Page 51 of Outlaw Ever After (Highland Handfasts #3)

“And my sire was witness and therefore, also had to die?” Peigi gasped. “What he didna’ count on is Seamus making a better case for acquiring Freuchie. My God, Kendrew used to be furious that he hadn’t been given the castle.”

Alex squeezed her hand and kissed it, hating what he was about to say.

“And if they suspect ye ken the truth about the murders, marriage to ye would keep ye silent. There’s no contract more unbreakable than a marriage contract, which ‘forbids a wife from being compelled to speak against her husband’.

” He quoted his law volumes, drawing her into his arms. Fok!

He had to protect her from this. “Rather than kill a wee lassie and an important ally’s sister—”

“He wishes to muzzle me with marriage? And now Seamus is about to make it worse.”

Alex shook his head. Seamus was up to something, aye, but what, Alex couldn’t be sure.

“What are we to do? Ye’ve been branded an outlaw and we need him to listen if we are to overcome this.”

We. As if they were in this together. He brought her hand to his lips again and kissed each scar of hardship her fingers had endured—

“Elope with me. Tonight,” he begged. “We’ll live here. It’ll be the life ye wanted.”

She laughed as if that were preposterous. “I… What

? What about yer castle? Yer people?”

He slipped his grip around her nape and rested his forehead to hers, breathing in her fine rosewater. “We’d have their village yonder, for it’s on my island—”

“But Freuchie is yer birthright. Ye deserve it returned.”

His throat bobbed and his eyes closed. “’Tis only stone and plaster. I ken ye have no wish for it.”

“But I want ye

to have it… Caleb Comyn canna allow Kendrew to finally get his way.”

His heart pinched at her fervor, her loyalty to him.

“Yer people want ye returned,” she pressed.

“Kendrew and Bale will fight me for it. The fighting will nay cease. I ken ye want peace.”

She shook her head. “I had no idea what I once asked ye to give up.” Her fingers cupped his cheek. “I nay want to be the reason keeping ye from seizing it. I wouldst see ye happy and yer sire’s skull found.”

But he also wanted to see her happy, and a life squabbling over a castle would make her miserable.

“And what about the contest—”

“A marriage contract would override any tourney contract. I have some coin. I could pay Kendrew restitution whilst I figure out how to have him and Bale investigated. We can build our life here. Like we’d once planned. We can cope with them, come what may.”

“I’m afraid to dream it. I’m afraid it will be ripped away before we can have it.” She shivered.

“Dream it. We shall make it so. Come, let me show ye.”

He dashed her along crumbling walls crisscrossing fields, delineating fallow pastures.

They passed the remains of a byre overcome with grasses. The stone footings of another outbuilding protruded like ragged teeth.

“Cattle would low happily here in these pastures.” He pointed. “Chickens would keep the pests away.”

She turned to him, so uncertain. “Goats would flourish, too. Plenty of milk for cheese.”

“And sheep, for wool.”

…

Her palm brushed upon the brittle grasses and dormant wildflowers as they ran.

So

familiar.

They slipped beneath the dilapidated thatching of the ruin, beneath an arched doorway adorned with tracery and a broken pane glinting in moonlight.

Ptarmigans startled!

Flapping from their roosts among the rafters with a beating of wings.

She traced her fingers along the peeling plaster. Weeds encroached along the footings. Memories whispered.

“The kitchen was over here?” She knew it had been, glancing about to get her bearings.

He nodded.

She remembered the oven, too, topped with metal stove plates, now off-kilter, when she’d once searched frantically for Mildred!

“This is where my brother hid us that day! This is where I lost my pup!” Could the ancient wolfhound be her dog? So old for a wolfhound. Had the Samhain fates destined it all?

“It can be fixed. If we roll up our sleeves. A little oil and a rag is all it would need.” A table lay broken. “But this?”

“I could craft a new one easily,” he said.

“Was the pallet over there?” she asked, pointing to a corner.

“A bed actually.” Alex smiled. He strode to the remains of a bed rope, coiled in the dirt among roots.

“The mattress, ’twould need restuffing for certain,” she jested.

“’Twould need to be replaced,” he chuckled, squeezing her hand, “and stuffed with rushes scented with fresh rose petals each spring.”

She grinned.

On the wall were two scythes. Once upon a time, mounted after a day of labor. Covered in moss and abandoned nesting tucked into the crux where the shafts crossed. And above the hearth hung a metal crest. She pushed up on her toes and wiped the webs clean of it with her cloak. A scythe and a lyre.

She stilled. Heart racing. Taigh Spealaidh

. Scythe House—

Pulling up her ring on her necklace from between her breasts, she brushed her thumb over that signet. The same exact crest. Like the designs on his arm.

