Page 17 of Outlaw Ever After (Highland Handfasts #3)

Alexander tapped Faunus to cantering as wind lapped at his ears and face.

He’d found the chink in Seamus Grant’s indisputable charter of Castle Freuchie. The deputy comptroller had been given the reins to call Grant, in arrears of sixty pounds sterling, to appear at Court and be formally stripped of his charter.

The entire journey, he’d steeled himself. But as he traveled beneath an archway of spindly branches creaking on the wind, as brittle leaves swirled across the path like gamboling nymphs, he rose a hillock and Castle Freuchie hit his vision like a war hammer.

Memories rushed back, a deluge after a drought, washing away his thoughts like topsoil.

He hadn’t steeled himself nearly enough.

“I swear it on our clan oath! I will see ye vindicated…”

A vow he’d once screamed into the wind.

Somewhere, in one of the castle’s renovations, was certain

to lie his sire’s skull. He carried a detailed list of exact locations where four and ten years ago, Seamus had requested borrowing royal money for specific repairs. After Alex resolved this discrepancy

, the Earl of Arran himself had agreed to consider rechartering it to him

as the new steward of the castle.

He’d known biding his time, using his mind over his muscle, would eventually pay off.

“I shall finally see ye buried, Da.”

He slowed to a halt to absorb the glow of the castle upon the River Spey like holy light shining on his atrophied soul. The magnificent castle, where his sire’s skull languished, hidden like a dirty secret.

It swarmed with celebration as visitors dotted the grounds with their encampments, a picture of happiness while the dormant need for retribution writhed within him.

“ Home

,” he dared to whisper as if trying to find the truth in the word, because he’d never thought there’d be a chance to reclaim it, and without the figment of a lass with whom he’d once envisioned sharing it, the word hung hollow, leaving a rancidness on his tongue—

Nay go there.

Mayhap she’d never been real. Mayhap the songbird with the enchanting voice had been a tricky fairy

, bewitching him, distracting him.

He was glad

she’d disappeared. He might have foregone this retribution to placate his songbird begging a simple life. He only regretted that he’d wasted so much time searching for a lass who didn’t want to be found. He’d certainly not

pined like a milksop for three pathetic months.

He held out his hands in supplication to the skies as if his sire were watching him. What better time to release a soul to heaven than during Samhain when the veil betwixt Christendom and the olden ways thinned?

Tapping his heels, Faunus lumbered into a trot, then a lope, as a lyre upon his thigh bounced.

He detoured off the high road, into the Tomvaich Wood, where he’d once gone a-mushrooming with the villagers and their pigs—a barefoot sprite, despite his mother scolding him to wear his boots.

Crimson leaves clung to the maples above, rustling on the breeze and promising winter. He reached up to skim his fingertips against them. They’d once seemed so looming to a laddie.

Singing rose and fell as he rode closer to Freuchie’s hamlet. Thatched roofs blinked between the trees as lassies cut oat stalks and placed them in a basket. He ignored the ruin of another cottage far in the distance, rising up to the sky:

“But lo behold our lovers dear whose worlds collide on three,

For only when the veil thins can their love be free.

Sing we now to fae folk, sing we now to Sidh.

The mantle ’twixt our world and yours is open for to see…”

His ear pricked toward the sound as he neared them. Despite his tumult, he smiled. Some things never changed. These kin still sang the old pagan lovers’ song of star-crossed souls.

“A bonny song ye sing,” he called, slowing.

“Our thanks, sir!” the lassies chimed, watching him curiously.

He eyed the oat stalks. “Are one of ye to marry?”

“Nay us. The lady of the castle, of course.”

Of course

, he harrumphed, as if I should have known—

“A Grant though, she is,” they added, and he took in their task more closely. Oat stalks.

His jaw tightened. The Grants could rot. Was the crowd upon the castle grounds not here for Allhallowtide but instead for her wedding? What was with the Grants, using Comyn lands to stage their marital spectacles?

The half-timbered smithy shop was operating in full force, hammering. Was it still manned by Alpin, the wiry smithy with the coarse whiskers? Or had he passed on?

The huts were smaller than he’d remembered, but it had been a lifetime ago that he’d been here.

He left the hamlet behind, cutting into the woods to take a path across Allt A’ Bhacain’s gurgling waters. Alongside the fairy bridge—made of staggered rocks transecting the current. After all these years, the river, fringed with cattails, or wood nymphs hiding from Pan

, his mither had always said , still

cut a bubbling path through these woods.

