Page 34 of The Highland Laird’s Hellion Bride

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He caught it before it went any further—jaw setting, mouth flattening back into its usual line—and told himself that settled the matter. He did not move. She was there, arms crossed, chin up, waiting for him to make things worse. He saw no reason to disappoint her.

“Ye are impossible,” she huffed.

Magnus shifted the chicken to his other arm. “I was tryin’ to protect ye.”

“From books?”

“From disappointment.”

He looked at her too long, long enough to notice how her eyes flashed when she was riled, long enough that he had to plant his boots to the ground to keep from closing the distance between them.

Elspeth clutched the edges of her shawl and tucked it back into place without once breaking his gaze. Behind her, one of the dogs gave a low whine, as though it too sensed that the wind had changed.

“I shall decide what disappoints me, thank ye.”

She turned on her heel. Her skirts caught the air and snapped around her ankles as she started toward the courtyard gate, gravel crunching sharply beneath her boots, her chin held up.

She did not look back. She told herself she would not look back and held to it for exactly four strides.

Magnus watched her go. The dog at his boot lifted its head, glanced at both of them, and thumped its tail once against the ground. The chicken, tired of being ignored, pecked once at his sleeve.

He did not notice. His eyes stayed fixed on Elspeth’s retreating back, the stiff set of her shoulders, the way her braid swung hard when she rounded the well.

He had not planned to say anything further. He told himself this even as his mouth opened, even as the word was already leaving his lips before he had decided whether he wanted it to.

“Elspeth.”

She stopped mid-stride, one boot raised slightly off the cobbles before she set it down with exaggerated care. Her spine went straight as a bolt. She did not turn.

Neither of them moved.

The wind pulled at her skirts and scattered the loose hay across the yard. It carried the smell of the stables toward them, horse and leather and turned earth. Behind him, the black stallion blew out hard through its nose and stamped once in the paddock, impatient with the pair of them and their silence.

Magnus searched for something to say and found nothing sensible in him. He was a man built for fences and ledgers and the counting of grain, not for finding words quickly enough to stop a woman mid-stride.

He stood there a moment too long, his jaw working before any useful word arrived. The chicken squirmed. He tightened his grip on it without thinking, and it settled, resigned. In the end, he reached for the only thing at hand.

“Tomorrow, I must inspect the loch,” he said. “And the western boundary.”

It was not what he had meant to offer, if he had meant to offer anything at all. But it was out now, whether or not it made sense to anyone listening, including himself.

Elspeth glanced back over her shoulder. One eyebrow lifted, slow and deliberate.

“Afterwards,” he added, “ye may have yer second outing.”

“Tomorrow?” She turned fully now, arms crossed. Her weight had shifted, no longer aimed quite so squarely at the gate, one foot already angling back toward him.

“After I inspect the loch.”

“How generous of ye.”

Magnus frowned, resettling the bird against his ribs, buying himself a second he did not strictly need. He glanced past her, toward the loch. “I am tryin’ to compromise.”

“Are ye?”

“Aye.”