Page 9 of Outlaw Ever After (Highland Handfasts #3)

Instruments!

Peigi’s eyes widened. Rows of bone flutes and panpipes. Bodhráns and dulcimers. And a Celtic harp! Racks of gitterns and lutes, painted vibrant colors and shielded from the sun by an awning.

“Goodness, I once had one of these…” She strummed her fingers across the harp, admiring its scroll, plucked out a simple melody as the shopkeeper smiled.

“Have ye a tuning hammer and a wrench, good fellow?” her rogue asked, holding up her lyre and strumming the problem string. “C Two has gone flat.”

How did he know the string names? Or how to fix it?

She picked up a panpipe, inspecting it, when moments later, he was twisting the loose pin back into her lyre.

“Try it.” He jutted his chin to the panpipe while tightening the string, plucking repeatedly to test the sound until it was pitch perfect.

She set the panpipe down. “I’ve never tried. Can ye play?”

He set her fixed lyre aside and brought the panpipe to his lower lip, trilling a fast ripple of sounds.

She brought it to her lips now, attempting to blow… Nothing but air.

Her face burned as he chuckled and she cast it down, but he returned it to her hand. He brushed her lower lip, where it edged the skin of her chin. “Place it… here

. ’Twas too high on yer lips before.”

She tried again, feeling foolish. But he nodded. And watched her blow. A sound came out! Followed by air. This time she

laughed. “I shall stick to my lyre, sir.”

“Nay, ye’re quite good,” he said encouragingly.

She nearly snorted. “On a few instruments, aye, but reaves destroyed our collection long ago. I only managed to save my favorite. I haven’t the experience ye have but I would have loved it if I did. It was my dream.”

He waved her off as if the destruction mattered not. “The inclination is there, lass. A little practice is all ye need… Here…” He thrust a dulcimer at her.

They experimented, harmonizing together, him rhythming on the hand drum and her on the dulcimer.

She eased to his nonchalance. Oh, how she loved a fellow musician to make music with.

How she wished her fingers could have been used for this over the years—a vain thought.

She’d earned her cuts and nicks honestly, by helping sustain her people.

Still, the shopkeeper clapped as they dueled, when she saw something through the crack in the wavering curtain. She stopped and fingered open the fabric.

“What is that? Up there beside the kirk?”

He arched a brow. “Wish to explore and find out?”

He took her hand, dropping a coin on the shopkeeper’s cart for his trouble. The folk, kindly, bobbed curtsies or waved, or beckoned them to dance about the fire. Oh, to be this happy and at peace!

Boulders jutted out of the glenside, half buried in trees. Her limbs ached as they climbed the ascent.

He guided her over roots, through slants of sunlight, past bells of twinflowers hanging among the brambles until they came to…a ruin? She smiled wondrously. Felt his gaze trace her face and jaw while he ushered her beneath the broken lintel, his other hand guiding her lower back.

’Twas a cottage, she realized. Perhaps an old parsonage accompanying St. Machan’s looming over the village? She scanned the crumbled foundation. Partial window frames protruded like jagged teeth as saplings twisted their roots about the stones.

She slipped free of his touch and walked the perimeter. She sifted her fingers through the saplings to trace the wall, to touch a shard of metal. A remnant of some farming tool or another. Rubble in the far corner turned out to be an old, rotting shutter, and the remains of…a cradle?

Nay a parsonage. Crofters had lived here if they’d had bairns.

What babes had once rocked in this vestige of the past? She smiled back at…what was his name? Eyes of deepest greenwood…

He stood within the doorway, watching her caress the cradle as if in awe of some otherworldly creature. Renegades lurked in greenwoods, like the fabled Robin of the Hood. This one seemed to understand her.

“Ye’re humming,” he noted.

Was she? For a short time, this man had made her forget her marriage problem. “A cradle. I’ve always wanted a large brood.”

“Marry yer widower and ye’ll inherit one,” he jested, arms folded upon each fist so that his biceps bulged, a tight tick to his jaw.

She shook her head, glancing heavenward. Did that tick mean her marrying another…bothered him?

“If there were a contest for the number of headshakes a man could suffer from a lass, ye might be the winner.”

He flashed his dazzling grin and hitched his chin. “I’m always glad to be a champion.”

“Ye’re pathetic. Ridiculous and cocksure and—”

“Ye insult me again.” He held out his hand and waited again when she suspected he typically enjoyed taking what he wished. She came to him, their fingers lacing comfortably.

