Page 109 of Promised to the Forbidden Laird

Roy reached for the bread before the stillness could become something neither was prepared to name. He broke off a piece and dipped it into the honey. It tasted of heather and late summer, impossibly warm against the cold morning.

Donaldina watched him. “Well?”

Roy remembered another spoonful of honey offered beneath the sun, and the dangerous answer he had given then. He swallowed.

“Acceptable.”

Her brows rose. “Acceptable?”

“Aye.”

“That honey required an entire summer from the bees.”

“They might have worked harder.”

Donaldina’s smile appeared before she could prevent it. Roy felt it more sharply than he had felt Cormac’s blade striking his own.

She turned away as though nothing important occurred and crossed once more toward the shelves. Yet the smile remained within the room after she moved, warming the cold stone more effectively than the neglected hearth.

Roy took another piece of bread.

Cormac remained alive. Men still required orders. The walls required strengthening, and the Highlands beyond them remained full of roads upon which danger might return. Roy would rise soon. He would inspect the watch posts, question the prisoners, and begin the pursuit again.

But not yet.

Donaldina stood within reach, moving through the room as though she trusted him to remain there. She did not ask him to speak of what passed between them. She did not retreat from it, either.

Roy looked back at the reports. For the first time in many years, duty did not feel like the only thing holding him in place.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Cormac chose the ruined chapel because no sensible man entered it after nightfall.

The roof had fallen inward years before, leaving the altar exposed to rain and nesting crows. Ivy strangled the eastern wall. Damp crept through every stone, carrying the smell of old earth, extinguished candles and the stagnant pool beneath the broken crypt stair.

Six men waited among the shattered pews. Once, Cormac could have summoned three times that number with a word. Now, those who remained avoided one another’s eyes. Two bore wounds from the hunting lodge. Another kept his arm bound tightly against his chest, while blood darkened the linen beneath his cloak.

Cormac stood before the ruined altar and removed his gloves one finger at a time. His palms were blistered from the reins. Smoke still clung to his hair and clothing, though he rode through rain for half the night.

Roy MacIver had reached the lodge too quickly.

That truth followed Cormac through the forest like another rider. He expected fury. A man driven by affection could be made reckless. He expected MacIver to charge without thought, sacrifice his men and leave openings broad enough for a child to exploit.

Instead, Roy came through the trees with his warriors placed carefully around him. He cut off the northern track, secured the clearing and drove inward with the cold precision of a man taking an enemy fortification.

Even when Donaldina screamed from within the flames, he had not lost control. He chose her.

But he chose her without surrendering command.

Cormac hated him most for that.

“The attack failed,” one of the men muttered.

Cormac looked toward him. “I was present.”

The man lowered his gaze. Cormac crossed to the narrow opening where a window once stood. Rain whispered through the ivy beyond it.

Donaldina should have broken at the lodge. She had been bound, surrounded, and carried beyond the reach of her walls. Fear should have reduced her pride to pleading. Instead, she looked at Cormac with contempt, as though he were not the man determining her fate, but some stain upon the floor beneath her feet.