Page 50 of Outlaw Ever After (Highland Handfasts #3)

She laughed as he waggled his brows, and made chase at him as he ducked out of her way, ignoring Kendrew MacGregor’s sister, who scowled.

Laughter roared. “Seamus’ll have yer head, man!”

He whipped out his flute and began puffing the tune as he skipped backward to the rhythm, like a piper leading his fray, and she followed, relinking her arms with her sister and this time, Jossy, dancing their way into the dusky woods.

She didn’t mistake him eying her though, worry behind his sparkling emeralds.

She should never have doubted him. She could love him for the rest of her days…

Love?

Aye, that’s what the heartache had been. The months of grief. She’d grieved the loss of their bairn, but more than that, she’d grieved the loss of a dream.

I imagine it’s the moment he fell in love with ye.

Her heart soared at the realization, then plummeted at the pending tumult with Seamus’s return, simmering with the uncertainty of the melee on the morrow.

They sloshed through the burn and rose over the hillock to the village draped in turnip carvings.

They knocked upon the first cottage door to the delight of a bairn in a handmade mask. He reached for a soul cake. “

Souls, souls for a soul cake! I beg ye good mistress a soul cake

!” he sang.

“Ah-ah, my darling.” She waggled her hand, grinning. “Ye must give me a trick, first, or a treat, or perhaps a prayer?”

The traveling party gathered around to watch as the lad spun around, then jumped and touched his toes.

Laughing, she passed him a soul cake from the basket Alex held for her.

“Hallowtide blessings, sweeting.” She smiled, cupping the child’s head as he tore off an enormous bite and gazed up at her.

The bairn and his family joined the procession, songs of prayer on their lips for the souls of loved ones not yet transcended to heaven.

At the next door, a shy lassie in a mask twisted back and forth and sang softly, “ Souls, souls for a soul cake, I beg ye good mistress a soul cake

.”

Peigi knelt down at the threshold and took her nervous hand. “Will ye do a trick for me, or give a treat? Or recite a prayer?”

The girl held out a rudimentarily carved turnip. “A treat for ye, mi lady.”

“’Tis lovely, lassie. I shall put it on my mantel in the verra middle.”

That earned her a huge grin, revealing a lost tooth. Peigi handed the turnip up to Alex, who passed down a soul cake for her to give the child. The procession moved on, the next cottage door opened to the singing—an older couple and granddaughter on the cusp of coming-of-age.

“A trick, or a treat, lass?” Peigi smiled when the girl replied.

“A prayer, for our late laird’s soul. As I do every year.”

She felt Alex still beside her. Solemnity hovered.

Peigi nodded and took the girl’s hands as her father spoke the prayer for all of them.

She reached for a soul cake, yet noticed the glances at Alex from the villagers while the nobles and lairds around them chatted among each other.

Alex, smiling wanly, wasn’t looking at anyone.

As the evening progressed, though tricks and treats were offered to the children, the prayer that everyone made as the basket emptied of cakes was for Alexander Comyn’s soul. Nay another.

And Alex looked…aged, despite still being young and hale, as he gazed up at the sky, the land, the silhouette of the ruin in the distance.

It was the same distant look he’d cast at the trees when they’d ridden to the hamlet with the Communion Bread or each time they broke bread in the great hall. Searching, or perhaps yearning

for all that had been stripped of him?

Did he think of his sire? A soul trapped in a skull that had long ago gone missing, leaving a void of unanswered questions?

She passed out another cake.

“Samhain blessings, Alpin,” she said to the mayor, offering him her hand.

He took it carefully, nodded his thanks kindly, then rested his hand upon Alex’s shoulder and closed his eyes, feeling a prayer in silence, and realization hit her like a pummel: Alex had never witnessed this outpouring of devotion from his people before.

He’d never experienced such prayers, exiled as he’d been.

His jaw grew tighter, still. This community of folk all grieved, still.

Torches lit the growing twilight, the procession moved door to door, the party sang and celebrated. The folk ate cakes and venison. The song filled the night. She resolved herself to be happy for now and let today’s problems become tomorrow’s.

Her stomach growled and she rested her hand upon it. His gaze flashed to her gesture with concern as he and Aulay roughhoused like lads,

laughter rolling from his throat .

I’m fine

, she mouthed to assure him. He masked his

worry with an eye waggle, before clinking tankards with Aulay and sharing a jest.

But he wasn’t fooling her. His hand constantly on the small of her back or his presence never straying far, glances like this one now, inspecting her visage, proved he wasn’t so happy-go-lucky anymore. He was worried.

