Page 45 of Outlaw Ever After (Highland Handfasts #3)

Samhain Day. The Wild Hunt. First day of November.

Peigi held out the cutlets from the bowl for Aulay to read.

“Sir MacGregor and Laird Graham! Yer names were drawn to captain the hunt. Pick yer hunting parties!” Aulay called through a horn.

Peigi’s lyre, having been abandoned in the hamlet the night before, had been perched on her bedstand this morn. A fresh posy tied with a green silk ribbon had lain atop it.

How was Alex, or…Caleb?…going about the castle unseen? Joslyn’s conversation had affirmed Peigi’s suspicions last night, but conveniently hadn’t

con

firmed them.

And where was Seamus? He’d not broken his fast today. How was she to catch him before he departed to Edinburgh? How could Seamus turn his back on all she’d confessed, when she’d thought he’d finally listened?

…

Aulay called MacGregor and Graham’s names. Peigi eyed him apologetically. It bolstered his pride, but no, it was better this way. It discredited the argument raised yesterday that he’d somehow stacked these odds, and restored faith in the others that the competition was fair.

Even if he suspected MacGregor had conspired with Graham to stab him. Would he attempt to sabotage him today, too, despite the pact he’d made with Seamus?

And speaking of Seamus… He’d seen him ride out early from his window, fit to travel. Where had he gone? Donegal now ran about in Seamus’s stead, no longer at his sentry post outside Alex’s nursery door.

The Wild Hunt, an imitation of Odin’s celestial hunt to usher in Yule, was a tradition his people had once celebrated under his sire’s command. Peigi had thought to include it.

What a fine chatelaine she made. Each event, chosen with care for the folk here, not herself, even though it was her wedding.

Each tradition, handpicked to demonstrate that she was here to serve them and not the other way around.

Even after collapsing, she’d risen with no care for herself, to hurry children, who by all accounts were the offspring of her clan’s enemy, to safety.

She was too good for him. She looked serene this morn, calmer, whereas he hadn’t slept at all, his heart twisted up in competing knots about what this woman who he’d loved thrice had confessed.

But lo behold our lovers dear whose worlds collide on three,

for only when the veil thins can their love be free

, she’d been singing when he and Auley had found her and the bairns.

Can, not will.

He wasn’t fated to win. Only fated to have three chances to keep her, and he’d already surpassed number two.

MacGregor and Graham drew straws. MacGregor held up the short straw, to utterances among the spectators watching the launch, but then Peigi began to fiddle with something…she twisted a

ring

upon a necklace—

his

ring—her finger slipping in and out of the loop while she chewed her lip nervously.

Hope swelled. His grin lifted. The sign he needed from her to persist. He winked and notched up his chin to rally her. Whichever hunting party he was chosen for mattered nay. He’d lead them to victory.

And MacGregor’s eyes fell to

him

. “Sir Alexander!”

Graham groaned. “That’s nay what we just agreed…”

MacGregor shrugged. Ah, so MacGregor had made some sort of deal with Graham that he was now breaching to gain the upper hand?

Paint Alex surprised at MacGregor’s dirty play.

Invigorated, Alex smirked and tapped Faunus forward, his arm sweeping wide.

“Friends,

friends

! No need to fight. There’s plenty of me to share,” he quipped as he passed Graham and pulled up alongside MacGregor.

MacGregor scowled and the crowd chuckled.

Graham raised his eyes to God in exasperation, taking hold of the cross at his throat. Alex chuckled. The man ought to pray for divine help, for he looked about as equipped for hunting as he had for competing at Burning Sticks: he had not even a bow and arrow.

“Laird Gordon!” called Graham instead, and the burly Gordon trotted forth to join Graham.

“Laird Maxwell!” MacGregor chose.

The selecting alternated, until all ten men were gathered in parties to begin strategizing.

Graham eyed Alex’s party over his shoulder, theirs quickly falling into debate.

“We should start at the crab apple grove,” said Maxwell in Alex’s huddle. “A likely spot for game.”

Alex said nothing.

MacGregor eyed him. “Speak yer mind, Sir Alexander. Ye’re generally nay short on words.”

Alex flashed his grin at the slight. Bastard, who was proud of lashing the back of a lad of twelve. More than ever, he was determined that MacGregor should

not

win.

“I think we should wait to see where Graham’s party goes first. And then head in the opposite way.”

“Why?”

Because Graham is going to lead them to the crab apple orchard, same as ye?

Alex shrugged nonchalantly instead. “They’ll scare the game away in their wake and we’ll find naught.”

“Parties at the ready!” Aulay called. “The team who returns with a stag wins the Wild Hunt! Should both teams return full-handed, then the heavier weight will be the winner! Either way, the castle will eat plenty!”

And so would the villagers, for once more, the lady of Freuchie would take her village a portion when the castle went Souling on the morrow eve when she blessed them with soul cakes. Aulay raised the horn and blew.

Graham’s hunting party rode uphill toward the crab apple trees. Just as he’d suspected.

“’Tis logical though, is it nay?” Laird Maxwell argued, gesturing to Graham’s party. “To search for game among the crab apples? The fruit will have dropped by now, making the deer easy pickings.”

