Page 4

He set it back on the table with some care. A man ought to respect a weapon that had bested him, even if the weapon was meant for candles.

The lass hadn’t even hesitated when she picked it up and threw it at his head. She had been determined to get out of there and put as much distance between the two of them as possible.

While there was a bruise on his forehead, he respected that.

His head throbbed in time with his pulse. Not badly. He’d taken worse from a shield rim at Glen Orchy and stayed on his feet to finish the fight. But there was something about being clouted awake by a half-dressed lass in a snowstorm of feathers that put a kind of ache behind the eyes.

Good aim, though. He’d give her that. She’d thrown it left-handed, too, because her right hand had been busy holding her shift closed.

The thought made him chuckle. No one had dared him like that in years, and he found he’d missed it.

Did she think that attempt at modesty was going to erase the memory of last night?

Evander pulled on his shirt, reached for his plaid, and found the peg empty. He paused. There was a commotion downstairs, a bunch of cheering and what sounded like congratulations. That must’ve been where his bride ran off to.

He stood there for a moment, looking at the peg. Then at the bed, where his wife’s plaid was decidedly not. Then at the window, through which, if he leaned, he could make out the yard, where a carriage was rattling out through the gate at a speed that suggested the driver had been offered money.

She’d taken his plaid, six yards of good MacArthur wool, and she’d run off in it like a reiver with a stolen cow. He was a bit cross at that fact. It was his, and she hadn’t hesitated to toss it on after not being able to find her own.

Where hers was, however, he did not know. It might’ve been tossed out the window at some point. He had the vague memory of something like that happening and her being aghast that it had happened.

The window had been open. She had been standing on the bed of all places, unwinding her plaid. She had stumbled a bit, rocking back and forth from the whisky she had drunk, and muttered about it being so strange in there. It had been warm, yes, but he did not think it had been that warm.

And then she’d flung her plaid. Not dropped it, but flung it with both arms, with the wild joy of a bairn. Six yards of Muir tartan had sailed out into the dark like a great woolen bat.

There had been silence.

“Och,” she’d said.

“Aye.”

“That was me plaid.”

“It was.”

She’d gone to the window, leaned out, and looked down into the yard for a long time. Then she’d turned around with an expression of such stricken solemnity that he’d nearly laughed.

“It’s out there somewhere.”

“It doesnae matter.”

“Me maither wove it.”

“It doesnae matter, lass. I have a spare.”

“Will she ken? Do ye think she’ll ken, somehow, from heaven, that I threw her plaid in a midden?”

“I think,” he’d said carefully, “that if she’s watching from heaven, she has bigger questions about tonight.”

She’d stared at him. And then she’d plopped down on the bed and laughed until she had to hold her ribs, and he’d thought, Christ, I’m in trouble.

He found himself smiling and wasn’t sure why. He could still feel the weight of her head on his shoulder once she had stopped laughing.

The night had certainly been interesting; he would give it that. Nothing had happened between them, but he certainly had had enough thoughts while they had been lying there together. It hadn’t helped that she was a wild thing, especially her eyes, which had kept drawing him in.

Evander was not easily captivated, but she had laughed at the Wolf as though he were nothing to fear, and no one had done that in twelve years.

The corridor was low and smelled of last night’s whisky, which was to say it smelled of the worst decision he’d made in a decade. He ducked beneath the beam at the top of the stairs and nearly walked into Callum, who was leaning against the wall with his arms folded and a look on his face that Evander had learned, over twelve years, to dread.