Page 20 of Outlaw Ever After (Highland Handfasts #3)

.

“Ye’re that cretin, Reaper,” Kendrew muttered.

Alex didn’t answer.

Peigi held her breath as her brother’s eyes narrowed angrily.

He shrugged as if MacGregor spoke of eating day-old bread, even if a twinkle sprang to life in Alex’s eyes.

He smoothed his beard with those ink—and now blood—stained fingers as if a cat toying with its dinner.

“I’m many things, man. But a parchment-pusher is best of them.

Seems the Crown has a newfound interest in employing Highlanders. ”

And then, casting that devilish glare at Seamus, he notched his chin and crawled right under her brother’s skin. “Consider me yer tenth entry in the bride tourney.”

Peigi’s heart leapt! Plummeted! Confused, her palms sweat.

“Like hell ye are,” Seamus seethed—

“Ye’re in no position to make threats.” Alexander tapped the royal summons in her brother’s hand, and Seamus’s jaw clenched so tightly, she feared he’d break a molar.

Alexander withdrew six pounds from his sporran, flicked each off his thumb, plunking them in succession off Seamus’s chest, who let each insult clink to the rushes.

His eyes finally cut to hers. In front of all these witnesses, and having been thoroughly embarrassed, Seamus couldn’t refuse. Her heart flip-flopped in her chest, for if he was choosing to compete only now, then he hadn’t

come for her. He was doing it for the same reason as every other contestant. It was clear from his surprise that he hadn’t even expected to see her.

“Yer name?” Seamus demanded. “Reaper? Or Alexander?”

“Alas, I’m merely an outland orphan from the Hebrides—”

“Yer name

!”

Peigi startled. Alex’s gaze flitted to her flinch and it deadened, his jaw ticked.

“Alexander Stewart, Esquire,” Alex replied evenly, stare slicing to Kendrew, then Seamus.

“A lawyer?” Seamus scoffed. “Ye expect me to accept ye with no title or knighthood?”

Alexander snapped open the parchment he’d just borrowed like a mercenary drawing a blade.

“It nay says a bloody word about title on yer invitation to sell yer sister off to the highest bidder like a prized cow and gain a pretty coin from it to bote

.”

Peigi’s cheeks flamed with embarrassment. Was there censure there? Her plummeting heart leapt again.

“Ye can call me Sir

Alexander, if it will make ye feel better.”

“ Ye

were nay invited, sir

.” Seamus jabbed his chest.

“Nay says a word about invitation only

, either.” Alexander smirked. “Read yer words. It says ten contestants total. I work in contracts, man, and this one is flimsy at best. Wish me to return to Edinburgh and inform the Lord High Treasurer ye attempt to pawn off yer debt upon an unsuspecting—”

“Enough,” Seamus fumed, stepping nose to nose with him as Peigi gasped.

“Brother?”

Gordon, Maxwell, and now Laird Ross began to grumble. “Ye attempt to dupe us all, Seamus?”

“ Nay

,” Seamus fumed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “He tries to rile ye. ’Tis my vow.” His eyes lifted to Alexander, who wore that too-handsome smirk. “Fine. Ye may enter.”

Muttering broke free from the dam of silence. A decision made.

“He needs his wounds treated.” Peigi composed herself. “No one deserves to be beaten to near unconsciousness.”

“Unconscious?” Alex snorted with a chin-notch. “Ye insult a man. ’Tis chicken scratches.”

Met with sporadic laugher.

Seamus folded his arms as if he didn’t care whether his wounds festered or healed. Peigi’s cheeks heated. Men!

“This is my marriage tourney,” she finally whispered to Seamus. “Or are all marriages in our family to be spoiled with violence unless they’re yers?”

Seamus’s face softened, as Alex’s perked curiously. His gaze burned into her profile, though she wouldn’t deign to look at him. Seamus scooped up his blade on an exhale. Left the coins in the rushes. He backed up, eyes still trained on Alex who returned his glare with one of his own.

“I’ll go post the notice that the tourney is full,” Seamus acquiesced, pointing at Alex with his dagger. “But we will speak when my sister’s eyes have dried and my temper has cooled.”

Seamus vanished out of the hall, MacGregor turning to follow, when he tripped on the lip of something…an uneven paver beneath the rushes? Alexander grinned as MacGregor scowled and slipped out behind Seamus. Aileana’s babe began to fuss, and she retreated to nurse with an apologetic frown.

Peigi exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, and turned to Alex as the hall resumed talking.

“I see ye told yer brother about me,” Alexander quipped coldly under his breath.

So imposing still, like a bulwark of lean muscle, belying the notion that he was a mere parchment pusher.

