Page 48 of Outlaw Ever After (Highland Handfasts #3)

He let her touch him. He shouldn’t. He didn’t know which way this was going to go, but Christ it felt so good.

He stood like a curtain wall, rigid beneath her uninhibited touch.

“Do ye remember me?” she asked. His attention flicked to her eyes as her whisper played over his senses. “Do ye remember a lassie?” Those eyes glistened, full of hope.

Stiffly, he reached into his tunic, to the pouch at his chest, and pulled out a small fabric bag.

A dangerous game this was, playing with fire, yet he opened it.

Took her hand from his cheek. Dumped out a crushed, dried posy of desiccated leaves.

A blessing given to him by the wee sister of the enemy who’d been bent on seeing him hung.

“I remember an

angel

…” The words scratched up his throat as she stared dumbstruck at the posy, tears vaulting over her lids. That draft intensified, those fates braiding back together. “When I thought I had no one.”

She fingered the brittle leaves, crumbling in her touch as the torches around them flickered.

“Ye kept it.” Her whisper tremored. “Ye never forgot me.”

“How could I ever?”

“I prayed, I hoped.” Her tears bubbled unchecked. “I-I was terrified someone would realize what I’d done and—”

“What

ye’d

done?” That wasn’t what he’d expected to hear. She was worried about being in trouble? What her brother and sire, what

MacGregor

, had done was what had been wrong.

A stranglehold he hadn’t realized had been choking him all these years eased. Someone finally knew.

She

knew. She’d always been meant to know.

“My God, Alex…

Caleb

!” Her eyes widened. “I fear Seamus on his way to Edinburgh for reinforcements. I nay think he’s going on business to settle yer summons, and he wouldna listen to me. I told him he was wrong, again and again, that ye didna do it, and still he…”

“Wrong about what?”

Anticipation brimmed within. He had to know.

“Wrong about

ye

.”

“How would ye ken that?” he pressed, tilting his head to look into her eyes, desperate to hear the exonerating words spoken from her lips.

He might die a happy man if only he could hear someone else say the truth.

She picked at his tunic as if a thread was frayed. “Because I saw wh-what my sire did. To yers. Because I saw what happened, before ye ran to yer sire, screaming. Because I saw ye wrongfully being hauled away…” Her words shook as badly as her fingers.

Jesu. She’d been but a wee bairn. She’d seen such horror and lived with it all these years?

They were forever bonded in their witnessing of that fateful day. He pulled her against him. Engulfed her in his hold. Buried her in his embrace and sank his forehead to that soft spot at her neck that smelled of rosewater. He hated to press her, but he had to ken.

“Did ye see who

did

do it?”

She shook her head against him. “A dark-haired man with his knife, ’tis all. He wore a signet ring of a flower. I was too frightened to watch more, and covered my eyes.”

Sweet lassie that she’d been.

“Wheesht,” he said soothingly, palming her head to him.

Except at Court…

Bale

wore the Luther rose and cross, the signet of a Protestant, which had always struck Alex as odd because King James V’s administration had been staunchly Catholic and opposed to heretics. Odd that he got away with it, too, after

James V had appointed him. King James had persecuted heretics. What clout did Kendrew’s brother have? “Ye’ve been strong, all these years.”

She deserved her cottage on the shore and her quaint, quiet life, destined to never have it with her marriage linked to this estate.

“I should be consoling

ye

,” she said, looking him in the eyes. “I should have done more for ye, should have tried harder to clear yer reputation—”

“A wee lass believed in me when no one else did. She fated me to live.” He rested his forehead down to hers and wrapped his hand around the posy in her grip, pressing a kiss to her tear-dampened eye.

“So we would meet again,” he whispered. Pressed a kiss to the other, the saltiness soaking on his lips.

“And again.”

Kissed her thrice, on her lush lips.

The draft wavered the tapestries. Bent the torch flames.

“Someone left a door open,” she murmured, twisting his beard on her finger, and his eyes pinched closed at the perfect sensation.

He caressed down her cheek with his knuckle. “Those fickle

fae.”

A soft laugh caught in her throat and she squeezed tighter. “I’ve felt so connected to ye and I could never understand why—”

“And I ye—”

“Because thrice we’ve met and…” She yanked back but didn’t let go of him, as a joyous burst of sheer happiness just like he’d seen on her face in the greenwood split those plush lips wide, and she gripped his bruised skin and crushed her mouth to his. “Thrice…the oat stalks nay lied.”

He grinned and kissed her harder. “Nor the crab apples.”

She giggled against his mouth. That sweet, girlish sound that reminded him this poised, sophisticated lady was only a lass of three and twenty, having been forced to grow up much too young.

“It means Jossy was right—”

“Say that again,” he gruffed, leaning into her, but his skin was alight with sparks and his body firing at her exuberance in a way it only ever did when they brushed with fate.

