Page 101 of The Highland Laird’s Hellion Bride

The man had retreated to the window, his knife gone now, his sword drawn out instead. He was laughing properly, head thrown back, shoulders shaking. It was the worst sound Magnus had heard in thirteen years, that laugh, because it was delighted.

“There it is.” O’Brien raised his sword. “There’s the face.” He stepped forward, rolling the blade once in his wrist. “Do ye ken what I’ve waited for? Nae the castle. Nae yer precious lands. But this. That look on yer face right now, kennin’ she’s behind ye and I’m in front.”

He lunged. Magnus parried and pushed him back.

“Every time ye love something, Magnus Wallace, it dies. Yer father. Yer mother. Yer wee sister and her bloody swan.” Another lunge, lower, testing. “And now her.”

Magnus drove him back three steps and said nothing.

“She’ll die like the rest of them.” O’Brien pressed forward, harder, working the angle toward the wall. “And ye’ll rebuild again, because that’s all ye ken how to do, and I’ll wait again, because that’s all I need to do, and this will go on until there’s nothin’ left of the Wallace name but ash and stubbornness.”

Magnus slammed his sword against O’Brien’s and held it there, locked hilt to hilt, the two of them close enough that he could see the grey in O’Brien’s stubble and smell smoke on his coat.

“Ye burnt me home,” he grunted. “Ye killed me family. Ye’ve spent thirteen years waitin’ for me to fall apart.” He shoved O’Brien back hard and followed him. “I’m still standing.”

O’Brien hit the wall and pushed off it fast, slashing wide, and caught Magnus across the upper arm, not deep but sharp. Magnus stepped inside the swing and drove his elbow into O’Brien’s nose. Felt it break. O’Brien’s head snapped back against the wall, and his sword hand dropped. Magnus caught his wrist and pinned it.

From behind him, another handful of embers hit the floor between them. Elspeth was repositioning. Buying him half a second.

He used it.

O’Brien’s sword hit the floor. His back hit the wall. Magnus’s forearm went across his throat and held him there. They were both breathing hard, and the room was very quiet except for the fire.

“She’ll still die,” O’Brien wheezed. “Everyone ye let yerself want, they always die.”

“Nay,” Magnus said.

He stepped back and let him fall.

He stood there for a moment longer than he needed to, looking at O’Brien on the floor, and then he turned.

Elspeth was at the hearth. She’d pushed herself upright and was standing with the burned stick in her hands and the rope hanging loose from her wrists and a smear of ash across her left cheek. She was looking at him with her chin lifted, her eyes very bright and her breath coming fast.

He crossed the room in four steps and lifted his hands to her face.

He didn’t say anything. He turned her face left, then right, checking, his thumbs moving along her jaw, her temples, her throat where he could see the faint mark from the blade at her neck. Then he looked at her hands, where the rope had been, the skin reddened from the embers she’d thrown twice in the dark.

He lifted her hands and pressed his lips to them. The right, then the left, holding each for a moment.

His hands were shaking. They shook against her face and hands, and he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t order it back the way he could order everything else in his body. He stood there with his forehead pressed against her hair and his hands trembling and let it be.

“Magnus.” Her voice was very close. Her unburned fingers found his jaw and held it. “I’m here.”

“Aye.” His voice came out wrong. He cleared his throat, and it came out wrong again. “Aye, I see ye.”

“Ye found me.”

“I was always going to find ye.”

She made a small sound against his shoulder and pressed closer.

He wrapped his arms around her and held her with everything he had, thirteen years of careful nothing finally useless, and said into her hair quietly enough that it wasn’t a declaration but a fact, “I love ye, Elspeth.”

She went still.

“I love ye, and I should have said it before now. I should have let ye wear yer ribbons on the mornin’ of our wedding, and I should have…” His jaw tightened. “I should have been many things I wasnae. And I intend to spend a considerable time being them from here on out.”

He pulled back enough to look at her face. His hands were still shaking. “I willnae let anything touch ye again. I swear it on every stone of Ben Cruachan and everything in it. I will protect ye until I draw me last breath.”