Page 49 of A Highland Rogue to Ruin

“I’ll thank ye for rescuing her from harm. But that’s all ye’ll get from me.” The Devil MacDonald just thanked him? “Stay away from her.”

“Does she want me to stay away?”

Their hands on each other’s wrists tightened.

“My sister is nay yer concern. We’ve learned our lesson about trusting a MacLeod. I’ll nay lose her, too. I already failed Margie,” he croaked, face darkening.

Tormund’s familiar anger lashed, but that remark gave him pause, as did the fond sobriquet James had used for his late sister. He finally saw MacDonald’s anger for what it really was. It wasn’t just grief. It was shame. James shamed himself for not protecting the beloved sister who’d protected him all his life from a vindictive stepmother. Tormund knew that shame of failing the ones who mattered most.

“I’m nay the one who harmed Lady Marjorie,” Tormund bit out, glancing back at Brighde, whose cerulean eyes remained riveted on them. His men, as well as MacDonald’s, were all shouting at them that the cutting was about to begin, to get ready, but for the first time, he and James were…talking. “She was much beloved by our people. And perpetuate the lies all ye want about Owen, but he was mad for her. And right now, I have pantries to replenish, thanks to my people’s labors all summer going up in smoke, or they will perish. And if I have to partner with the bastard who did it to them…” His lips contorted with disgust as he inspected James as if staring at a paltry sum. “So be it.”

He ripped his hand away from James and gathered up his scythe. James did the same, but this time, he didn’t take the opposite end. He stepped up next to Tormund, sickle in hand.

“Leave her be. She’s innocent to the world and nay needs yer darkness.”

“Are ye going to ask her if that’s what she wants? Or keep making decisions for her without her agreement?” He turned to James, as the seneschal’s calls rang out for the pairings to make ready. As the sheep’s horn was raised. “Did ye ken it’s stifling her? Yer fear?”

James’s brow furrowed as the horn was blown, as the other pairs began scything and the crowd began cheering. “I’m protecting her.”

“Ye’re smothering her. Throwing yer marriage and progeny in her face every day and then telling her each time ye reject a suit that she’s nay worthy enough for such a life, too.”

“Why in the hell would ye think that?”

“Like she’d tell ye when ye’re the one forcing her to watch the years pass her by.” James opened his mouth to argue. “She loves her wee brother too much to hurt him. Which means, she’d forsake her own happiness because ye’re scared to let her go. But did ye ever think she might want bairns? Want a man? Want a life of her own? Did it ever occur to ye that she might no’ like living beneath yer armor? Or that when ye recoil at the words Lady Marjorie, she might want to celebrate her? Ye’re no’ the only one who lost a sister, man, but ye seem to think yer grief is the only grief that matters.”

James froze. The crowds beseeched them to start cutting.

Tormund began scything. Arms swinging, he hacked the shafts of barley. Ignored the MacDonald, for he had nothing else to say to him and if he had to clear this pitch single-handedly, he’d do so. His hands grew sweaty on the handles. The blade whooshed with each slice. He set his jaw. Cut, cut. He intended to be the winner, despite sour sentiments and even worse company.

At his side, he felt and heard James’s grunts as he, too, began sickling. They labored in silence. Determination reigned supreme. Sweat rolled down his back, over his pectorals, saturating his waist. The sun, blazing, offered no sympathy as it baked his skin. Still he cut, never stopping, heaving steady lungfuls as the crowd cheered for their warriors or lairds, as he and James cleared their field.

“Get that end,” James huffed, pointing.

“Aye, and ye the far corner still,” Tormund grunted, motioning to James.

“On it,” James replied.

They shared a wary glance, and yet there was no denying, they made a superb team. Stubbornness and determination were fodder for winning.

“Shite,” James muttered, as the handle on his sickle broke and the blade went flinging into the field.

“Look lively.” Tormund snatched up his unused sickle and tossed it to James.

James snagged it from the air, hitching his chin in thanks, and took stock of their competitors. “They’re gaining on us.”

“Nay if I have a say in it,” Tormund muttered, and the corner of his mouth quirked up when he realized that James was suppressing a smile, too. Hell, at this rate, they’d be sharing ale in the tavern by nightfall. In another life, they could have been friends.

A glance at Brighde showed her strangling her finger in her necklace, leaning over the ropes and worrying her lip. Aileana doing the same, their arms linked at the elbows, holding each other tightly, and the clipping of hair secured to his chest tickled with every drop of sweat that rolled through it.

Lavender. Home. Peace. All the sentiments he loved and missed, wrapped up in a sunshine smile and bonny blues.

He glanced back at James. If he could gain the man’s cooperation for this simple competition, could he mayhap succeed in bringing his adversary to the table? To hear the truth? Was a future with Brighde a possibility? Or more, was The Great Peace achievable?

Not with the true culprit behind Marjorie’s disappearance still unsolved and the secret he still harbored buried in Inverness.

His and James’s backs bumped in the middle. They turned in each direction to examine their field. Everyone else was still reaping.

“It’s done,” James muttered.