But no amount of steeling himself staved off the flood of memories when he exited the trees, crossed the harvested hayfield, and rode past a row of olden standing stones, refusing to look at the patterns of lichen adorning them that he’d once traced with wee fingers.

Memories rattled their cages for release as the hooves pounded beneath him.

He’d handle his business with his enemy swiftly.

He’d drag Seamus to court with him and see him stripped publicly of these lands.

Seamus’s arrears had been overlooked as monarchs died and were born, and as regencies had been won and lost.

Leave it to the orphaned layman, who’d worked his way through King’s College Law by swinging a war scythe, to discover the discrepancy, much to the Archbishop and the Earl of Arran’s gratitude.

The grounds were abuzz. Grant guardsmen nodded to him, taking note of his weapons. Unsuspecting eejits letting the wolf into the chicken coop.

Across the manicured castle lawns, vendors hawked their wares from the backs of their carts. Celebrants ogled the goods, tourney-goers opened their purses, bonfires crackled, around which clans had erected encampments. Folk gathered around it, singing, heads sloshing with drink.

Pennants— Grant

pennants, his lip curled—snapped upon the breeze above the daises for the Hallowtide contests that always ushered in Yule.

The gallery was still adorned with gargoyles, blackened by the baptism of Scottish rain, where he’d oft watched rivulets roll down the monsters’ teeth.

He halted Faunus at the steps leading to the courtyard.

Remembered that skull upon the pike right there

, on that left newel, immortalized in the etching that had declared a lad of twelve an outlaw. At least no pikes or brackets were affixed there now.

“What be yer business?” a guard asked. “The bride tourney?”

Bride tourney? He thought back to the lasses in the hamlet, preparing wedding games. Withdrawing his summons bearing the seal of the Archbishop of St. Andrew, he stopped.

“I seek audience with Seamus Grant, if the laird is in residence.”

They pointed him toward the stable and he clicked his tongue to Faunus, nudging him into a walk when a dutiful groom in flaxen trousers and tunic raced out of the gate to assist. Dipping into a perfunctory bow, the boy took the reins, gazing wide-eyed at his horse’s shimmery coat and deep black eyes.

“Oh, mi laird, he’s a handsome beast,” he said reverently, stroking Faunus’s cheek.

“Ye’ll spoil him and make him arrogant,” Alexander teased.

The child snapped to attention and bowed. “Thomas Comyn at yer service.”

Comyn…

“Are ye here for the bride prize?” the lad asked. “It’s nearly filled up already.”

Bride prize? This was the third he’d heard of a wedding. Was he about to interrupt some ceremony? He dismounted, his arsenal of weapons and satchel creaking.

Not his problem. The more uncomfortable he made Seamus, the more he’d enjoy this. Yet his curiosity was

piqued “What bride prize?”

“Winner takes all. The castle, lands, and the Lady Margaret.”

Alexander froze.

Margaret? Since when was there a Margaret Grant?

“Who is she to Seamus Grant?”

“Why, his sister. Only just arrived a fortnight ago. The castle is her dowry.”

He’d only ever seen two sisters mentioned when reviewing Seamus’s charter. A Peigi and an Aileana. And now, his birthright was on the auction block to whoever won this event?

It mattered nay. Seamus was about to be stripped of this before it could be given as anyone’s

dowry, and then he, Alexander Stewart, was at the top of the list of candidates to assume lairdship—

“ Margaret

, ye say?” He couldn’t let it go.

Christ… Could it be her

***

The lad nodded. “Seems her kin call her Lady Peigi, though.”

Peigi, pearl

…indeed such was a moniker for Margaret. Blood racing, tinged with budding anger, he needed to see her for himself. Could it be the lass who’d once promised to elope with him? Now promising herself to someone else instead?

He flicked Thomas a coin. Thomas caught it, his eyes rounding. “’Tis… gold

, mi laird!”

Alexander grinned, ignoring the term laird

. “Of course it’s gold.” He leaned down as he passed by the child, taking in his strawberry blond hair—a strong clan trait—and murmured, “I bet the other lairds only gave ye coppers, eh?”

The lad giggled. “Sir MacGregor didna give me anything

.”

Kendrew MacGregor was here? The MacGregors and the Grants had always been attached at the hip.

“The man is cheap, make no mistake.” He winked and tousled the lad’s head.

“That way, mi laird.” The lad beamed, leading Faunus into the stables.

Alexander knew the way. It had been years, but he knew these paths like the veins on the back of his hand.

He climbed the steps to the courtyard. Would anyone recognize him? Or had all of his father’s loyal servants been slain or removed? Would they keep silent if they did?