Page 42 of Outlaw Ever After

Seamus’s face softened, as Alex’s perked curiously. His gaze burned into her profile, though she wouldn’t deign to look at him. Seamus scooped up his blade on an exhale. Left the coins in the rushes. He backed up, eyes still trained on Alex who returned his glare with one of his own.

“I’ll go post the notice that the tourney is full,” Seamus acquiesced, pointing at Alex with his dagger. “But we will speak when my sister’s eyes have dried and my temper has cooled.”

Seamus vanished out of the hall, MacGregor turning to follow, when he tripped on the lip of something…an uneven paver beneath the rushes? Alexander grinned as MacGregor scowled and slipped out behind Seamus. Aileana’s babe began to fuss, and she retreated to nurse with an apologetic frown.

Peigi exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, and turned to Alex as the hall resumed talking.

“I see ye told yer brother about me,” Alexander quipped coldly under his breath.

So imposing still, like a bulwark of lean muscle, belying the notion that he was a mere parchment pusher.

He stepped a degree closer and leaned around her. Her eyes fluttered shut at the heady smell of patchouli—denied her for three months—as his body heat so warm, so close—

He flipped up a bench with a flick of his wrist, stepping around her with a smirk.

Then he dropped to his rear like a king returned from a Crusade as he scooped up a stem of grapes from the rushes, like royal cuisine and not rubbish from the floor. He slung an arm across the board at his back as if a throne. He looked up at her with knees splayed wide.

She fidgeted her fingers at her waist. “He kens we-we…” She couldn’t force out the words. “But I nay told him anything else about ye. I’d have to ken who ye really are to do that. But Alexander, Reaper…it’s hard to tell which one of ye is real, or if ye’re both mirages. Besides, I was just a lark to ye—”

“Nay true,” he growled, shoving back to standing, that pleat returning to his brow as something flashed in his eyes that warned her off. Anger? Nay…more hurt . She itched to smooth her finger over it. “I was waylaid after the fire. My laird was imperiled. I had to fight for him—”

She scoffed. “Dashing away to battle even when he promises to lay down his sword—”

“And the Archbishop was summoned away from the faire. He demanded I travel to Edinburgh to officiate my post, lest I be passed over for another candidate. I left ye that missive. I came”—he looked around pointedly at all the other contestants and swallowed, his throat bobbing—“too late, it seems. Apparently, ye’re more swayed to a, oh, ‘man of money and prestige’ after all.” He fluttered his hand as if dismissing an unwanted servant.

His barb landed. She gasped, slapping a hand over her mouth. Her face paled. Her eyes flooded with more tears, but she turned away, as she held in the contents of her belly with her palm. She blinked to clear the burn, biting her tremoring lip.

She should send him off! Except, when she looked up again, his gaze was once more trained on her stomach.

“Are ye ill?” he growled, just as Mistress Joslyn hurried through the throngs with a legion of maids following.

He sat again, plucked a grape free, and tossed it up, catching it between his teeth. Juice squirted as he bit down. He calculated her as he chewed, licking juice and blood off his fattened lip as his teeth worked angrily.

The knot thickened in her throat. His jaw pumped as if to withhold something, as uncertainty clouded his sparkling eyes—eye , for the other was nearly swelled shut, darting back and forth between hers and then away to take in the grandeur of the hall, as if wondering if it was worth it.

She touched the injury. “Al-Alex—”

He yanked away as if she’d burned him. She flinched back. He stilled, then softened.

“Nay pretend to want me, lass,” he gruffed through stiff lips.

“Nay pretend to be fighting for my hand when it is clearly a castle ye prefer—just like everyone else,” she whispered sadly.

“Why vie for the heart of a lady who wishes nay to give it? I should ken.”

Her mouth dropped open. His eyes deadened as the swarm of maids engulfed them, too.

They froze, stony eyed as Peigi glanced at them. After her brother’s beastly display, was it any wonder why the Comyns hated the Grants? The path to their hearts was going to be arduous.

“I shall fetch my medicinals and order a pot of boiling water,” Peigi breathed beneath their searing perusal. “Please, Mistress Joslyn, will ye see a chamber prepared for him?”

Mistress Joslyn, to her credit, smiled kindly, astute gray-green eyes flitting between her and Alex, and nodded.

Peigi turned to the wee serving girl. “Gertie?” The child bobbed a curtsy. “Please fetch Thomas and bring ye both an armload of firewood. For Sir Alexander ’s chamber.”

“Aye, mi lady.”

“Good lass.” The child bobbed her head of strawberry waves at the praise and darted away.