Page 104 of The Highland Laird’s Hellion Bride

“He did.”

She watched him hold still under Mrs. McAulay ’s hands with his jaw set, and then she looked back at Elspeth with a knowing expression on her face.

“I told ye,” she quipped.

“Ye told me nothing of the sort.”

“I told ye to trust me.” Katherine lifted her chin. “In the solar, when this all started. I told ye to trust me.”

Elspeth looked across the yard at Magnus, who had caught her looking and held her gaze for a moment before Mrs. McAulay redirected his attention by pressing firmly on the wound. His expression shifted from steadiness to pained restraint.

“Aye,” she said. “Ye did.”

Agnes appeared at her elbow, quiet as always. She stood beside Elspeth and slipped her small hand into hers. She said nothing; she only held on. Elspeth looked down at her and felt something whole and warm settle deep in her chest.

“Is he all right?” Agnes asked, looking at Magnus.

“Aye,” Elspeth replied. “He’s all right.”

Agnes nodded, satisfied, and kept holding her hand.

Elspeth stood in the courtyard in the morning light, with ash on her rosy cheek, dark shadows under her eyes and burns on her delicate wrists, but felt, for the first time since she had walked into an auction dreaming of princes, that she was exactly where the story had been heading all along.

* * *

Magnus woke up before the household.

That was nothing new. He had woken before the household for thirteen years, rising in the dark to check the walls, the yard, the roads, the silence that told him whether the night had passed without incident. He had done it for so long that it had stopped feeling like vigilance and started feeling like breathing.

This morning, he lay still for a full minute instead.

The castle was quiet and peaceful. He could distantly hear the first birds outside the window. Somewhere below, the kitchen fire was being built up. No other noise was present. Everything was still.

He stared at the ceiling and took stock of his body; his arm, which ached and burned where Mrs. McAulay had stitched it. His jaw was still tender where O’Brien’s elbow had found it, and the rest of him was present and functional and apparently going to be married today.

He got up.

The yard was already bustling by the time he came down, which should not have surprised him but did. The speed of it, the cheerful, organized chaos of a household that had collectively decided that nearly losing their future Lady was sufficient reason to make their wedding the finest Ben Cruachan had ever seen.

Two boys were hauling more greenery through the gate. A woman he recognized from the village was directing the arrangement of benches in the yard with a hand-drawn map she kept consulting and revising. The musicians were warming up near the stables, better than yesterday, the reel working properly this time.

Duncan appeared at his shoulder with a cup.

Magnus took it without looking. “How many men on the western approach?”

“Two. But Magnus.” Duncan waited until he looked at him. “It’s done.”

Magnus looked at the yard—the benches being set up, flowers arriving in armloads of bouquets, and a ribbon someone had tied to the gatepost. He looked at it all and then turned back to Duncan.

“Aye,” he said.

Duncan clapped him once on the shoulder and went back to wherever he had come from, leaving Magnus somewhat bewildered, standing in the middle of his own courtyard holding a cup and a load of feelings. He did not know what to do with either.

Liam found him there ten minutes later. He came to stand beside him, looking at the yard rather than at Magnus, and for a while neither of them said anything, which suited Magnus just fine.

“She’s well this morning,” Liam said eventually.

“Aye.”