They’d both been cheated of what could have been. She had to have faith in the crab apples and oat stalks, that they knew who her husband-to-be truly was. She had to have faith in the

sidh

that wavered the winds when she brushed with fate, as her mother would have wished. She’d always have Freuchie, a source of power struggle and dark deeds, but at least, she’d have

him

and his bright spark between the moments of frightening defense. And so would his people.

And when

he won, they could start anew.

They could leave the past where it belonged, so long as Seamus could be convinced to lay down his anger.

“Come with me,” a voice murmured in her ear. She glanced up to see Alex’s eyes full of sparkle. He tugged her between a shed and a cottage. “I want to show ye something.”

“We’ll be missed.”

He shook his head, casting his arm toward the idyllic scene around the bonfire of people eating venison off the spit. “’Twill be fine. Only castle folk and villagers remain. The tourney party returned a while ago.”

Peigi looked about. True. And for the time being, the villagers were distracted and satisfied.

“Where do ye take me?”

He tugged on her fingers, chewing his cheek. Sheepish? This bold outlaw? Nay…he was looking at everything but her with that same contemplativeness lingering in his eyes when he glanced at the trees like he knew them.

She furrowed her brow on a hesitant smile. “All right.”

He laced his fingers into hers and guided her down the route she’d escaped with the bairns. The sounds of celebration grew distant as he spirited her along the moonlit riverbank, the clouds from earlier lifting.

“Ye need to stop? To rest?” He glanced over his shoulder, grip tight upon her as if she were the most fragile thing in the world.

“I’m fine.” Peigi squeezed his hand, smiling at the scolding. For once, she truly felt… fine

. “I promise.”

Her stomach growled, as if to defy her. He scowled angrily, but said nothing.

Allt A’ Bhacain bubbled and churned its way into a wider basin, until she realized they’d long since passed the cave and the riverbank felt much more like a shore.

She took in his profile against the starry sky.

“Alex, please. To where do we go? For ye to be so short on words worries me,” she teased.

He guided her up the shore. The ruin that she’d spied in the distance loomed closer.

That same familiarity skittered over her skin that she’d been here before.

She glanced back at the shore, taking in the village, lanterns hovering like glowworms in a meadow, noticing Freuchie looming beyond the woods, a shadow in the distance demarcated by sentry torches.

“I ken this place.” She shivered. His brow hitched in question. “Where are

we? Nay make me beg.”

He turned her toward the jagged silhouette stark in the moonlight.

His belly to her back, he rested his chin atop her head and banded an arm around her shoulders.

He kissed her ear, his other palm splaying protectively across her belly.

So tender, so full of yearning, as if wishing he could have protected what had once been.

That knot tightened in her throat. She swallowed it down, refusing to let it dash this stolen moment. Her stomach growled. He tensed, but honored her and said nothing.

“It’s nay much, but it’s still a cottage on the shore… my

cottage.” His hands feathered away and took her fingers, pulling her onward.

“Bequeathed to my assumed name by my maw’s people.

This was my family’s favorite place to be.

My cousins and me. We gathered just like ye once said ye wished to do, as a brood around the fire, whilst my maw sang and played her lyre,” he continued, looking at her, not as if he remembered the past, but as if he was envisioning his future.

“Did yer da let the laddies beat him at games, too, like ye do?”

For she’d seen how he’d thrown his scythe wide to miss the target so Thomas might win. A laugh rumbled in his chest as that divot in his cheek emerged.

“Would ye be like my maw if it were yer home, songbird? Scolding us, ‘Foolish man, they’re going to cut themselves and I’m the one who’s going to have to patch them up.’”

“Whilst ye all act as if I’ve said naught

,” she shook her head, “like a true mither is oft ignored.”

A rich laugh tumbled from his throat.

“I’d have to get used to that headshake.”

“Their sire’s fruits for certain, nay having fallen far from the proverbial tree,” she teased.

“Are ye saying I’d be a bad influence on these bairns of ours, songbird?”

She didn’t miss his word bairns

as he waggled his brow.

“The worst sort,” she smiled.

His gaze danced. He brushed a wisp from her lip with great precision. So close, she could see the imperfections of his skin.

Their smiles waned as they fell silent, as if realizing in the same moment that somehow, the teasing had become tender.

“I’m hopeful, lass,” he breathed, feathering a kiss onto her forehead. “There will be another.” Another kiss, this one to the pulse beside her throat as his beard tickled and she dared to twine it around her finger. “And another…”

Her throat thickened. Would the loss ever stop hurting?