Her brow furrowed playfully. “The oat stalks nay lied?”

He grinned. “Nay, Joslyn’s name.”

Her smile softened. “Jossy.”

“It’s what my people call her when they love her, and she loves them back. It means ye’re one of

mine

.” He gripped her hair at her nape, giving it a soft, purposeful grip. “And that ye belong to us.”

He kissed her. He arched her backward and let go. He curled her into the crook of his elbow as his other hand grasped her hip and anchored her against the wall of the stairwell, leaning over her, pushing against her. In a world where he’d felt forgotten, she’d always remembered.

“Did ye ken it was me?” Her words were a desperate mash of sounds as his mouth devoured and his teeth pinched her lip.

He nodded, hand raking up her front, over her breast to her throat to brace it, to sift along her cheek and tilt her head as a carnal need to be connected to the soul he’d always been meant to find fueled his need to touch.

“From the moment I arrived,” he rumbled against her lips, “and realized ye were Seamus’s sister. My first”—their tongues danced—“and only,” teeth nipped, but he didn’t finish.

She pulled back, eyes wide, breathing, “What?”

Something was scratching his nape, blessedly distracting from what he’d almost admitted.

That parchment she’d been gripping? He reached up, taking it from her hand. A green ribbon?

His

green ribbon? He separated an inch, his lips burning and swollen.

“My missive?” he asked.

Worry returned to her eyes at his frown.

“Yer missive. I just found it when I went looking for Seamus. And Kendrew…”

He bristled at the way her brow pleated in concern. “Go on.”

“He’s the one who found it and discovered that ye and I had trysted. He told Seamus. And he did nay want me marrying anyone else. He sabotaged me to get Freuchie when he dared to call me a friend.”

“Men have played darker games for less,” he replied. “Ye say he sabotaged ye to get it?”

She nodded.

“How long has Freuchie been yer dowry?”

She blew an errant strand off her lips. “Since as long as I can remember. As the firstborn daughter, it was always assumed I would marry first and therefore would need the dowry. But we had no coin. Only loads of debt from this castle. And men want coin or lands, nay just expensive castles and no way to upkeep them.”

“Has Kendrew kenned this all along?”

She shrugged, her brow furrowing as a thought seemed to strike.

“What is it?”

She shook her head. “It’s just something his sister said. That I should ken how much he fancies me, since he’s waited all these years for me to become eligible, remaining a bachelor till now… It’s clear he feels entitled to Freuchie… And I wonder…”

“Wonder what?”

She tapped her lip. “Something I read last night in the gallery. His sire was once stripped of his lands in Glen Lyon, for treason at Flodden Field, as had any of his issue been stripped of their inheritances in Speyside.”

“But Bale is laird of a small holding in Glen Lyon. Lyon Tower.” Alex frowned.

“Bale, Bale, why does everyone keep speaking of this man? How could he own anything there if his sire was stripped of it for being a heretic and a spy?”

The pleats in Alex’s brow deepened.

Celebrants poured in from the courtyard, complaining of snow and filling the hall with chatter. He laid a finger over her lips.

Music was struck up. The bard sang. Aileana could be heard asking where Peigi had gone.

“Go, songbird,” he said, cupping her cheek and pressing his lips to hers once more, slipping past her up the steps. “I have something to consider.”

“

Come with me

.” She tugged on his fingers, pulling him a step down to her again.

Oh, to indulge her.

“All will ken I stole a kiss this time if they see us together,” he argued as he brushed her lips with his thumb, inspecting the damage with a cocky notch of the chin, “and the men already realize ye favor me to win.”

She scoffed at his swagger.

“Steal a kiss and twirl the miss,” she teased. He grinned. Her playful side again, finally. “I will have to dance again and tonight, I want to dance with

ye

.”

“Ye’ll have me, lass.” His heart burgeoned, to be so wanted, and he whispered, “Go, before someone finds us, so naybody tries to take me head.”

She began to leave, yet he pulled her back.

L eaned down and kissed her well-softened lips. Let her go again—pulled her back once more and planted another kiss upon her, earning a sweet giggle, even if frustration at their situation leached into his blood.

And Kendrew was never touching her again. Not until he got to the bottom of this. If Richard MacGregor had been stripped of land and title for being a heretic and turning traitor, then how had Bale become a laird of those very lands? How did

he

get away with being Protestant in a Catholic court?

And something wasn’t sitting right about what she’d said about Seamus. When Alex had eavesdropped on him, he’d heard a hesitant man who valued caution and methodology over anger and action, nay the type of man ready to make haste for a troop of soldiers to string him up.

Peigi’s confession of what she’d once witnessed also raised questions about who had truly done it, who this dark-haired fellow was. And Kendrew…vying for Freuchie on the River Spey when Richard MacGregor had been stripped of not just Glen Lyon, but also his promise of an estate in Speyside?