Page 8 of Outlaw Ever After

He detoured into the trees, a sailor chasing the siren, determined to drown for one more listen. He padded over brambles as a sense of familiarity washed over him in another wave of gooseflesh he couldn’t explain. He slipped between tree trunks, ducked beneath boughs, until he landed on a deer path that dipped into a greenwood above a trickling burn. He wiped his face on his wadded tunic and slung it back over his shoulder, stalking faster.

“Lullaby sweet bairn of mine…”

He stopped, eased closer. Tingles raged over his skin as if a force pulled him. How did this lass know this song? How had he heard her melody from so far away? “Those fickle fae.” Jossy’s voice threaded over the years.

He dipped beneath a branch.

The lass glowed in a halo of secluded sunlight overlooking the drop off into Glen Alban where the burn twisted through the land like a silver ribbon. A vision, as if sunlight streaking into a darkened chamber when the shutters were thrown wide.

The late morning sun set aflame a rainbow of auburn, bay, sorrel, and chestnut tresses. Beneath a wreath of flowers crowning her head, her hair tumbled like a cascade down her back to splash upon the grasses surrounding her. Her narrow waist and generous bosom were encased in a luxurious sage plume of satin, a kirtle of embroidered silk, and a stomacher dotted with tiny crystals.

A wood nymph.

A fine noblewoman, even if she sat on the ground with her slippers cast off, toes kneading the grass.

Wear yer boots, son, so ye nay cut yerself to pieces… rang a distant chiding in his mind as he remembered the feel of loamy soil against his toes, as he and his cousin Aulay had chased each other from stone to stone, across Allt A’ Bhacain’s fairy bridge, making mischief.

Dog roses and Michaelmas daisies fringed the clearing, garnishing her like a centerpiece. Bees and birds flitted among the foliage as if their mistress’s protectors. He breathed her in, so wholesome, as music from her lips spellbound him. The sidh had lured him here like a stolen child of lore.

And that voice, a sweet enchantress drawing him…home .

He crept closer, staring at the creature’s plush lips, when she stiffened. Could she sense him? He’d barely made a sound. Only ears accustomed to danger approaching would be so trained.

What dangers had she known?

Chapter Two

Peigi could feel the lurker’s eyes upon her.

Alarm, familiar and unwanted—years of reaves had taken their toll—spiked her pulse. Should she run? Keep singing as if nothing was amiss, so as to buy herself a moment to plan her escape?

“Sleeping sweetly in the pine…”

Wariness stiffened her back like a curtain wall, as she kept singing the song from the book of lyrics Seamus had once given her, even as her periphery narrowed on a…man ?

Breathe , she advised herself, and strummed, glancing to the overlook of the glen for a route to abscond upon since he was blocking the path she’d taken, when his soft movement rustled.

Her lyre clanged as she bolted to her feet to run, head whipping around and her gaze landing on—

Emerald eyes that twinkled with mystery, cocksure attitude, and secrets.

Tribal hair knotted up and beard braided in bone beads like the worst rogue.

A thousand sheaths strapped upon the craigs and glens of bare muscle rippling over him like sea swells and a band of black tattooed around his bicep, and that scythe…

No smile now.

She froze in mid jump as he held up a placating palm. Him ? The preening warrior? She’d passed him at the spear throw while walking here, cocking a grin that lifted the apples of his cheeks as his crowd had adored him. She’d seen him boasting and pounding his chest. Up close, he was tall, donning a plain kilt that denoted no clan relations.

A renegade with a…document satchel slung over his arm?

She stared at his chest, littered in nicks, he a magnet and she a helpless speck of ore unable to resist the allure.

And then he smiled. A boyish reverence softening the hard edges of his chiseled cheekbones and warming that green gaze, though there was nothing boyish about his body honed into a weapon.

Awareness skittered through her beneath his roving eyes. Men didn’t dare look at her with such abandon. In fact, men rarely looked at all. She made sure of it by keeping out of the public eye, for she hated their appreciative examinations. He hooked an arm around a bough for leverage to duck into the clearing as if a buccaneer swinging around a ship mast—

“Eh, sorry,” he murmured, as if coming to his senses, and dropped his satchel, stripped off his back sheath, to slip on the tunic that had been slung over his shoulder like a washerwoman’s rag.