Page 74 of Outlaw Ever After

Nay, every man here was either landed, titled, or both. Even he’d once said he owned some land.

He shook out the tartan of these conquered people, then swept it around her—so shabby, yet worn and comfortable.

“What are ye playing at?” she breathed.

“Ye hate being here upon a pedestal. I remember the way to yer heart, and it was nay being lavished in fanfare.”

She gazed upon his deep bruises, now yellowing, his focus intent on tucking the garment around her shoulders and cinching it around the pearls sewn into her bodice.

His hands, swift a moment ago, lingered where it overlapped her bosom as if taking care to tuck a beloved into bed, and for a moment, her eyes fluttered shut, when next she felt him plucking a pin from her snood.

Her eyes flew open. “My hair!”

He released another pin, ignoring her protest as her hands shot up to touch it.

Detangling her fingers, he leveled a playful frown at her as he braced her hands at her sides, then returned to freeing the netting bundling her tresses until it fell away and the weight of her hair tumbled down.

“There,” he gruffed. “Such a bonny wood nymph should never be so constrained.” Sifting his fingers like a comb into her locks, he fanned her waves reverently as if they were silk, and God, how her skin burned at the touch, for it was still filled with tenderness.

Her body flamed to life. Cheeks flamed hot.

His eyes inspected her blush with a pleased notch of his chin. Leaning in, his lips brushed the shell of her ear, his beard scraped her collarbone, and his male musk filled her nose and clouded her judgment.

He whisper-sang, “Skin so fair with chestnut hair… ”

Her forehead came to rest at the center of his chest and her hands gripped his tunic. Mist stung her eyes, and she closed them. Afraid to fall again.

Mayhap if he won, they could begin to sort out the wreckage?

“Wh-what are ye doing?” she whispered against his tunic.

“I’m sneaking the lady of Freuchie away to her greenwood.”

He sifted his hand along her nape beneath her hair. Shivers flitted down her spine at his careful touch. She looked up. Something quiet filled his eyes as he fingered a lock between his thumb and pointer.

“These past three months, yer voice and this hair were all I could imagine, as every bloody village I passed, castle I visited, clue I looked for, led me to the wrong Margaret. Fok I couldna believe that the only lass I’d ever given all of meself had nay waited for me and I’d never ken if she carried my—”

He scoured his jaw, shutting himself up. All of himself… He’d never completed in union with a lass…until her. Realization dawned like a gut punch, winding her.

And it was then that she saw unvarnished pain, as if these past months of thinking she hadn’t waited for him had been hell for her bright, shiny warrior. Was…he speaking truth about some missive?

Carefully, she took his arm, peering up into his askance gaze.

He shook his head, as if helplessness had suddenly bloomed within him. “Even if I win, will it ever be as it once was?”

Gasps sounded behind them.

Oh God, the staff was listening to them! She jerked back. Whispering rustled like a breeze. Were the maids whispering about the oat stalks? Of Joslyn’s premonition about another chance at love? She’d only known Alex twice now. The last stalk had predicted thrice for her husband-to-be—

Absurd , she chastised herself. ’Twas only a game.

Yet an inkling was growing restless, itching to take voice.

Her brow furrowed upon him, hoping to find some sort of clue.

Taking bread to the village is a Comyn lady’s task . And a lady was only a Comyn if she was married to the laird, he’d just informed her as he’d smoothed this shabby tartan she wore as if it were fine silk. He seemed to fit with these folk, too, cleaning the tournament field with his opponents’ arses as if having played Burning Sticks countless times.

These folk calling him a laird, almost as if he were…their laird. For that to be true, he’d have to be the surviving heir of the laird her sire had slayed so long ago. He’d have to be…the laddie she’d once set free?