Page 36 of Outlaw Ever After (Highland Handfasts #3)

Alex swooped down and caught her as the villagers gasped. She hung limply upon his arms. He shook her.

“Peigi! Lass?” She was so pale. “She’s nay rousing. Jossy, she’s nay rousing! She’s—”

“This way, mi laird,” Joslyn called.

He whirled around, striding toward Jossy’s cottage as panic knotted his throat.

“ Move,

” he commanded, wedging between the crowd.

Fok, she hung spiritless, like a wet rag. Her breathing, so shallow. He buried his nose in rosewater as he strode, and kicked open the door, thudding a wall. Jossy scurried in behind him. The heady smell of herbs and peat overpowered.

“Lay her here.” Jossy fluffed her pillow, and he laid Peigi down upon the pallet of coarse furs, creaking the rope supporting the mattress.

He wrenched loose the tartan as Joslyn rested the backs of her fingers to Peigi’s forehead.

Yanked her bodice lacing open and slipped a finger beneath, dragging the ribbon free.

It slackened. Her head lolled, a soft moan.

Christ, she was rousing, and yet, the relief lifting off his shoulders like an oxen yoke did nothing to loosen the twist in his heart.

Had she fainted

? Her eyes fluttered open, those rich chestnut pools disoriented at first, then coming to. She felt clammy. She pushed up on her elbows—

“ Lie down

,” he commanded as he pushed her supine and braced her shoulders there.

“I’m-I’m fine,” she croaked.

“ Bullshite

,” he gnashed out.

Last night, she’d slipped away from his attempts to make her sit when she’d nearly dropped from carrying the water.

Yet his hands wouldn’t stop tremoring. He searched every inch of her face, his nerves ablaze with something foreign he couldn’t name. Was it rage? Fury? Nay. It was… fear

.

She started to protest— “Ye’re nay to get up.” He lay a finger over her lips. “Francine, stoke the fire. Thomas, gather wood. Gertie, bar the door.”

Jossy sloshed water into a pot to heat over the flame as the bairns did as he bade, then began to grind a mortar and pestle.

“I’m fine,” Peigi protested again.

“Ye crumpled to the ground

. That’s nay fine

.”

“I stood too quickly, ’tis all.” Again, she wrestled free, and this time, he eased his hold, but as she pushed up on her elbows, he sat, blocking her escape as his hands twitched with unchecked frustration and he braced his knees instead.

“Has this happened before?”

She looked away as Jossy ladled hot water over a sieve at her worktable strewn in vials of medicinals. That was an aye

if he’d ever seen one.

“When?”

She shook her head. “Everyone has grown lightheaded from standing too quickly once in a while, aye?”

“Ye near swayed off yer feet yestereve, too. When

?”

“I carried a pot of water up three stairwells.”

“Yer ale, mi lady,” Gertie said, holding out the tankard, but Peigi grimaced and held her belly.

“My thanks, lassie, but I fear I feel a bit unsettled.”

“When last did ye eat, mi lady?” Joslyn hedged while packing away her herbs and wiping clean her table.

“This morn.”

“A bit of bread, aye,” Joslyn replied, nodding to herself. “The eggs and pheasant did nay appeal to ye.”

“Sakes, a bonny prize I’ll make, retching into a chamber pot as I handfast…”

Alex’s jaw pumped furiously at the thought of her hand tied to another.

“And the day before?” Jossy urged.

She chewed her lip now, cutting it. “The same. Some porridge.”

“That’s all

?” Alex said, face twisting in anger. “Marg—Peigi, ’tis nay nearly enough.”

Peigi looked askance. “The tournament has made me nervous.”

This tournament was an excuse. A shield covering something uglier than a spoiled reputation.

He planned to needle the sore spot to get some bloody answers and doubled down. “Why will ye nay tell—”

A hand rested on his shoulder. Jossy? He glanced up at her cool and collected face.

“Try this instead, dear lass,” Joslyn crooned. Peigi looked up, eyes tormented and glistening, then took the herbal drink with a shaking hand. “An infusion of ginger and chamomile.”

Peigi brought it to her nose and smelled carefully. Sipped. Set it down, but Alex picked it back up with a murderous glare.

“If Jossy says drink, ye drink.” His hands enveloped hers, holding the cup there, white knuckled and shaking as he returned it to her lips, tipping it, feeling that knot finally ease an increment as he watched the column of her throat undulate with each swallow.

Joslyn smiled, patting Peigi’s cheek, though it was cryptic and vague, for she eyed him, too. But for him, her mouth was a firm, tight expression, the one she’d once worn when he and Aulay were summoned to fess up to a wrongdoing. Silent, which for her, always imparting pearls of wisdom, was odd.