“Now I’m

just getting started titling ye with insults.” She poked his chest.

Their hand hold tightened.

“A man should be so lucky to be decorated by yer attention. I’m Sir Desperate, Laird of Cocksure, if it means ye’ll keep singing for me.” His gaze twinkled without a drop of remorse as he tugged her gently, urging her close.

“Ye still have nay told me what ye do want,” he said.

“Hmm?”

“In a man.”

“Nay a roving warrior who waggles his brows and expects a lass to fall at his feet, for certain,” she breathed.

“What do

ye want?” he repeated, voice gruff as his expression fell an inch, but this time, she wasn’t sure he was asking quite the same question, and her entire body tingled with anticipation.

As if he could sense her wavering on that precipice, he moved around her again, letting go of her hand.

His fingertips skimmed her arm, her shoulders, down her other arm.

When he came around her other side, his fingers laced with hers again.

He was chewing his cheek, evading her eyes, when until now, he hadn’t seemed to be short on words.

Sheepish? This braw man laden with a deadly scythe that he’d wielded with precision yesterday?

“A man who wants me. For me,” she said before she could think better of it. “Nay wants me for my status. Or my dowry.” Freuchie Castle.

That cursed place where that boy from so long ago had lived and suffered. She blocked out the injustices she’d seen on a swallow, wishing that to this day, she could escape them.

He stepped close, his belly to her back, patchouli and warmth a comfortable mantle as his lips came down to her ear and he said, “A man who labors each day, and comes home to his woman and hearth, each eve?”

She nodded as he spanned his hand across the wall they faced and the remnants of an old hearth, now piled with desiccated nesting from beasties who’d used the chimney. He brushed back a tendril of her hair, scoring a trail across her neck as if picking the perfect place to kiss.

“A man who wants a peaceable life? Wants a family?” he continued.

She blushed as her eyes darted to the cradle.

He continued his revolution around her.

She breathed, “Wants the simple pleasure of cozy nights before a fire, playing his flute whilst—”

“Whilst his woman sings and the fire crackles and their bairns frolic and their villagers grow strong and jubilant—”

“Who is faithful.” She was nodding again, and had they stepped flush with each other? This was foolish. Why on earth was she playing his game? Considering what

? A future with him? She knew not a whit about this penniless rogue, laboring as a hired pen or sword, she couldn’t tell which, judging from his muscles and weapons and his ink stains.

He seemed like a speck of barley tossed about at the wind’s pleasure, incapable of putting down roots. And yet she couldn’t deny the energy flowing between them, this impulsivity to do the wrong thing. An impulse she’d only felt once before as a little girl with a young lad. She chewed her cheek.

“Who wouldst move a mountain to ken we’re safe. A man who would love me when I’m gray, and wrinkled, my body humbled by time—”

“From a life weel lived and a man who loved her body good,” he gruffed softly, pushing back her hair again, so

tenderly. “And a wife who’d do the same for her man when he’s stooped and silvery—”

“A man who’d nay appraise me for my value. Who wouldst make peace with his past so he can look toward his future and lay down his arms and never bring terror to our threshold—”

He turned her around to face out the doorway over the landscape. It overlooked the village, glowing in the glen.

“Goodness,” she breathed, slowing, taking his hand again and resting her head to his shoulder. “’Tis beautiful.”

The jubilant village, as if the one they imagined, lay before them upon the shimmering river waters, surrounded by golden fields piled with haystacks. Their music echoed up the glen.

She looked up at him as his gaze connected down to hers. Gone was that cocksure swagger, replaced with that same solemn reverence he’d gazed at her with when she’d played the song his mother had sung—desperation.

…

He chewed his cheek. His hand tightened upon hers like a reflex. He might jump out of his skin with primal satisfaction at this reluctant lass’s head resting upon his arm and tightening her grip on his

hand in return.

He glanced at the kirk spire protruding through the tree canopy atop the craig. Down at the village. And for the first time in years, let himself…submerge into the past.

“I have a cottage. On a loch,” he whispered roughly. Breathed in rosewater. “ Taigh Spealaidh

.” Scythe House.

He’d never shared that with anyone

for the pang it evoked in his chest, for the risk it put him at to divulge it. He cleared his throat to scrape the gravel from it, swallowing, but couldn’t

look her in the eye when he spoke.