Page 75 of Outlaw Ever After

Chapter Twenty-Three

Wrapped up in cheerful red and green, Peigi bent to collect her basket but Alex plucked it up and slipped his hand in hers. Wove his fingers with hers like laces up a well-fitted boot.

He pulled her through the fallow herb rows. Hopped over the late parsley and through the gate, sticking to the shadows. They rounded the corner and he dragged his reluctant songbird out into the Samhain fanfare.

Celebration dinned. Drummers pounded; vendors hawked their wares. Children dodged carts and chased each other. The laypeople’s music filled the air.

Song .

He glanced back at Peigi, hoping to see her expression change—for he’d overheard her avoid her sister’s pleas for song when Seamus had been showing him castle repairs. She’d once said music was her solace.

Jossy suspected that if singing were her happiness, she must be deeply sad. What had silenced her?

Laird Graham sauntered through the crowd with one of his men.

She balked. “Someone will see me.”

“They nay even ken it’s ye.” He squeezed her hand.

Still, he hoisted the basket onto his shoulder, bracing it there to shield their faces and veered off the footpath. Weaving behind a vendor whose chickens roosted in their crates, toward the abandoned competition field, he pulled her a pace behind him.

He slowed and turned her to a cart loaded with strange orange, yellow, and green melons from the New World—pompions they were called—as his brow firmed.

“Alex, what are—”

“One of yer brother’s soldiers patrols up yonder.”

Peigi’s hand tightened on his, whispering, “Oh God, Seamus’s soldiers will skewer ye! And he’ll—”

But her eyes darted around. Searching for her path of escape. To hide. To flee the danger.

He blocked her in with the basket over one shoulder and his arm.

“Relax.”

“I can nay—”

“Ye must . Besides, ’twill nay be yer head on a pike if we’re found. Ye’ve nothing to fear.”

She gawped up at him. “But ’twould be yers .”

He teased softly, “Like the song?”

She scoffed, but he caressed the fold of Comyn tartan around her neck thoughtfully, the impact of the jest dying. “Hiding in plain sight sometimes makes ye invisible.”

…

Spoken like someone who’d mastered the art, like an outlaw who’d thrust himself into the torchlight to distract everyone while he watched from the shadows.

My brother wants yer head… Heads on pikes, like in that flyer from long ago.

There was a dark undercurrent to Alex’s jest. It could be that he was the outlaw…couldn’t it?

Now that the idea was rooted in her suspicions, she couldn’t rid her mind of it. She knew pieces of Alex’s past. Of being orphaned young and losing everything like the wee Comyn heir had . Of coincidences between things Joslyn and Alex had separately said.

If he was the laddie, could she blame him for wanting to enter this tourney and take back what was his? Yet did it mean his interest in her, deep down, was false? It would mean she’d met him thrice, though.

Ye’re being ridiculous , she scolded herself, quelling her mounting excitement. What are the chances of this braw warrior and scholar being the same lad from years ago? Coincidences, plain and simple.