She whirled back to him as he removed a scythe from the wall and tested its state of decay, fiddling with the metal head.

He was a miller’s son…

labored in the fields, reaping corn, and managed the granary

.

Jossy’s words whispered through her thoughts.

Alex carried a war scythe on his back and yet, when she looked at him, she pictured a farmer holding his harvesting scythe in his fields, wiping his brow on his tunic as he labored in the sun. Nay a warrior, but a man who’d come from meager roots…

Reaper.

Her eyes misted and her fingers crept over her mouth.

It was never meant to be a warrior invoking the Pale Death. It had been who he was and where he’d come from. It had been a bairn’s attempt to honor his family, desperate to cling to a tendril of roots. A boy who’d managed to stay a dreamer at heart, despite having every excuse to become a monster .

The wheel turns ’round and ’round unless someone knocks a spoke out.

“There’s much to fix.” He nodded.

“Aye, but it’s rife with possibilities,” she whispered, her emotions too strong.

She hooked his fingers with hers and pulled him with her. He tossed aside the scythe, searching her eyes.

She nodded, pushing up on her toes to kiss him. Needing to hold him, feel the realness of their dreams and stave off fears of the pending melee.

He stilled, then cradled her nape and tilted her head as his lips dove in for the boon. She swallowed the thickness in her throat and drank from his offering.

His tongue delved between her lips, demanding more, as if letting go.

She thought on his happy childhood here, wanting those rich memories for her own bairns, too.

It had only been one miscarriage. The nuns had cautioned her that she’d been under duress and not to fret.

She could see him sitting beside this crackling hearth, crafting a cradle while she hummed and chopped vegetables for their stew.

Could see him a year from now, rocking a wee lassie, or years

from now, playing games with their bairns while she strummed her lyre.

She could see him in twenty years, white peppering his temples and streaking his beard as he worked upon his contracts for the treasury or planned the next spring’s planting, mayhap a paunch, a body sated from a life well lived. Mayhap grandbairns snuggled on their laps as he played his flute.

She wanted to be cherished in his arms. Wanted

to feel his body press to hers, like it once had. Wanted to feel him sating her like a husband did his wife, no longer fearful of what might come of such a joining.

She wanted to try again. Wanted to let go.

He cupped her cheek as his tongue stroked earnestly over hers and he walked her back to the crumbled wall like so long ago, braced her there, devoured, and blanketed her with his chest.

She gripped his face, twisted his beard onto her finger as he rumbled his approval. How she loved toying with it, holding the lifeline.

It was Soul Mass. The night when the veil between worlds was thinnest. The night of their blessing and fate. The night that they could make this happen.

Hungrily she kissed him back as he relinquished her and fisted her tartan to keep her close. Felt his arousal, prime for joining as she wriggled with need against him—

“I canna hurt ye again,” he gruffed, ripping his lips from hers.

His eyes closed. His guilt. “Will ye elope with me now? Curse the consequences and give yerself back to me? I nay want to cause ye pain or loss. I just-just want to give ye the world and live in it with ye.” He fought the words out on a snarl of guilt and desperation.

She nodded. This was all she’d ever wanted. “ Aye

.”

“Ye’re weakened, lass,” he reasoned, even as he untucked her tartan.

“I’m weel, man.”

“Ye collapsed,” he resisted, his forehead digging harder. “I have no right—”

“Nay treat me like a wounded butterfly,” she begged. Pulling back as her eyes watered. “Please, j-just, make me feel beautiful again.”

His knuckles traced down her skin as he chewed his cheek. Then he released her tartan, shucking it down her arms. His hands roved down her body, pulled loose her lacings, dragged up her bodice and peeled it off her breasts.

She fumbled open his belt, letting the thick leather laden with sheaths thud to the earth as his gray-blue kilt pooled at their feet and snaked off his shoulder. He lifted her into his arms to swipe the discarded garments away with his boot.

She tugged at his doublet, fighting it down his shoulders as he flicked his arms to free it. Fought her chemise up.

His manhood was warm and heavy with need, wedged against her. His thighs, skin to skin, caged her in. His boot came between her ankles, nudging her legs wider.

She gasped into his mouth but he swallowed it down on a primal growl of satisfaction.

So savage. He wasn’t the patient, gentle lover she’d first known.

He was desperate.

The months had been hard on them both. But together they could weather this storm. His palms gripped her rear.

“Up,” he commanded hoarsely as her heart raced, as her breath came out in whimpers and she offered her tongue and lips to him.

He hoisted her legs around him as he palmed her rear, splaying her apart, aligned himself, and plunged home.