He stepped a degree closer and leaned around her. Her eyes fluttered shut at the heady smell of patchouli—denied her for three months—as his body heat so warm, so close—

He flipped up a bench with a flick of his wrist, stepping around her with a smirk.

Then he dropped to his rear like a king returned from a Crusade as he scooped up a stem of grapes from the rushes, like royal cuisine and not rubbish from the floor. He slung an arm across the board at his back as if a throne. He looked up at her with knees splayed wide.

She fidgeted her fingers at her waist. “He kens we-we…” She couldn’t force out the words.

“But I nay told him anything else about ye. I’d have to ken who ye really are to do that.

But Alexander, Reaper…it’s hard to tell which one of ye is real, or if ye’re both mirages. Besides, I was just a lark to ye—”

“Nay true,” he growled, shoving back to standing, that pleat returning to his brow as something flashed in his eyes that warned her off. Anger? Nay…more hurt

. She itched to smooth her finger over it. “I was waylaid after the fire. My laird was imperiled. I had to fight for him—”

She scoffed. “Dashing away to battle even when he promises to lay down his sword—”

“ And

the Archbishop was summoned away from the faire.

He demanded I travel to Edinburgh to officiate my post, lest I be passed over for another candidate.

I left ye that missive. I came”—he looked around pointedly at all the other contestants and swallowed, his throat bobbing—“too late, it seems. Apparently, ye’re more swayed to a, oh, ‘man of money and prestige’ after all.

” He fluttered his hand as if dismissing an unwanted servant.

His barb landed. She gasped, slapping a hand over her mouth. Her face paled. Her eyes flooded with more tears, but she turned away, as she held in the contents of her belly with her palm. She blinked to clear the burn, biting her tremoring lip.

She should send him off! Except, when she looked up again, his gaze was once more trained on her stomach.

“Are ye ill?” he growled, just as Mistress Joslyn hurried through the throngs with a legion of maids following.

He sat again, plucked a grape free, and tossed it up, catching it between his teeth. Juice squirted as he bit down. He calculated her as he chewed, licking juice and blood off his fattened lip as his teeth worked angrily.

The knot thickened in her throat. His jaw pumped as if to withhold something, as uncertainty clouded his sparkling eyes— eye

, for the other was nearly swelled shut, darting back and forth between hers and then away to take in the grandeur of the hall, as if wondering if it was worth it.

She touched the injury. “Al-Alex—”

He yanked away as if she’d burned him. She flinched back. He stilled, then softened.

“Nay pretend to want me, lass,” he gruffed through stiff lips.

“Nay pretend to be fighting for my hand when it is clearly a castle ye prefer—just like everyone else,” she whispered sadly.

“Why vie for the heart of a lady who wishes nay to give it? I should ken.”

Her mouth dropped open. His eyes deadened as the swarm of maids engulfed them, too.

They froze, stony eyed as Peigi glanced at them. After her brother’s beastly display, was it any wonder why the Comyns hated the Grants? The path to their hearts was going to be arduous.

“I shall fetch my medicinals and order a pot of boiling water,” Peigi breathed beneath their searing perusal. “Please, Mistress Joslyn, will ye see a chamber prepared for him?”

Mistress Joslyn, to her credit, smiled kindly, astute gray-green eyes flitting between her and Alex, and nodded.

Peigi turned to the wee serving girl. “Gertie?” The child bobbed a curtsy. “Please fetch Thomas and bring ye both an armload of firewood. For Sir Alexander

’s chamber.”

“Aye, mi lady.”

“Good lass.” The child bobbed her head of strawberry waves at the praise and darted away.

Peigi swirled away to order the water, aching to take refuge from their hateful stares, as the maids’ whispers followed her retreat.

“…I canna believe what Seamus Grant did…”

“…his eye. Sakes, that knife…”

“…that bastard…”

Slipping into the corridor to the kitchen, she finally exhaled and turned around. The wolfhound pattered behind her like a loyal lady’s maid and she peered from the shadows. From here, she could simply look

at him, as she idly scratched the dog’s head.

Betrayed by him or not, now that she was seeing him again, there was no denying how charming he still was.

He jested with the horde of maids and Mistress Joslyn as if they were all fond friends, though he looked thinner, new thought lines having tightened his brow.

He looked older. Tamer, even as he waggled his eyebrows at the maids.

And that devastating grin. How seeing it ached, because it was no longer meant for her.

His eyes darted toward the darkened corridor as if he could see her. She pulled back.

“I always listen to the shadows. That’s where the danger lurks…”

What had happened for him to leave her empty-handed? Did she dare tell him what had happened to her?