Page 108 of The Highland Laird’s Hellion Bride

A sound rippled through the gathering. Not quite laughter. Magnus looked up at all of them, then at the book in his hands, and his jaw shifted. Then he turned his eyes to Elspeth.

“I still think poetry is exhaustin’,” he stated.

Proper laughter erupted at that, rippling through the yard. Duncan made a sound that was definitely not a sob, and Katherine gripped Agnes’s shoulder.

Magnus stood in the middle of it all, holding a page in the worn book with his thumb, waiting for the laughter to settle.

When it was quiet enough, he looked down at the page. Then he looked back at Elspeth.

“But there was one line ye read aloud once that lingered in me mind.” He paused. His voice had dropped out of the public register and into the one she knew from studies and corridors and a lodge in the western hills. It was for her to hear, not the gathering, though everyone heard it. “It says: I would rather share one lifetime beside thee than face all the ages of this world alone.”

Tears welled up in her eyes unbidden. She had been holding them back since the dressing room, and now they could no longer be denied their rightful claim. They blurred Magnus’s face into a soft golden hue. She blinked hard and found him again, standing there with her book in his hands, looking at her like she was the only legible thing in his world.

She whispered her own vows. She knew she would not be able to repeat what she had said afterward. The words rose from a part of her that had been pushed down deep for a long time. She felt them leave that place. She saw them land in his heart.

Magnus took both her hands when she had finished, the book held carefully under his arm, and she decided she had had enough of waiting. She stepped into him, her arms going around his neck. His hands rose to her back at once, pulling her close, and the yard burst into a sound she barely heard.

He kissed her with everyone watching, but neither of them cared. She shivered to the soles of her feet.

When he finally drew back to look at her, his eyes were dark, and his hands were splayed warm against her back. He was not merely looking at her. He was seeing her.

His lips curled into a slow, rare smile that was only meant for her. He pressed his forehead against hers and lingered there for a moment, in the middle of Ben Cruachan and the golden hills and all the people who had stayed, and breathed.

Behind them, Duncan stated, “I’m nae crying,” and Liam said nothing.

Katherine burst into loud sobs and made no attempt whatsoever to be graceful about it. Agnes passed her a handkerchief.

* * *

The Great Hall had never sounded like this.

Magnus stood at the edge of it for a moment after supper, before anyone could find him and insist he do something ceremonial, and listened. The fiddles were going properly now, the reel working exactly as it had not in the rehearsal. Three village men had pushed the nearest table further back to make more room, and the dance floor was already full.

Duncan was in the middle of it.

He had located a widow from the eastern village at some point during supper, and he was presently demonstrating a step Magnus was reasonably certain he had invented on the spot. He held her hand and grinned at an angle that had served him approximately half as well as he believed it did.

“Is that working?” Elspeth appeared at Magnus’s shoulder, following his gaze.

“For him or for her?”

“Either.”

“Nay,” Magnus said.

Elspeth pressed her lips together. “She looks entertained.”

“That’s nae the same thing.”

“To Duncan, it is.”

From across the hall, Duncan caught Magnus’s eye, pointed at the widow with considerable pride, and mouthed something that Magnus chose not to interpret.

Magnus looked away.

Near the hearth, Katherine was on her feet despite everything, her color high, one hand resting against her middle and the other conducting the nearest musician’s tempo. Liam stood two feet behind her with his arms folded.

“Katherine,” he said.