Tears kept wavering on Peigi’s eyelids. He brushed them away with his thumb, his gut twisting to not be able to take away this mysterious pain.

“Tell me. Jossy said ye’ve been unweel.”

He took her face in his hands, splaying fingers into her hair. Wanting to shake the answers out of her lips like flour through a sifter.

She shook her head, shook harder, holding in whatever sadness had tied her tongue. But the dam was cracking, threatening to break free.

“I’m fine now—”

“ Christ,

if ye say ye’re fine once more…” he gnashed out. “Lasses who cry are nay fine. When last did ye fall faint?” Was she avoiding his question? Not on his guard. “At the abbey?”

Her eyes widened. Her argument ceased. And those tears vaulted down her cheeks. She drew her knees up to bury her face in them as a sob wracked her frame.

Joslyn swept the bairns from the cottage in his periphery.

“Why did ye agree to this tournament?” He gnashed out the frustration, snagging her fingers and bringing them to his stiff lips to kiss.

Her other hand curled around her middle.

“Why do ye keep doing that?” he said, eyes trained on her stomach.

“Doing what?” she breathed.

“Does yer stomach ail ye?”

Another tear streaked down her cheek and she blinked it away. “The preparation for this tournament t-took much out of me.”

“Liar,” he growled.

“Stop interrogating me,” she snapped with growing vexation.

“Nay until ye be honest with me.” God he was a plaster saint, but he barreled onward as she pinched closed her eyes, shaking her head. “Nay until ye tell me why ye keep pushing me away, until ye tell me why ye didna wait for me, why ye—”

“I was with child!” she blurted out.

Silence rang like kirk bells. Winded, he grappled for breath. Whose child?

And then his eyes lifted to hers as everything fell into place. Was

. And if she’d been convalescing at the abbey unwell, it meant…

“Ye left me with child and nary a single word, and unwed, I, I was sent—” she breathed feebly now, her voice shuddering.

She’d been sent to the abbey. For care and anonymity.

“The babe,” he breathed, dreading the answer.

“I lost it.”

He’d rooted his seed within her, a family she’d wanted so badly to start. He’d seen glimmers of that lass tonight as she’d styled Gertie’s braid and tied a corn doll in it, like a maw with her daughter. To think she’d nearly had that dream until…he’d nay come for her.

It mattered nay his reasons… Oh God…

“Songbird,” he croaked.

The past crashed down on him. No wonder her distrust. He dragged her to him. No wonder that light had faded from her eyes. His hold tightened. No wonder she’d tried to marry quickly. No wonder she’d felt as if she had no honor.

She nestled into his chest, and his heart broke when it should be soaring that she was finally coming to him for affection. Because he didn’t deserve her.

“I agreed to marry,” she murmured, “to protect my people from the shame.” He clenched her harder

. “But then I miscarried, and needed the nuns’ care—”

“I nay deserve ye,” he whispered, voice thickening, as his beard brushed over her skin and his hand knotted in her hair further.

Dampness stained his tunic. Her tears, the dam leaking, the pressure to let it out gaining strength, yet she pressed her ear to his lips as if aching to hear him.

“Ye were gone and, and my clan’s honor hinged on me and my honor had never been in question before because no one kenned about the reaver,” she breathed against his neck as if breathing in his scent.

“Stop implying ye’re dishonorable—”

“I didna want to feel anymore.” Silence.

He couldn’t breathe. To think this gentle lass had been filled with such despair.

“The summer festival was like a dream that had been too good to ever come true for me and then it was ripped away whilst ye went on with yer life with whichever maid suited ye and I…”

He froze at her words. She assumed he’d forsaken her.

He gripped the sides of her head, hurt lancing through him.

“Christ, sweeting, is that what ye think? Do ye nay ken that a songbird in a greenwood bloody ruined me and I have nay lived since?” He jostled her subtly, wishing he could drive into her heart and mind how desperately he’d searched, not finding her until he’d been meant to by those fickle fates?

“How could a man want another when ye were destined to steal my heart? I want that life with ye, lass. More than anything.”

More than this castle?

She closed her eyes, as if daring to breathe her biggest fear into existence. “But what if I can nay carry?” Silence. “How would I ever endure such loss time and again?”

His muscles jumped as he cradled her head to his chest in his palm, curling over her to bury his nose against her crown and breathe her in.

“What if ye win, but I leave ye with no heirs, leaving this castle to be reaved over and squabbled over? What if I fail everyone? What if I’m never able to-to—”

He gripped her nape and pressed his forehead to hers. Watched firelight flicker in her watery eyes.

“ None

of that,” he growled, a ferality to his chastisement. “If I have ye

, then I have everything.”

“How can I believe that?” she begged, gripping him, shaking him.

“How can I make

ye believe it?” he gnashed out, his lips crashing to hers.