Page 110 of The Highland Laird’s Hellion Bride

He held out his hand. She looked at it, then at him.

“Nay counting?”

“Nay.”

“Nay battle maneuvers?”

“Nay.”

“Nay treating me like a piece of furniture ye’re worried about dropping?”

“I make nay promises about the last one.” He kept his hand out. “Are ye coming or nae?”

She took his hand.

The reel was fast, and he did not count once. His hand found her waist and recognized it; they stepped into the music together. She laughed with delightful surprise when he turned her with unexpected speed; he did not mind the sound at all. He minded it so little that he turned her again to hear it.

“Show-off,” she teased, coming back to him.

“I’m dancing, nae showing off.”

“Ye turned me twice on the same step.”

His hand settled more firmly on her waist, the move raising her eyebrow, but she did not pull back. They finished the reel with her laughing and him watching her laugh, and when the music paused between sets, neither of them stepped back.

He was vaguely aware that people were watching. He realized he did not care. He had spent thirteen years managing what the clan saw and did not see of him, and what he was currently doing was standing on his own floor after his own wedding, holding his wife. Any man who took issue with that was welcome to bring it to Duncan.

The musicians started on a slower tune. Elspeth settled into his arms, resting her free hand against his chest, and they turned slowly while the hall moved around them.

Magnus looked at her face. She was taking in the room: the dancers; Mrs. McAulay laughing again; Duncan having apparently found a second widow to tell the same story to; Agnes standing with Liam near the hearth, looking at the musician with her head tilted. Then her eyes came back to him. She caught him looking at her, but did not look away.

“What?” she prompted.

“Nothin’.”

“Magnus, ye told me ye loved me while bleeding onto a hunting lodge floor.”

“I told ye while I was standing. I was perfectly upright.”

She tipped her head back and laughed, full and unguarded.

He felt the laugh vibrating through his hand on her waist and thought about thirteen years of halls that had echoed empty, and walls he’d built one stone at a time, and the night he’d come home to ash, and all the years between that night and this floor and this woman in his arms laughing at him in green silk with a ribbon in her hair.

He could not find better memories before that. He briefly tried to remember the specific shape of the hall without her in it and found he could not fix on it.

Elspeth’s laughter settled, and when she saw the expression on his face, her eyes softened. She pressed her forehead against his. There, in the middle of the floor, with everyone in their world apparently present and accounted for.

“I cannae remember wanting princes,” she said.

His arms closed around her protectively.

“Good,” he murmured against her skin.

Epilogue

She had not noticed him leave the Great Hall.

One moment, he had been beside her near the hearth, listening to Duncan tell a story that grew more embellished with every cup; the next, Katherine drew her into a conversation that required her full attention and he was gone. She looked for him across the hall, found the empty place where he had been standing, and started toward the door.