Page 19 of Outlaw Ever After (Highland Handfasts #3)

“Stop!” Peigi cried as ladies screamed and hurried for cover.

The man who’d forsaken her thrashed for freedom as her brother’s guardsmen converged upon him.

“ Stop

!” She gripped Aileana and Elizabeth as they shielded their babes, as men bellowed and Alexander freed a boot and sent a guard reeling backward, though her cry was drowned in the chaos.

He threw a guard off his back like the fabled Tyr battling the Fenir in her mither’s Irish tales. Thrashed away another guard, noosed his scythe in his freed fist beneath the iron head to yank from its sheath—

Seamus leapt into the fray now, replacing whom he’d dispatched.

“No!”

Peigi screamed.

Fists rained down on Alexander as he upended a table with his torquing body, sending the feast crashing to the rushes. His sheath was ripped off his back.

“Damnation he’s strong!” huffed a sentry.

“Take him away!” boomed Seamus.

“ Nay

!” Alexander’s call shook the rafters. “I looked for ye Margrrmf

…” A hand clamped over his mouth, muffling his protests.

My, still so tall, his ginger-blond beard still braided like the worst sort of rogue.

And then she saw a lyre, banging upon his thigh, the instrument smashing against his side, strings pinging loose.

It meant he had found it where it had lain forgotten in a greenwood, when she’d collapsed into Seamus’s arms that fateful night. Did it mean he had

come for her?

“ Seamus

!” She hefted up her skirts, dashing down the dais, into the melee.

Dishes scattered as Alexander broke free again.

Seamus couldn’t hear her amid the screams and thuds of fists connecting with skin and yet like a god, Alexander seemed impervious to the pain.

She pattered over the rushes littered with toppled feast that the wolfhound now foraged through to eat.

“Ye’ll be subdued, man, or ye’ll feel my wrath!” Seamus lifted his knife.

Alexander twisted free yet again

. But this time, a rib slitter flicked free of his wrist guards, gleaming in his fingers.

Horror! She lunged between them as Seamus’s blade struck down—

An arm curled her head into a wall of muscle. Shielded her with warmth and the sharp tang of patchouli and heather and summer promises, broken forever. Clenched her suffocatingly.

The bundle of muscle she was encapsulated within grunted beneath an impact, lurched, tensed hard, exhaled a harsh wheeze of pain.

“I beg ye stop

!” she screamed, as every nightmare, every reave she’d ever endured, flashed to life in her mind.

Time lulled. Quiet descended.

A knife clattered to the rushes, but the muscle held firm around her like an oak twining her in his branches—

Hands wrenched her from the warm embrace.

“Nay!” She flinched.

Seamus’s hand dropped immediately, the sharp edge of his anger contorting his face with regret.

“ Sister

,” he breathed, scouring his face. “Ye were nearly slashed.”

But when she dared to look up, Alexander’s glare was trained on her brother who’d just yanked her free. Face battered, nose bleeding and staining his beard red, his eye was swelling into a nasty pulp. Her fingers crept over her mouth.

Then she noticed his shoulder. Blood oozed through the slash in his doublet.

She stepped around Seamus, splaying apart the tear. When she’d jumped between them, Seamus’s knife had been about…to strike her

.

“Ye protected me,” she breathed. He’d taken the stab without a thought.

“I promised I always would”—he gritted out, heaving for breath, when seemingly remembering Seamus in audience—“ protect

those in need.”

She shook her head, winded. “Promises are broken.”

Alexander’s eyes dipped to her empty finger. “Indeed they are.”

“Nay speak a word to her,” Seamus growled.

Not deigning to acknowledge her brother, he gritted, “Are ye hurt?”

“I said, nay a word—”

“Seamus,” she whispered, this time with mounting anger that he wouldn’t stop.

She searched Alexander’s face as his gaze roved over her skin, her neck, searching for injury as if he weren’t a prime example of injury himself.

He exhaled roughly and raked his hand through his hair, ripping strands of strawberry-blond from their knot. “Christ, lass…”

“My lady

,” growled Seamus, composing himself. “Nay lass

. She’s nay one of the tavern wenches ye seek along the high road.”

“ Seamus

,” Peigi breathed a rebuke, not wanting to think about the past three months when Alexander might have found solace elsewhere while she’d—

Nay, she was stronger now.

A tick jumped in Alexander’s jaw as he bit something back. Hard work for a man who’d once spouted whatever jest popped into his mind and catapulted it off his tongue.

His eyes fell to her hand. It dropped from her stomach where it had migrated.

“ My lady

,” Alexander seethed with a faux smile, blood trickling off his swollen lip and rolling down his beard. “A brother who wouldst take me head. Reminds me of a song.”

She sucked in at his jab.

