Page 40 of A Highland Rogue to Ruin

Christ. Brighde’s mortified expression sobered him and he relinquished her as she stepped back. She’d been too loud and roused James’s suspicions.

Face dropping, she frantically looked around, taking his hand as if seeking a place to stash him: the back flaps of the tent undone from when he’d crept in while she’d searched the ground outside in nothing but her chemise and enemy tartan moments ago. Her wee writing desk? He’d be hard-pressed to fit one leg beneath, let alone his entire frame.

Had she lost something outside? The way she’d inspected the tent stakes had been curious. Or mayhap there was something wrong with the tent’s structure?

“I’m really fine, Jamie!” Brighde called, too chipper. “Eh, just fine!”

She was a shite liar. Tormund smiled to himself. If he were James, he’d storm to her tent to see what was truly the matter.

“Wheesht,” he crooned softly again, taking her chin and laying a finger over her lips. “Breathe. Ah…” He cut off her next protest. “Breathe. Naybody makes canny decisions whilst panicking.” Pain contorting her face, she forced her erratic breathing to steady. “Good lass—”

“Ye nay sound fine, sister!”

She jumped, her panic rushing back.

“Oh.” She worried under her breath, turning in a circle and wringing her fingers at her waist.

He shouldn’t have come. But he’d grown tired of hovering in the woods like a love-sick lad, hoping the lassie he was sweet upon would step to the proverbial balcony and bestow a smile down on him. After tucking her in last night and creeping away, he’d known he treaded on thin ice.

Her teasing about an ambush hadn’t sat well. That thin ice would break and plunge him into frigid depths if he ambushed her kin.

If he ambushed? Not when. Ah, was he changing his mind? Nay. But the idea of an ambush no longer sat well, and already he’d spent half the remaining night trying to determine all the ways he might separate the ladies from the MacDonald retinue so that they didn’t become caught in the skirmish. Carrying on with her no longer sat well, either, even though he couldn’t bloody stop seeking that next taste of her. Keeping the past secret didn’t sit well. Nothing bloody sat well, and yet the only time he felt even slightly at ease was when he was with her.

There were too many betrayals to be discovered. Yet still, he didn’t want to sneak her about, hiding what was becoming plain to him. He wanted to walk with this woman openly on his arm, boast that she was his. Lay a claim he had no right to lay instead of continuing to exist on subterfuge and faceless sooks in a seedy tavern. He wanted to know what his brother had known. What his sire had known.

That man was the same one who loved me last night. He was honest and kind and there was good in him…

Her scolding after the race resonated. It wasn’t love so soon, but then again, mayhap that wasn’t what she’d meant, because it was something meaningful and his angel had seen it from the start: this wasn’t just a tryst. This was dangerous. This liaison involved organs such as hearts, could start a battle ending in more bloodshed, and yet he couldn’t leave her be. Couldn’t abandon the only other woman to ever see something honorable or beautiful in him. As his mother had.

This game they played was an execution in the making and he was walking himself to gallows he couldn’t yet distinguish through the haze.

James’s boots shuffled now.

Brighde’s pulse thumped wildly in her neck. She worried her lip and wrung her fingers in her chemise, rolling it higher and higher off her ankles as she twisted it. And then he spied tears welling on her eyelids, marring the pretty blue with panic as James’s tent flap rustled and he thudded closer.

Dropping down, Tormund rolled beneath her cot and ruffled the blankets so they were cast over the side to conceal him. Lavender assaulted him, her bedclothes scented in the essence. Did she keep fresh lavender stuffed in her pillows? He drank it in as she dragged her soiled gown off her trunk and cast it across the foot of the cot to cover his boots.

The tent flap thrust wide. Light shot across the rug, just as Brighde dropped to sitting on the cot, winding Tormund as her rear slammed hard on his belly. She coughed strategically as Tormund suppressed his own.

“I heard ye exclaim.” His enemy’s voice. “What’s wrong?”

“N-nothing, I, eh, thought I saw a spider.” She was rustling fabric. Covering herself, mayhap? “Wee demons, they are,” she added under her breath.

A grin at the secret scolding aimed at Tormund split his lips wide despite the tumult within him.

He traced a knuckle over the back of her heel and ankle where it was tucked beneath the cot. Sneaking about was how he often kept tabs on James. But if Brighde didn’t relax, she was going to give them both away. And then he’d need to watch his back if he made it out unscathed.

“I thought I heard ye talking to someone.”

Shite. James was going to keep prying. Tormund could slip out beneath the edge of the tent if he must, though he had no idea who was outside and might see. There was clanking around their central fire, so the MacDonald cook was awake, and of course he’d memorized James’s sentries’ patterns in order to sneak into Brighde’s tent. Good thing he had his list of knives upon him.

“Leave her be, Jamie,” spoke another woman, her voice sleepy. James’s wife, Lady Aileana? The woman swished into the tent. “Go on, husband. She’s nay even out of bed yet. I’ll talk to her.”

After a heartbeat, the flap fell shut and James’s steps receded. “He just worries for ye,” Aileana said now, also coming to sit beside her, for the cot depressed again. “What on earth happened to yer gown? Pray tell ye nay plan to wear it. How did it get…the hem is covered in sand—”

“Hush, sister,” Brighde breathed.

Tormund tightened his hold upon her ankle, his thumb caressing up and down over the joint as the soiled gown was nearly shuffled off his boots completely as Aileana inspected it.