Page 21 of Outlaw Ever After (Highland Handfasts #3)

“As I live and breathe…” warbled that voice as din consumed the hall.

He turned his good eye to the old woman, and a genuine smile split his lip, breaking through the dam of his brooding thoughts.

“I’d recognize those eyes anywhere. Yer sire’s green ones if there ever was.

Seeing ye walk through the portico was like seeing yer da returned from the grave, for ye look the spitting image—”

“Jossy…” Never had he thought he’d see her again. He’d assumed by now, age would have claimed her. “Careful ye nay put a target on me back with yer doting. I’m already toying with fire, as ye can see.”

“Ye always were, laddie, always were. Yer name starts with C

,” Joslyn murmured. “And it seems as if our new ladyship saw a Samhain ghost tonight. Or mayhap ye just did.”

A draft rippled through the hall, flickering the torches. Joslyn had always been perceptive.

“Quite an entrance ye made, son.”

“I aim to entertain.”

“ Hmph

,” she grunted at his jest. Yet her hands trembled with barely contained worry she played off with a lift of her eyes to heaven. “Listen to ye, calling me pet names as if the warrior before me was still a laddie begging for sweets.”

“Seamus can rot, and so can his sisters…” grumbled a maid, snagging his attention.

“We can nay believe it’s ye, mi laird,” breathed another, trying to be surreptitious. This one was familiar to him as they swarmed around him. Francine

? Aulay’s sister? He grinned. She’d only been five and ten years when he’d been dragged from these lands. “’Twas good of ye, Sir, eh, Alexander, to protect her so from her brother’s blade,” she added on a curtsy.

“I would nay have,” retorted another as she set a tankard upright, pouring ale and placing it into his hand. “I’d have let him finish her. One less Grant’s arse to wipe…”

He pulled back from the maid dabbing his face at her remark, glaring up at her. Seamus, in his rage, had nearly killed

Marg—Peigi. And that flinch when Seamus had wrenched her from his protection a moment ago? When she’d clung to him

as if she still needed him? Alex was angry, aye, but what had possessed him to snap so acerbically at her?

His eyes darted toward the corridor to the kitchen, where Peigi had disappeared. Those tears of pure hurt. The way her face had paled. Her accusations, as if she’d nay believed his missive to wait another sennight… Her terrified screams had been otherworldly.

Shame slammed him now as the maids continued shaming Marg— Peigi

beneath their breaths, lamenting Seamus drawing his knife, even if MacGregor’s accusation had started the beating. That

wasn’t lost on Alex, either.

But why did they hate her

***

What in Christ’s name had he just done? Entering a bride tournament to win back the very castle he was here to investigate, along with the hand of a woman who hadn’t even waited for him?

A tournament that turned this sacred time of year into a cheap spectacle?

A castle he could very well be granted as one of the Earl of Arran’s top contenders? But the thought of Marg— Peigi

, dammit, married to another, even when it was clear she’d rejected him, still burned.

When her face had paled just now, he’d seen trepidation in her eyes.

She was doing this tournament. But she didn’t like it.

Christ’s bones.

He raked fingers through his hair, ripping more strands loose. This was a conflicting interest and as a decorated lawyer from King’s College with a specialty in contracts, he knew that whilst what he was doing wasn’t illegal, it was definitely unprincipled.

Peigi walked back into the hall, composed, and no longer looking at him as she floated among the guests like a perfectly trained chatelaine.

A knot tightened in his gut as he tracked her, the pearl of an already valuable prize, for all these other men to woo.

Laird Graham was waylaying her, and was dangerously close to losing a hand, for it was upon her lower back as the supposedly pious man leaned down to her ear to speak.

To her credit, she slipped free of him in much the same way she had MacGregor.

“Have a care ye nay murder Laird Graham with the daggers ye be slinging from yer eyes, lad,” Joslyn teased, clucking her tongue as she stretched wide his swelling eye and flipped down his lip.

Oh, songbird…

If she only knew how he’d searched for her, ill with regret that he’d had to leave another bloody note for her, while she’d been here instead, planning a marriage to some rich laird.

“Come, let us get ye to yer chamber before Seamus Grant sets his guard upon ye again.”

He cocked up his grin. “It’s good to be back, Jossy.” He hefted his satchel over his shoulder and followed Joslyn out of the hall as the entourage of maids flurried behind him, carrying food and ale.

“We thought ye dead. Years ago. After ye went to retrieve yer sire’s, eh,” she couldn’t say head, apparently, “and were chased down again—”

“Wheesht,” he shushed.

Christ, they were all

going to give him away if they didn’t stop staring like he was the prodigal son.

“When I realized that Seamus had rampaged through the hamlet after me, I’d nay do that to everyone again.”

And then, that damning flyer… The skull was here, somewhere, buried in these walls.

They ducked into the stairwell, when Aulay leaned in behind them. “Blessed be yer ugly face survived.”

A grin split both their faces wide, and Alexander lay his finger over his lips.

“Aulay…” He hitched up his chin with a flourish. “What are ye talking about? I’ve always been prettier than thee.”

Aulay stifled a laugh, his jaw pumping with a retaliation that he chewed back.

“I almost nay survived, had it nay been for a…”

A lassie, he remembered. The wee sister to Seamus Grant who’d played a lyre… His eyes snapped back to Peigi in the hall.

Peigi’s broken lyre, abandoned in that greenwood where their summer dreams had once bloomed, burned against his thigh…

My brother wants yer head

, a distant memory whispered.

And his brother doth said I’ll take yer head!

a lady had laughed and sang three months prior.

Gooseflesh pebbled his skin. His eyes narrowed on the hurt, angry songbird playing flawless hostess, dancing a reel with Laird Gordon.

That night so long ago was distorted by time. It had been too dark to see the girl’s face, not to mention he’d been delirious with grief, pain, and hunger. Could his memory be trusted?

“Are ye weel?” Joslyn whispered.

He turned back to Aulay as shock pitted in his gut. He gripped Aulay’s shoulder and murmured, “Meet me for an ale tonight?”

“If ye can evade Laird Grant to do so, but I was just without the walls and overheard him say he plans to set a guard on ye.”

Alexander whispered, “Does Seamus ken about the, eh, alternate routes?”

Aulay grinned. Shook his head. “In the village at midnight, then? We’ve a fresh barrel of whisky to tap.”

“Count on it.”

Joslyn shooed her son Aulay away and took a tallow candle from her apron, lighting it in a torch. They began to spiral up. Plastered stone, covered in rich tapestries made so painstakingly, hung like reminders, threads of red ochre and saffron yellows, royal purples, and indigo woad:

The weaving of a young man reaping fields of barley with his scythe.

The granary miller grinding corn.

A country wedding.

Up they spiraled as he took in the next tapestry, the maids following quietly behind them and the din growing distant: the lady playing a lyre in a cloistered orchard, enveloped in folds of finery, blossoming branches surrounding her.

The babe at the woman’s breast. Me

.

The layman stood upon the next weaving, styled a baron! Dressed in a puffy doublet and hose receiving the keys of Castle Freuchie, a prize for once alerting the king to danger…

The visual feast rippled solemnity through him. Home

. He’d dashed past this story of how his family had established themselves time and again, brimming with much imagination and not enough appreciation for his own good.

That draft washed over him again. A chill shivered down his spine.

“Those fickle fae

,” Joslyn muttered as if spirits floated overhead. He smiled at the forgotten familiarity of her words. “Whose fates do they play with now?”