money?”

She cocked a knowing brow at her sister-in-law.

“Nay sell yerself short, Pegs,” Aileana encouraged. “Look. They keep eying ye. That one has his eyes upon ye hard. Sakes, he watches ye , nay the castle, as if ye’re the crown jewel and he a prime thief come to steal ye away…”

Peigi’s skin tingled as the crowd parted like Moses had commanded it. Alex strode forth. Clad in his weaponry. A head taller than most folk around him and distorted through the heat wavering off the firepit. Odin among his thralls. He had had a chance to steal her away. Little did her sister know, he’d chosen not to.

“Will ye sing yer song about him this afternoon?” Elizabeth teased her.

“She wrote a song about him?” Aileana gasped softly.

Lovely. Peigi stifled a heavenward glance. Now Aileana would pressure her mercilessly as to why.

“I’d love to hear ye play it, mi lady,” Joslyn said. “It’s been years since these walls have heard a chatelaine make music.”

Peigi opened her mouth to refute—

“Ye’re so lucky,” Aileana said to Joslyn. “I miss her music. It was always my solace.” Aileana put her head together with Mistress Joslyn’s as if the two were fond friends and hadn’t just met the day before. “She always speaks more through her song than her words. I remember all those reaves, how she’d always sing to me when we hid, waiting for the menfolk to return from the skirmish…”

At this, Aileana’s words trailed off. Reaves had left their scars on all of them. And Joslyn was watching her carefully now, as if curious about something she wasn’t asking.

“Nay, Lady Aileana, she’s no’ graced us with her songs,” Gertrude said, pausing in her tussling with the dog and pushing unruly wisps from her eyes.

“Nay once ?” Aileana’s question lilted.

“And now, we feel cheated,” the old woman teased. “I shall request ye play, if I may be so bold.”

Peigi dismissed their request with a flick of her fingers, for she was known for her appearance , nay herself, and only one man had cared enough to look beneath the surface. “It’s noth—”

“Nay just music. She strums a lyre as if a fae upon a harp. It’s the sound of her voice that is the sound of her quiet heart,” her impish sister continued.

“A lyre,” Joslyn breathed. Peigi shivered in the gusting wind, though no one else seemed to notice a gale. “The Lady Esther Comyn reared her bairn on song.” Peigi didn’t mistake how Joslyn’s face, wrinkled by time, softened at the sight of a distant memory instead of something tangible. “She once wrote down her songs in a book in the gallery, but it went missing long ago, else I’d fetch it for ye.”

“Oh, my lyre was lost for a spell.”

“Then what is this?”

Peigi’s cloak shifted as Joslyn pulled something from beneath tugging on her girdle… Her lyre ? On her person?

She froze, then whipped around to gaze at Alex. Had he just…when he’d come to her only moments ago… He was watching her. His hands slouched on his belts and weight shifted onto one boot, he was the portrait of casual, as if he didn’t have a beaten face and slashed arm.

His eyes dipped to her lyre. Hesitantly, she took it from Joslyn and strummed it. Each string, repaired. Perfectly tuned. By a skilled musician with an ear for song. The feeling felt foreign on her fingertips after three months, and yet, so natural. Sing me a song, woman…

Her chest pained, clashing chords striking heartstrings. All eve, as she’d danced, she’d thought of him above stairs, guarded in his chamber like a criminal. All night as she’d stitched his coat, she couldn’t shake how he’d shielded her from the knife, his desperation for her to know he’d come for her and his untruth about a nonexistent missive, the way he’d lain his forehead upon her belly while she sutured him like a wife tending to her husband, gripping her as if wishing he could push the sands of time back up the hourglass.

What on earth was she going to do? What if Alex didn’t win this tournament? Would she be able to live her life as the wife of another now that she knew he was vying for her again? And yet, what if he did ? Could she ever put her trust in him again? What if he never lay down his sword like he’d promised, or was summoned away unannounced time and again? Always one boot out the door? There was nothing binding a man to his word except his promise, and Alex’s promises rang hollow.

The promise ring burned in her pocket.

“How did this get here?” she breathed.

“Ye often carry it, silly.” Aileana giggled.

“But-but it was…so badly damaged…”

Aileana inspected it. “I’d hardly call that damaged. Aye, some nicks, but it looks to be in perfect working order.”