Page 39 of Outlaw Ever After (Highland Handfasts #3)

As Alex and Aulay ferried the bairns back to the village and Peigi back to the celebratory castle, her arms around him as he trotted Faunus through the woods, the fury wouldn’t abate. It coursed through his blood like rapids down a river.

He was proud of how selflessly she’d jumped to action and protected his kin, despite worrying about her health and his bitterness that she knew such deep-seated fear. And her admission about her— their

—babe? Tonight, he’d seen firsthand the scars that a turbulent ocean scored on a soul when creating a resilient pearl.

Castles. Lands. What men thought were worth fighting for.

A fight he’d harbored all his life. God had a twisted sense of humor to now make winning the very thing she resented the only way to keep her, the only way to uphold a laddie’s desperate vow over his sire’s corpse—the only way to make the past right.

He owed his folk a win. But he owed her

peace. He owed everyone

the truth.

And now, standing along the margins of the crowded great hall, itching to pace, while stuck watching Peigi dance with her suitors like the perfect lady, as if nothing was wrong, made him want to thunder at Seamus that she should bloody well be in bed.

Unless she hadn’t told her brother of her collapse, which would be just like her to see to everyone else’s peace of mind at the expense of her own.

Seamus, across the great hall, nodded subtly at someone. Alex’s attention darted around the chamber to see whom, when he landed on Kendrew MacGregor. A moment later, Seamus slipped out the archway toward the main door.

Kendrew made a point of stretching, of jesting with a wench who’d been sidled up to him, then casually prowled the hall—tripping as his toe wedged against that paver that had been uneven since time immemorial, and glanced around to see if he’d been spotted as his ale sloshed.

His eyes landed on Alex, who grinned just to piss him off.

MacGregor scowled and stopped at the casks to turn the tap key and refill his tankard, before also slipping out.

Shite. Seamus suspected he was the lost Comyn heir. Had he just summoned his partner-in-crime to discuss the possibility?

Hair prickled along Alex’s nape. If the cat was truly out of the bag, then he had a plan to make to avoid capture and a skull to find immediately, for he had no men of his own to fight back should Seamus’s sheer numbers overpower him.

Tormund had offered to send a small retinue with him to Edinburgh to serve him when he’d taken his new post, but he knew Tormund needed all his men and Alex had never anticipated needing extra muscle.

Never thought he’d find himself embroiled in this mess of his own making.

And even though Tormund was in Edinburgh now for Arran’s peace talks and Alex could

send Aulay on an errand with a request for men, Tormund would need them all should discussions turn heated, as they often did.

His kin would fight, but he couldn’t bear to put their lives at risk, knowing they’d be subjugated to punishments when they lost. Leaving would protect them all, but God, he never wanted to be apart from Peigi again.

Why string me along with yer promises when ye were intent on leaving instead?

His gaze collided with Peigi’s, her dancing on another man’s arm when it should be his, and those wide brown depths latched onto him.

He scoured his jaw.

Even if leaving might protect his kin, it would solidify every doubt she still harbored and there’d never be hope of winning back her heart.

Why was I nay good enough?

Why did ye nay want to keep me? I have no honor…

He paced—

“Ye all right, man?” Laird Ross asked, eying him curiously.

He nodded, lifting his tankard in salute and taking a swallow, belying his inner turmoil.

“It’s just, ye look as if ye want to murder someone.” Ross chuckled.

He slapped Ross on the back and grinned. “Imagining what I must do to steal my

bride prize away from all of yer roving hands.”

Ross laughed, oblivious to his jest being a stark truth. “She does seem to fancy ye over the rest of us. Nay fair, ye bastard.”

The tension uncoiled an inch when Peigi departed for the night. Alex could finally quit the hall. She fancied him, aye, but she feared what he might do to her fragile heart.

He climbed to his chamber, sensing boots behind him, and as he stepped into his darkened corridor, turned to see the glow of a torch wavering around the spiraling walls when Sir Donegal came into view.

The guardsman paused at being spotted, but finally nodded to Alex and climbed to the top, stepping into the corridor and affixing the torch to a bracket.

“The laird says I’m nay to leave yer side tonight. What did ye do this time to piss him off?”

“Wish to climb abed with me, man, and stay true to yer orders? A word of warning—I covet the blankets,” Alex twitched his brows playfully, “but I promise to keep ye warm.”

Donegal chuckled. The man didn’t want to dislike him. “Ye’re nay bonny enough for me, man.”

He nudged his head toward the door, motioning Alex inside.

Alex lit a taper in the torch, then did so, sliding the bar across the door, but today he’d seen most of the renovations with Seamus. He knew where to start his search for the skull:

The mantel in the laird’s solar and storage cavity.

The refurbished floorboard in the lady’s solar.

The refurbished tiles in the undercroft and pantry.

He’d start in the undercroft and work his way up to the solars.