“Aye. We should go, too, and make haste,” said Ross to his other side. “Graham’s team kens it. MacGregor, as our captain, what do ye think?”

MacGregor’s eyes flitted between Alex and Ross, as Comyn villagers crowded around the field yelling at them to go hunt.

“I’m more interested in what ye think, Sir Alexander. Ye seem like ye’ve got an idea up yer sleeve, and it’s fair to say after ye swept the competition yesterday, ye’re fond of this place. We might want to give credence to yer thoughts.”

Aye. Crab apples were always a treat for deer, but he needed to win. And if he was to lead his team to victory, then Alex needed to lure his team

down

slope without making it seem as if he knew where he was going. Because he could almost guarantee that the seasoned deer

would

be at Freuchie’s best-kept secret.

He shrugged. “I’m nay much for hunting, but deer love the woodlands as much as they do a grove, aye? Beechnuts. We’ve as much a chance at losing as we do winning.” The others nodded at his reasoning. “What time did Aulay say we must return?”

He knew the answer already, but he had to plant the seed in someone else’s head.

“He did nay say at all,” Maxwell said.

The others nodded. “So, we could stay out all night, if we wanted,” Ross reasoned.

“We’ve got provisions enough,” Alex said. “We could always double back to the crab apples later. Dusk is a better time to find deer venturing into the open anyway.”

That bit of logic seemed to seal his men’s agreement.

He turned the reins. They rode toward the Tomvaich Wood along the deer path he’d taken Peigi upon the afternoon before. But instead of crossing the river, this time, he let them meander ahead.

“The lady was gone aye long last night,” Kendrew MacGregor said, drawing back beside him.

He prickled, to be so close to the man who was responsible for much of his pain.

Their horses squished along the soil, the snow having turned it to mud. “Word has it ye were the one behind her disappearance.”

“Escorted her to the village. Though the way in which ye and Seamus Grant twitter to each other like gossiping grandmithers, ye already ken that.”

MacGregor smirked at the jab. “Quite knowledgeable about Burning Sticks. The villagers seemed to welcome ye, too. And now this. How did ye ken to come this way to hunt?”

Alex watched the men ahead of them, unwitting of him herding them like sheep. “I ken nothing. Ye heard the party. They agreed this was a good idea, but as of yet, I’ve seen no quarry, so mayhap you shouldna credit me so easily.”

MacGregor shook a finger at him as he rocked in the saddle.

“Nay… Ye made them think to come here.” Alex inhaled slowly as if the conversation were a bore.

Usually if he let people talk uninhibited when they were seeking something, they talked themselves into their own corners. “Ye’re a skilled manipulator.”

“I prefer

lawyer

.”

“Nay much of a difference, me thinks. But I have ears in the Earl of Arran’s court. Mayhap they’ve heard of ye.”

Alex glanced sidelong. “Ye mean the

monarch’s

court?”

“The monarch needs a regent.”

“Makes it easy then to see it as a man’s playing field, aye? Opportunists exploiting power and solidifying their own instead? Tell me, what does yer brother, Bale, do for the crown again?” He quirked a brow. His arrow had struck true, if he were to judge by MacGregor’s jaw tightening.

“Which means it’s ever distressing that I’ve never heard of

ye

until recently. What be yer surname again? Mayhap ye’ve argued a case or two before my brother.”

Alex worked in contracts and monies in an entirely different administration. Nay litigations. But he did know of Bale. Fine, he’d give Kendrew an inch. He didn’t have to admit if it was an inch in the right direction or not.

“I’m an orphan. But I have family who are Stewarts, so I used that name for me studies.”

“Indeed. That’s the one. A sept of Stewarts hailed from nearby once, aye?”

Until they’d been frightened off in those early years of reaves.

Before that, they’d lived here on the isle delineated by the river that MacGregor’s sire had tried to acquire for his Grant bride, and the nearby holdings had remained in his maternal line until being bequeathed to him under his faux name.

MacGregor’s questions were getting too personal. And lo and behold, as MacGregor contemplated his next question, the woods thinned. Meadow grasses and fresh saplings overtook the unruly damson, pear, and apple trees that were returning to the wild, flitting with birds and squirrels.

His mother’s orchard.

And right in the center rows climbing with weeds and woody vines choking them…

“I’ll bloody be,” breathed Maxwell.

“That’s the finest stag I’ve ever seen…” Ross murmured as an enormous stag lifted his antlers, draped in a vine and coated with velvet, thick with muscle and wrapped in a burly mantle of shag around his withers. It stared back at them.

Walking around him, munching upon the fallen mast, were a score of does, at least.

An old king among ordinary deer. This had always been the favored place for deer to forage for sweet, fallen fruits. This was always where his sire and he had hunted on the Wild Hunt every autumn. And a part of him pinched with anger that he’d had to share the secret with outsiders.

“Weel done, Maxwell,” Alex whispered.

Maxwell puffed his chest up proudly, but he felt MacGregor’s eyes burning into him.

He flashed a grin at the whoreson and notched up his chin, whispering, “Who could have kenned?”