Page 49 of The Scot Beds His Wife

Feminine state… that was one way to put it.

“Aye, even after we brought ye cheese from Rua Reidh,” Locryn agreed with a solemn nod.

“Which ye ate for lunch without sharing,” Calybrid grumbled under his breath.

Locryn’s brow lowered over the one eye that tended to narrow as the other one bulged with observant suspicion. “Yer appetite shames that of the cattle, lass,” he marveled. “Have ye as many stomachs as they? For I doona ken where ye keep all those biscuits.”

Samantha rested her forehead in her hand, wondering if it was truly possible to expire from exhaustion. She’dhave to tell them, she supposed. Not everything, of course, as her very existence depended on her deception. At least for the moment.

But she wouldn’t be able to hide her pregnancy for long.

Strange, she thought, that it was better they think her a hussy than a liar.

“I have something of a confession to make…,” she began.

“Then find a vicar,” Calybrid huffed as he hauled himself to his spindly legs and trudged toward the door with the uneven limp of an old man. “Or at least wait until I drain the cod.”

The frigid November chill barged into the great room the moment Calybrid flung open the door.

“It’s going to be the coldest night, yet.” He shuddered. “It’s stopped raining, but the dew on the grass has turned to ice.”

“Do ye smell smoke?” Locryn queried, his bulbous nose twitching like that of a bloodhound testing the air.

“I used more peat in the fire than usual,” she replied. Though it was hard to detect any scent past the pleasant aroma of fresh cedar and clean, loamy forest that seemed to envelop her at the moment.

Just as Thorne had done with his superlative body.

She should return his cloak, she supposed, drowsily. But that meant seeing him again. Besides, it was a great deal warmer and better made than the woolen or the pelisse she’d brought from America. It didn’t carry with it the strength or the weight or the warmth that had beckoned to her when he’d wrapped his arms around her. But it was an admittedly lovely alternative.

An unmistakable crack resonated down to her bones, arousing her every nerve to instant vigilance.

Locryn’s fretful gaze collided with hers.

“Was that…?”

“A rifle shot,” she finished. “And not far off, either.”

“Poachers?” Locryn speculated.

Samantha sprang for the gun belt hanging from the antlers of a stag head some long-dead Ross had mounted close to the fireplace.

Another shot echoed over the moors, even closer this time, and a heart-rending call of torment instantly followed.

“Calybrid!” Samatha gasped, too frightened and astonished to note that old, top-heavy Locryn beat her in a race to the door, his own rifle in hand.

Shoving bare feet into her discarded boots, Samantha checked her pistol, testing its familiar weight in her hand. She looked up just in time to keep Locryn from charging out of the door like an ill-tempered bull.

The wool of his old sweater abraded her palm, already slick from fear, as she yanked him back behind the door. “We don’t know who’s out there, how many there are, or where the shots came from.”

“I ken Calybrid is out there,” Locryn snarled. “That’s all I need to know.”

“Wait!”

A sound from behind them turned Samantha’s terror to anguish. A distinctive noise, like a gust of wind quickly ushering in a storm.

Writers often described the din of a large fire as a roar, a narrative she’d never before understood until this moment. She turned in time to see flames race along an invisible path toward the floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the back pasture as it crawled to the sea.

Fire didn’t move like that. Not without an accelerant of some kind.