He slipped out of his doublet and back sheath. Slipped his documents from the treasurer into his belts, along with a taper and flint. Slipped open the hatch covered in a rug beneath his bed, and eased himself down into the darkness before pulling the hatch closed again.

Last night, the tin he and Aulay had once stashed, containing a set of castle keys, had proven to be undisturbed beneath the floorboards. He patted through the darkness, sifting through dust and cobwebs, until he found it and wedged open the lid.

He withdrew the keys.

He inched through the crawl space, reaching the narrow stairs barely wide enough for his shoulders, and scooted down on his rear until he reached the first floor.

He took up the key ring to a tiny door, one of many that led to the escape passages of the castle.

Pushing outward against the resistance of a tapestry concealing it, he peered his head through the crack.

The corridor was empty, the sounds of fanfare louder here.

Closing the door behind him, he straightened the tapestry and moved along the shadows to a servant stairwell, through another passage past the laird and lady’s chambers. In and out of the walls, he traveled like a ghost, until he found himself in the undercroft packed with furniture in storage.

He’d made Seamus painstakingly pry up the renovated tiles that afternoon to assess the materials used in the foundation repair from damage long ago, and they still had yet to be resealed.

The iron crow Seamus had used was still propped in the corner.

Striking his flint, he lit the taper and affixed it in the wall scone.

He heaved the tiles up, one by one, revealing heavy pavers underneath.

Taking up the crow, he pried between the grooves of the pavers, hoisting them up, one at a time, his pulse rising.

Was this going to be the moment he came face to face with his sire again? Except…

Nothing but hard bedrock lay beneath.

Disappointment, and yet, relief, sagged his shoulders. He replaced the pavers, then the tiles, blew out the taper, and took the iron crow with him.

He crept through the castle to the pantries, doing the same.

Storage lay beneath those tiles, but each crate proved to hold only household goods.

He eased himself into the lady’s solar. The lingering scent of rosewater hovered in the darkness, a vestige of Peigi sitting here today.

Using the bar, he pried each board up—the boards creaked as the metal fasteners pulled loose…

Footsteps shuffled in the corridor.

He froze. Listened, as the footsteps passed the chamber by. He exhaled. Pried up the next. Nothing.

That left the solar: where lairds exacted their power and rubbed it in the faces of others, such as defeated foes

. He’d chased Peigi to the kitchens before Seamus had shown him the solar.

Alex crept past the lady’s chamber to the solar door and inserted one of the olden keys into the lock. It clanked open, and Alex did his best to muffle the sound. Blessed be, the locks were still original.

He slipped inside, closed the door, and eased the key back into the lock, resecuring it. Embers rolled in the hearth from an earlier fire. He maneuvered to it and ignited his taper against a coal. Holding it aloft, he looked around.

The desk

his sire had crafted sat in the middle. He removed his records and reviewed them.

Chipped masonry and a new panel above the mantel, fashioned as both decorative and a storage door.

He removed the crossed swords over the hearth.

It was new wood compared to the plastered stone wall that it had once been.

It was a large wooden panel bearing the blazon of the

Grant

carved in relief. He found the handle on the side. Would

this

be the place? Was he ready to come face to face with his sire, after all this time? None of the other chambers had yielded results. Nothing else in the castle looked renovated.

He gritted his teeth, swung it open, holding his breath, and…discovered a newly masoned niche within where wood and tinder for the fire were piled.

Disappointment plummeted. This was the last renovation…

Footsteps thudded in the corridor again. Alex slowed and listened, when another key was inserted into the lock—

“Mi laird,” a man said.

“What do ye report, man?” came Seamus’s reply, the key pausing.

Damnation!

Alex blew out the taper and fanned the air, swinging shut the blessedly-oiled hinges. He lunged for the swords and rehung them over the Grant blazon, careful, so

careful not to clank.

“The renegade is finally abed. His rustling died down some time ago,” replied Sir Donegal.

“Good. See that he remains there.”

As Donegal continued his report, Alex snatched up his records, the iron crow, and scanned the darkened chamber—shadowy from the embers—for something behind which to hide.

The oaken desk was where Seamus would go if he intended to work.

A shelf upon which sat parchments, scrolls, and writing accoutrements was still upon the far wall, but wasn’t deep enough for hiding.

The door slipped open an inch as Seamus’s arm, latch in hand, stretched into view.

“Do ye think he’s dangerous?” Sir Donegal asked. “He’s been kindly enough. The folk here seem to like him, nay to mention Lady Peigi.”

A tapestry hung over the window but didn’t drape all the way to the floor. Alex’s boots would show if he hid behind it.

“Likely harmless,” Seamus said dismissively.

Alex nearly snorted. Seamus wouldn’t guard his bedchamber, knife him, and launch an attack on him in the village if he thought he was harmless.

“Nevertheless,” came Kendrew MacGregor’s calculating voice, “we should keep an eye upon him.”