He shrugged straight his doublet as if he hadn’t just gutted her. He dusted his epauls with the backs of his battered fingers like a haughty prince full of flourish, even if she noticed that for the first time, his smile didn’t

meet his emerald pools, when once upon a time in their idyllic greenwood, his eyes had been soft and smitten on her.

“Is this the man?” Seamus breathed in her ear. “Kendrew says he saw him this summ—”

“Ye must stop,” she begged on a thread of air, as Sir Kendrew MacGregor stepped up behind her.

She didn’t want to think on how Alexander had promised her the world. How he’d once gazed at her with reverence. How convincing it had seemed. How he still looked so achingly handsome—

“What be yer business, man?” Seamus, studying her, finally seemed to heed her discomfort and changed his questioning.

Alexander’s glare darted away from her and landed squarely on Seamus.

He withdrew a scroll from his satchel and handed it to Seamus, who ripped the seal open and snapped his wrist to unfurl it.

“Laird Seamus Grant, Earl of Morriston

. On behalf of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, his Grace the Archbishop of St. Andrew, I, Alexander Stewart Esquire, Royal Deputy Comptroller, summon ye immediately to Court. Ye’re to face inquisition in the matter of yer arrears owed to the Crown regarding yer charter of Castle Freuchie.”

A dark grin lifted the apples of Alexander’s cheeks, revealing his bloodstained teeth tinged red with satisfaction.

The hall quieted.

“I’m here to inspect each location where ye used royal funds to perform repairs after, eh,” Alexander looked over the rim of the parchment in her brother’s hand, “ ye

damaged the castle in a reave years ago? Ye will produce every record, reveal to me every repair, so I may correlate with my records and ensure ye nay owe more than it indicates. Ye will do this before departing for Edinburgh.”

Alex cocked a brow despite his swelling eye, but Peigi’s blood pumped harder.

Was Seamus’s charter in jeopardy? Was she at risk of losing her dower property?

Not as if she’d wanted this spectacle, but she needed the castle in order to ensure a quick marriage.

Why was Alexander delighting in Seamus’s embarrassment?

“Ye’re more of a blackguard than I realized,” she whispered.

“Ye celebrating an engagement, my lady

?” Alexander asked with that shite-eating grin, glancing around. Yet his jaw ticked with accusation.

“When I win this tournament she will be,” said Kendrew smoothly, laying a hand on her shoulder. “And when I win, ’twill nay be a handfast. ’Twill be the kirk wedding she deserves.”

Alexander’s glare trained upon MacGregor’s touch as if he wanted to stab his dirk beneath each of MacGregor’s fingernails. His nostrils flared and that tick in his jaw jumped harder.

Was he angry at Kendrew for touching her? He had no right to be, for it wasn’t as if he’d

wanted her. Still, she slipped discreetly free.

The other contestants grumbled. “Nay truth, man… Wishin’ upon stars, he is…”

Alex snatched a tournament invitation from another contestant’s hand. His eyes roved over the words and narrowed murderously as his chest rose and fell. Then his eyes lifted to hers and she swore she saw a flash of hurt.

Hurt? Him? He

hadn’t been compromised, abandoned, and then threatened with losing his dowry.

How she wished she could enshroud herself in shadows! She lifted her chin instead. Her cross to bear for the stain of dishonor she’d brought upon the Grant name. Even if her lip tremored and shame reddened her cheeks.

“Hell, ye’re all fearsome competition if ye were given such an enthusiastic welcome as I, a mere parchment pusher sent on an errand,” he chuckled darkly.

“…Nay possible…he’s a warrior through and through…” murmured voices in the crowd. “…No mere administrative lackey can fight off nine guards as weel as he just did…”

So he truly had taken employment with the Crown. Apparently he could tell the truth, sometimes.

A scheme brightened Alex’s eyes. Cocksure, stirring the cauldron like a wily mage. She’d loved his recklessness. How he’d had no worry for tomorrow, living on the whims of today.

“Were ye beaten when ye arrived, Laird Graham?” Alex asked.

Oh God… She’d once told him about Laird Graham’s suit.

“Of course, nay.” Graham stood, licking chicken grease from his lips and adjusting his belts around his paunch.

“Hmm. Ye?” Alex nodded toward Lairds Maxwell and Gordon, burly warriors who both shook their heads.

“No? What about ye, MacGregor? Were ye deemed so much a threat as to be beaten?” Alex arched that same brow. He hooked an arm around him as if long-lost mates from boyhood and slapped his chest. “Huh. ’Twould appear to be an honor just for me…”

MacGregor frowned, straightening his coat with a tug as Alexander released him, a twinge of discomfort tensing his mouth as he swung free his injured arm.

He needed treatment. His eye swelled in a dangerous way. His lip, too, was fattening, as did his nose keep staining his coat with a rogue’s finest red paint, as if he didn’t notice. She shouldn’t care, and yet, he’d sustained that stab protecting her