Page 82 of Outlaw Ever After

“Mi laird, a spear throw!”

“Show us how ye hit the target!” Thomas said.

“Or how about…” Alex reached to the sheath always across his back. “A scythe?” He spun the weapon, arms out as he turned in a circle. “Does anyone challenge me? Ye, Thomas?”

The wee groom’s eyes widened.

“Indeed! Come hither. Ye’ll make a worthy opponent.”

Peigi laughed as the boy’s face reddened. Alex swiped up a torch and carried it toward their makeshift pitch delineated by buntings of turnips. The villagers gathered along the lines, out of harm’s way.

“Sir Alexander kissed ye.” Gertrude collapsed beside her, handing her ale as other womenfolk gathered on the straw bales to drink and gossip, no longer guarded as they flashed smiles her way. “Safe to say he fancies ye.”

Peigi took a polite sip. Again, her stomach turned at the taste, and she set it aside and wiped her lip.

“Aim…like so…” Alex was saying from afar. “Here, hold my scythe…”

She watched him noose it in his fist and place the polearm in the lad’s hand.

“There. Stand…like so.” He squared Thomas’s shoulders and planted the bairn’s foot in front. Lifted the weapon over the lad’s shoulder. “Ye’re going to step into the thrust, use yer body’s momentum to propel it forward… Aye, that’s the way of it!”

Jovially, he ruffled Thomas’s hair. Like a da teaching his son… He’d once begged for a family with her. They’d once daydreamed about children of their own—

Nay, she couldn’t let that sadness of lost dreams assail her, wondering what might have been, when she’d barely regained her ability to hold her head up high.

“Do ye fancy him back?”

Peigi swallowed, then nodded and patted the space before her so Gertie shifted in front of her. She took to combing back the lassie’s tangles, damp and strewn about her face, weaving Gertrude’s hair into a plait. Over, under, cinch. Over, under, cinch.

“Have ye met him before?”

Peigi peered around at the girl’s face as she continued to weave, frowning. “Why such a question?”

Laughter erupted as the scythe ricocheted off the target, drawing her attention. Alex’s manner was so easy, teasing the lads and lasses, promising them a turn. He commanded respect without even trying, delighted in giving them coins for the slightest requests. He’d make a fine laird of Castle Freuchie and these people who’d suffered so. He wasn’t beholden to the trappings of nobles, but comfortable in his skin and plain claes, among these working folk, as if he belonged.

She traced how Alex’s chuckle stretched the column of his throat, when he waggled his brow back at her and Gertie.

Gertrude shrugged. “The oat stalks say ye did. But the crab apples, I am mystified.”

“Because the oat stalks were just a coincidence, Gertie.”

“Granny Jossy says coincidences are what we call fate when we nay understand what it’s trying to tell us.”

That shiver once more assailed like it did each time the wind stirred the leaves into frolicking spirals, as if those fae her mother used to whisper about were trying to speak. Her arms erupted in goose flesh as she put the final knot in the twine, when she looked up at a shadow blocking the firelight. Alex stood before her, an expectant gathering surrounding them again.

“Songbird, ’tis unanimous.” He winked down at her with a cheeky grin. “The lasses have asked me to dance, but I promised them aye only if my lady gives me the first honor.”

She glanced at the maids, gathered around the fire in anticipation of a dance with the warrior charmer from Court. She’d heard the whispers of the ladies today, wishing for a chance to turn his gaze. Remembered the flirt at Lughnasadh who’d enthralled his adoring crowd and winked at the maidens he’d no doubt planned to bed.

She looked at his hand, extended down to her , then up at the sparkle of anticipation in his eyes.

“Ye can nay refuse, mi lady!” Gertie and the other girls crowed, oblivious to her hurt, nudging her to accept.

She laughed uncomfortably and took his hand.

But his brow grew serious. His smile fell. He wanted to dance with her, that much was clear, and yet, distress knotted in her belly that it had been months . Three months of loneliness while he’d freely done as he’d wished no matter what sadness he’d spoken of when searching for every Margaret in Scotland, with the endless stream of maids who batted their sheep’s eyes at him.

“Lass?” he hedged.