Page 33 of The Highland Laird’s Hellion Bride

“I relocated them.”

“Why?”

His jaw worked. He picked up a bridle from the fence post and inspected the leather far more closely than a bridle he had hung there himself required.

“Ye’ve already asked me questions about courtship. About stars. About poetry.” He said the last word like it cost him something. “I feared the books might encourage more of the same.”

Elspeth stared at him. “You hid me books because ye were afraid of a discussion.”

“I didnae hide them. I relocated them.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere they’ll do less damage.”

She opened her mouth to tell him precisely what she thought of a grown man, a laird, sneaking through his own library like a thief to strip it of anything with a beating heart.

She found the words tangled somewhere behind her teeth, because he had chosen that moment to drag a forearm across his brow, and his sleeves were rolled to the elbows. The dirt streaked across his skin betrayed that he had spent the whole morning at the fences, and his hair fell dark and damp at the collar.

She dug her nails lightly into her palm and made herself look at the bridle in his hands instead of at him.

“That is theft,” she hissed. “In me own home, that would be theft.”

“This is me home.”

“That is worse.”

The corner of his mouth twitched, and he immediately caught it before it could bloom into an actual smile and sent it back where it came from. He hung the bridle on its hook with more care than the task warranted, buying himself a few seconds she did not miss.

“I’ll consider returning them,” he said, “once ye stop askin’ me if I’ve ever recited poetry to a lass beneath the stars.”

“I asked that question once.”

“It was a memorable once.”

Morag reappeared at the stable door and fixed Elspeth with a flat, unbothered look. One of the dogs got up, circled twice, and settled against Magnus’s boot as it belonged there. Which, Elspeth supposed, it did.

She turned her attention deliberately to the dog. Not to the forearms. Not to the collar.

“I want the books back,” she insisted. “All four of them.”

“Four.” He said it like a man recalculating a debt. “Ye counted.”

“I counted twice.”

“Thorough.” He reached past her to loop the stallion’s lead over the rail, and for one unhelpful second, his arm brushed close enough that she caught his scent. Warm, blended with that of horse and hay.

“Where are they, Magnus?” she pressed.

He looked at her, making her wonder if he was debating whether to lie or adjust the truth. Then, in a perfectly even voice, he said, “I’ll tell ye when ye stop lookin’ at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like ye’re about to set the stables on fire to make yer point.”

Elspeth’s chin lifted. “I havenae yet decided against it.”

He almost smiled again. She hated that she had learned to spot it.