His hand slipped over her belly as his arms hooked her, pulling her to him and burying her in his embrace.

“We will try again, lass,” he croaked.

“If ye win—”

“Ye will nay marry Kendrew,” he growled, her heart squeezing with mounting concern.

“But Caleb, what if ye do nay—”

“Do ye hear me, Margaret Grant?” He clenched her. “I’d nay be here today had it nay been for ye

, setting me free and binding me to come back to ye. I’m fated for ye

.”

He guided her onward when she noticed a weathered stone. A headstone?

She pulled away from him and went to it. She traced her finger over the lettering she couldn’t quite read in the nighttime, surrounded by weeds and grass, then glanced up at him in question.

Stoic for the man who loved to jest.

“My mither died shortly after my da. They say from a broken heart,” he murmured with a wan smile.

This was his beloved mother’s headstone? She squeezed his hand.

“She never kenned my fate. I snuck back after MacLeod took me in and I’d regained my strength.

I went in search of my da’s skull in hopes of burying all of him beside her.

” He scoured his jaw and cleared gruffness from his voice.

“There was a second fresh dirt pile here.” He pointed beside the headstone, now covered in meadow grasses.

No headstone. “Jossy said Seamus gave them permission to bury his body.” He stared at the burial as he spoke, jaw tensing.

“Did ye find it?”

He shook his head. “Ye asked for my honesty. When I arrived to force yer brother to go before Arran, I also came to search for his skull. I’d hoped my list of renovations would lead to a clue, but alas…

“This was their favorite place to be together,” he changed the subject, “and Richard MacGregor tried to steal it from my maw. My da would have none of it. He demanded they leave, but MacGregor claimed he had no right to masquerade as a baron when he was nothing but a common crofter…”

“I wonder if he knew.”

“Who knew what?”

“That yer sire was the reason his lands were stripped from him.”

Alex’s eyes furrowed in confusion.

“It says so in the history book in the gallery,” she said. Did he not know? “Richard MacGregor conspired against King James IV to carry secrets to the English. Yer sire was awarded these lands for reporting MacGregor’s treachery to the Crown traveling to Flodden Field.”

Alex’s eyes narrowed, and something seemed to lock into place. “It would mean he never forgave my da. He wanted to steal back what had been awarded to my da…”

“The history said Richard MacGregor was noted as a ‘heretic’.”

“Aye, and as Protestants, Bale somehow manages to work in the king’s Catholic court with immunity.” His thoughts ground to a halt.

“Protestant? The MacGregors are staunchly Catholic. We’ve celebrated church holidays with Kendrew before.”

“What?” His brow riveted. “Then why

would he wear such a ring?”

“What ring?” she asked.

“The Luther rose.”

“The flower ring…” she breathed, brow furrowed deep in thought, when her eyes snapped wide. “The man I saw do the slaying wore a flower ring…”

Caleb’s face hardened resolutely as a possibility dawned. “ Richard

would have worn the ring of a Protestant.”

“Could Bale have taken it off his body as a keepsake?”

His eyes lifted to hers. “Only if he was there for the slaying.”

“What does Bale look like?” Peigi breathed.

“Dark hair. One green eye. One blue.”

Her pulse raced as his hand tightened on hers and she thought back to that horrid time, those flashes of memories, of the man in the solar so long ago, one blue eye, one green. That

was Bale?

“I ken him! He’s the one who demanded Seamus dismiss my concerns when I told them they were wrong about ye! Laird Bale MacGregor! His name was on the flyer, and aye, he had dark hair like the man I saw wearing the ring and—”

He gripped her shoulders with alacrity.

“The flyer… Christ, that’s what Seamus…”

“What?” Peigi asked.

“Bale was already

being addressed as ‘laird’ of those lands in Glen Lyon when his sire was slain.

Somehow, he was already laird of Lyon Tower before news of his sire’s death could have possibly reached Court.

I bet he made a pact with the crown to slay his sire in exchange for Glen Lyon being returned.

And I bet he and Kendrew hoped that by slaying my sire in retaliation, they’d be able to steal back these lands in Speyside. ”

“Except my brother fought for the rights to Freuchie and prevailed.”

“So Kendrew wants to marry ye to get them. No Catholic would wear the rose ring of a Luther adherent. He had…permission to… He killed his da.” His gaze hardened on hers and she shivered. “And yers. I’d bet my life he wears it as a trophy.”