Page 58 of Outlaw Ever After (Highland Handfasts #3)

“For only when the veil thins can their love be free.”

– A Song of Samhain Night

Peigi shook her head, her hands covering her mouth. “Yer homeland, Caleb… Nay. I’ll nay let ye do it.”

He ignored her.

“Caleb, please, ye deserve this,” she argued in his silence. “Yer people deserve this. Nay give it away for me—”

“Nay listen to yer sister on this account,” Caleb said to Seamus, eyes still locked on her. “She wants a simple, peaceable life, and she’ll never have that so long as people fight over Freuchie.”

“Caleb, nay—”

“The MacGregors will vie to unseat me.” He cupped her cheek, as she shook her head and licked her lips. “Bringing reaves to her threshold and fear to her heart. It’s nay a life I want for my bairns.”

Christ his back hurt, but his songbird was so gorgeous, sleep deprived, and looking delivered from battle herself, glowing with the beauty of his babe rooted within her. Stronger than she’d ever given herself credit for as she fought this battle for him.

She was right. This was probably certain death. But he’d rather die fighting for her than live without her and his babe.

The heraldic crest his sire had designed for their sept gleamed shamelessly upon her ring finger, where it belonged.

Her eyes brimmed with a sadness he couldn’t bear as she shook her head and begged him to save himself. Begged Seamus to refuse such a request.

He could do this: pray that Seamus honored his request to bury all of Alexander Comyn. Or if he lived, forsake his father’s soul and walk away.

His father wouldn’t have wanted him to be unhappy.

Aye, Jossy was right: his past had laid the path to his future.

His mother would have wanted him to love a woman as much as his sire had loved her.

With his songbird sitting barefoot in a greenwood, the smile he’d learned to wear to hide his emptiness finally had meaning.

“Keep the castle?” Seamus furrowed his brow.

He looked to Niall now and nodded, realizing he was willing to die for just one moment’s breath of what Niall had had with his wife.

He gazed around these walls. Listened to the memories of youth and happiness drift around him, but that’s all they were. Memories. All this building was, was stone. He’d wanted to see his lands vanquished from Seamus’s clutches for so long, but now…

Seamus had proven over the years to be honorable and had actually looked after his kin, and now had the funds to pay back his final debt to keep it.

“Aye.” He hitched up his smile, just for her. “I promised her a cottage on a loch and as long as I breathe, it’s what I’ll provide.”

He dropped his hold on her face and turned—

“Cease this, Caleb,” she pleaded, yanking on him, but he pulled free even as the burning pain lanced his lower back. “Seamus, please

, nay listen to him! Nay be so greedy as to keep his birthright when ye ken he’s innocent! Caleb, ye canna do this!”

He stopped and cupped her cheek again. Relished how she leaned into it, closing her eyes, and lay her fingers over his.

“I’m afraid I can do a great many things, lass.”

“Th-then here.” She hiccuped and withdrew a crumpled posy from her pocket. His bridal bouquet to her. She’d salvaged it. She folded it into his hand as that telltale energy zapped. “A hawthorn to drive away yer despair. A-a clover, for luck, and a forget-me-not, to ken I will al-always—”

He rested his forehead to hers and closed his eyes, feeling her energy mingle with his. Stole a kiss for one more taste of heaven, not caring if her brother saw.

Caleb’s scythe hung on his arm as he heaved himself to the center of the chamber. People dispersed to the periphery as MacGregor sauntered to the middle, smug and calculating, taking his claymore from his valet.

He swallowed hard. He’d lost so much blood. But he’d drunk a belly’s worth of water as Peigi’s pleas had echoed through his mind and the feel of her handfast had burned in his touch. His unborn needed him to try.

She chewed her nails as MacGregor took his guard and began to prowl about Caleb in a circle, evaluating Caleb’s weaknesses.

He had many right now. Caleb did the same, but he need not prowl to see them.

MacGregor wore his biggest weakness upon his sleeve: he didn’t know this castle the way Caleb did.

All Caleb had to do was draw first blood on MacGregor.

…

MacGregor swung first. Peigi flinched and threw her hands on her cheeks.

Caleb ducked as the heavy sword followed through. Hissed at the exertion as MacGregor recovered. Damn this man! Trying to give up what had been stolen from him. She wouldn’t let him do it.

Aileana wrapped an arm around her and Peigi buried her head as MacGregor delivered yet another swing. Caleb’s scythe shot up, even if he grimaced. The heavy sword bore down. Caleb nearly buckled under the weight.

Not once did he attack. Like with the Burning Sticks, he seemed to be waiting for his adversary to make a fatal move. MacGregor unleashed a torrent. Caleb staggered back. Staggered back again. Shuffled to one side as he managed to dodge the claymore as Kendrew followed him toward the hearth.

His face looked granite. His limbs so weak.

“Cease this!” Peigi begged, as folk gasped and Jossy gripped her other arm and Aileana and Lady Elizabeth begged Seamus to intervene.

MacGregor raised his sword. Peigi cried out as the metal came down and Caleb buckled to the floor on a roar, the sword missing by inches as MacGregor lost his grip and it clattered away. Yet Kendrew withdrew a dagger.

The hall roared disapproval. “Poor sportsmanship!”

“Only one weapon of choice!”

Seamus launched himself over the dais. “Disqualified!”

But MacGregor was backing Caleb into a corner! Caleb inched back, heaving for air through the pain, a little farther, when—

MacGregor’s toe caught.

He tripped. The uneven paver by the hearth… MacGregor collapsed atop him!

Thumped the hearth. Went still. Had Kendrew’s blade cut Caleb?

Peigi couldn’t bear to think it or worse, worry that Kendrew had finished him.

She ran around the dais, bunching up her skirts when…Caleb grunted. He shoved at MacGregor’s bulky weight as Niall and Tormund hauled the man aside, flipping him over.

The dirk clattered aside, as did Caleb’s scythe. Blood trickled from Kendrew’s forehead where he’d knocked it on the hearth, splitting the skin.

“First blood!” Naill and MacLeod bellowed into the silence.

Caleb had lured him across the hall, unable to outmuscle him, and so he’d outwitted him!

Bale, furious, snatched free his sgian dubh, lifted it high as a roar of protests erupted—

“Enough!” boomed Seamus, flicking his fingers at his guards. “Lock Bale away!”

Cheers echoed to the ceiling as folk flooded away from the edges to gather around, and Peigi looked down into her warrior’s face and knelt.

“Christ,” he wheezed. “Did I win? Or die?”

She laughed as she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him. “Ye won.”

A smirk tilted up his lips. “Will no man give me uh”—he winced as he swallowed and curled a hand around his side—“a worthy competition?”

“Ye’re insufferable

,” she lamented, brushing back his hair and resting her ear to the drumbeat in his chest as he convulsed on a husky, pained laugh.

His hand rested on her cheek. “I’m just getting started, songbird.” His other hand found her stomach, palming her. “ We’re

just getting started.”