Page 46 of A Highland Rogue to Ruin

She glanced at Tormund, his face still shuttered. “Of-of course nay. I told ye yesterday, ’tis only a sennight’s lark.”

“Ye hesitated, Bridge.”

“I nay hesitated—”

“He could be using ye.”

Brighde’s eyes flashed to Tormund, whom she was distressed to see was backing up into the crowd.

“He could be trying to soften ye to get to James. James is nay wrong to be concerned.”

“But James doesna really ken him. Torm would no’ do that,” Brighde defended.

Her sister-in-law began to protest, when Brighde, frustrated, took her hands. “Do ye remember how ye once felt about my brother?”

Aileana fell quiet. It was no secret, her clan of Grant and the MacDonalds had once been fierce enemies, too, and when she’d been forced to marry James, she’d been determined to hate him.

“He and I both ken this can nay last. I beg ye, just let me have this, before I must go home and watch ye and Jamie grow old together whilst I become a spinster.”

Aileana’s face fell, eyes widened, and then she threw her arms around her. “Oh, Brighde. I’m so sorry.”

Brighde peeled out of her sympathetic embrace and turned back to Tormund, but he was gone. Looking every which way, her heart drew tight again. Faces loomed around her, but his wasn’t there. The sagebrush was gone. His warmth, gone.

Her throat constricted. Had James’s wife spotting them together scared him away?

“Tormund?”

Nothing. A moment later, Aileana tugged upon her arm again as a hush settled over the cacophony of voices and music. She turned as the crowd parted once more.

Tormund MacLeod, with scythe, sickle, and pitchfork in hand, lumbered up the path. Shirt removed, his chest was suntanned, rippling with lean muscle, a trail of dark hair peppering his navel beneath his buckle where his mantle was bundled and slouching around his belts. She froze. Watched him. Then pushed forth through the bodies, unable to tear her gaze away from his, for his was locked on her.

His chest and shoulders were covered in more art, patterns faded by time, others that looked fresher intermixed over the dips and rises of every ridge rippling over his belly. So many scars to commemorate. And tucked against his pectoral, over his heart, was a clipping of blond hair beneath his straps for his shoulder sheaths.

Her heart might leap from her chest at the secret, yet public display. Her favors.

Whispering ensued. “…thought he’d left…”

“Barbarian…”

He hadn’t left, though. He’d only pretended to, to get people’s guards down. And told no one except her when it had been just the two of them adrift in the world to exist where reality wouldn’t find them.

The royal seneschal began calling out the pairings. Laird MacNicol with Laird Lindsay. Laird Rose with Laird Maccoll.

“Are ye sure he’s willing to let yer tryst end?” Aileana finally said. “For that is the look of a smitten man.”

Chapter Fourteen

Tormund peeled his gaze from Brighde’s, from her shocked sister-in-law, and his eyes landed on James. Hell, he was normally far more observant, but he’d set Brighde so hard in his sights, he’d not paid attention to James’s woman nearby.

He jutted that chin to James who was tracking him onto the field, knowing the false comradeship only irritated his adversary.

“What the hell are ye doing here?” James growled, tossing aside his sickle. “Ye’re supposed to have left.”

His gaze snaked to her in the crowd, cramming her way to the bunting, fingers twisting that talon string. God, she was so bonny, it hurt. Like a sunshine pummel to his gut. Aye, women made men weak, but he was letting this one kill all his good sense when he had far too much to lose.

When he’d watched her dancing toward the field in her buttery yellow gown, a wreath adorning her head as if she were a wee wood nymph, he’d felt his blood warm on what was becoming a familiar path southward below the kilt. Had relished how her face tilted toward the sun like it had when feeling the ocean breeze, her river of hair woven in an intricate plait swinging about her,

His eyes cut back to James. Fok, how was he supposed to vindicate Owen when doing so would devastate her?