Page 67 of Promised to the Forbidden Laird

“Better,” Roy answered. “Can ye move yer feet?”

The boy kicked both boots weakly against the straw.

“Yer hands?”

Iain lifted them, then reached suddenly for Roy. He caught fistfuls of Roy’s shirt and pulled himself upright, burying his face against Roy’s chest.

Roy went still. Donaldina remembered how he looked when she took his hand beside Lachlan’s cairn, as though even comfort might be a danger he had not prepared to meet.

The child clung harder. For one uncertain heartbeat, Roy’s hands hovered above him. Then one broad palm settled upon the back of Iain’s head. The other curved around his narrow shoulders, drawing him securely against his body.

“Ye are safe,” Roy murmured.

Iain sobbed into his shirt. Roy did not hush him. He did not tell him boys ought to be brave or that the fall was too small to justify tears. He merely held him, one hand moving slowly along his back while the child’s fear spent itself.

Donaldina stood only a few paces away, Bran’s reins forgotten in her grasp. She had seen Roy use those hands to wield a sword. She had watched them wrench Cormac away from her, bind wounds and press against maps while he spoke of patrols and war. Now one rested gently over the head of a frightened child.

The stable yard quieted around them. Even the other children ceased whispering. Footsteps sounded beneath the arch. A woman rushed into the yard with her skirts gathered in both hands, followed closely by a broad-shouldered man Donaldina recognized as one of the fishermen from the village.

“Iain!”

The boy’s mother dropped beside Roy.

Her face had gone white. “What happened? Is he hurt?”

“He fell,” Roy explained. “He struck the ground, but he remained conscious. His eyes are clear, and he can move every limb. The healer should still examine him.”

The woman reached for her son. Iain tightened his arms around Roy’s neck.

The boy’s father knelt beside them, breathing hard from the run. “Come now, lad. Let the laird stand.”

Iain only clung more fiercely. Donaldina expected Roy to become uncomfortable. He endured the child’s embrace with patience, but tenderness before witnesses was not a thing he appeared willing to display for long. Instead, he adjusted his hold.

“It is all right,” he told the parents. “Give him a moment.”

The boy’s mother looked at Roy with startled gratitude. Roy seemed not to notice. He continued speaking quietly to Iain, asking whether he had ever fallen from the stone wall near the cottages or slipped upon the fishing path. The boy answered between ragged breaths. His sobs gradually softened into hiccups.

“Was the horse angry?” Iain whispered.

“Nae. Afraid.”

“Of me?”

“Of something she didnae understand.”

Iain considered this from the shelter of Roy’s chest.

“Will she bite me?”

“Nae if ye approach her properly.”

“I dinnae want tae go near her again.”

“Ye neednae today.”

“Ever.”

Roy’s hand moved once over the boy’s hair.