Page 50 of The Highland Laird’s Hellion Bride

Duncan studied him. The teasing was gone from his face, replaced by something quieter and more careful.

“Ye ken,” he said, “this isnae about vengeance for ye. I’ve watched ye long enough to see it plainly. Most men who lost what ye did would want the man’s head on a pike the moment his name surfaced.”

“I daenae want his head.” Magnus said it flatly and meant it. “I want him gone. I want peace for me people, for this land, for the woman I’m to wed in a week, and if O’Brien is foolish enough to bring himself within reach of that peace, then aye, I’ll end him, and I’ll nae lose sleep over it. But I’m nae huntin’ him for the satisfaction of it. I hunted that feelin’ out of meself thirteen years ago, because a man cannae rebuild a clan with one hand on a sword and the other in the ashes. I had to choose.”

“And if he forces the choice back on ye?”

Magnus’s jaw set. “Then I’ll make it again, same as I did the first time. But I’ll make it for them.” He nodded toward the Great Hall, toward the smoke and the stone and the sound of Elspeth’s laughter drifting faintly from somewhere within it, carried on the wind. “Nae for what he took, but for what I’ve built since.”

Duncan held his gaze for a long moment, then nodded once, the matter settled between them the way matters always had been—without excess words.

“I’ll see to the patrols meself,” he said. “Startin’ tonight.”

“Good.”

He pushed off the fence rail, took two steps toward the yard, and paused. “Magnus?”

“Aye.”

“If it is him.” Duncan’s voice now carried its usual ease. “If he’s truly comin’ back, I’ll stand beside ye same as I did the last time. Only this time, we willnae be three valleys away, learnin’ swordsmanship from a man who couldnae teach us fast enough to matter.”

Magnus looked at his cousin—he was the only family he had left in the world—and for once found that he had no ready answer.

“I ken it,” he said finally. “I’ve never doubted it.”

Duncan nodded and walked off toward the stables, already calling for the stable lads to ready fresh mounts for the western patrol. His voice carried easily across the yard with its flat, practical note, as though he had not just offered to stand between Magnus and a man who had once burned their entire world to the ground.

Magnus leaned against the fence a while longer, looking out over the land he had rebuilt stone by stone, field by field, thirteen years of labor standing between him and the ash O’Brien had left behind.

He thought of Elspeth’s laughter drifting out of the Great Hall. Of small MacKinnon hands tugging at her ribbons. Of a bundle of wildflowers left on a nightstand, and the way she had looked at him afterward, warm and startled and unguarded.

He had spent thirteen years convincing himself he needed nothing beyond what he could build and defend with his own two hands.

He was no longer certain that was true, and the timing of that particular discovery, with O’Brien’s name surfacing after thirteen years of silence, felt considerably less like fortune and considerably more like the sort of cruelty the world seemed determined to visit on him whenever he came close to wanting something.

He turned from the fence and made his way back toward the Great Hall, formulating in his mind the order he would give the guards at first light.

* * *

The sky had turned the color of a bruise by midafternoon, and Elspeth knew, even before Mrs. McAulay came bustling out of the kitchens wiping her hands on her apron, that the calm of the last few days had run its course.

“Storm’s comin’,” Mrs. McAulay announced, to no one and everyone. “Big one, by the look of the sky. Better get movin’.”

The courtyard, which had held its usual unhurried afternoon rhythm only minutes before, transformed within the space of a breath into a controlled chaos.

Magnus was already crossing toward the stables, calling instructions as he went, his voice carrying flat and clear over the rising wind. “Sheep to the lower barn. Horses first, then the milk cows. Duncan, the west shutters—they’re the ones that stick.”

“I ken which ones stick, Cousin. I’ve fixed them a dozen times.”

“Then fix them a thirteenth.”

Elspeth found herself swept into the current of it before she had properly decided to join. A stable lad thrust an armful of blankets at her without ceremony, clearly assuming any hands present were hands meant to work. She took them without complaint and looked around for someone who might tell her where they were needed.

“The east barn,” Magnus said, appearing at her shoulder with two coils of rope over one arm. “For the calves. They’ll want warmth more than the grown stock.”

“Aye.” She was moving before he had finished the sentence. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught what she thought was surprise crossing his face at how readily she had taken the direction.

The wind picked up as she crossed the yard, tugging at her skirts, carrying the first cold spatter of rain against her cheek. She reached the east barn and found three calves already huddled in the corner, wide-eyed and unsettled by the changing air. She set about laying the blankets over their backs.