Page 69 of The Highland Laird’s Hellion Bride

Magnus swung down first and was at her side before she’d worked out how to dismount without her legs betraying her, his hands finding her waist again to lift her down and set her on her feet.

She looked up to thank him and found the words caught somewhere behind her teeth.

His dark hair had come loose from whatever order it usually kept and clung to his forehead and temples, rain running in rivulets down the column of his throat and disappearing beneath the collar of a shirt gone transparent enough at the shoulders that it hid nothing of what lay beneath.

His leather coat hung open, forgotten, one side slipping off his shoulder. He hadn’t noticed, too busy checking the horses were settled, too unconcerned with his own state to spare it a thought.

Elspeth was not so unconcerned. She stared considerably longer than any strict standard of propriety would have permitted, warmth blooming somewhere beneath her ribs that was at odds with how thoroughly cold the rest of her currently was, and only recovered herself when he turned and caught her at it.

She did not look away fast enough to pretend otherwise.

He didn’t remark on it. Something in his face shifted instead, a stillness settling over him that hadn’t been there a moment before.

She swallowed, her throat suddenly tight.

“Thank ye for today,” she said, and was pleased that her voice came out steady despite everything currently working against it.

He stepped closer. Close enough that she caught the smell of rain on him, clean and cold, underneath it the same warmth she’d started cataloging without meaning to over these past days. Close enough that for one suspended moment, water dripping from both of them onto the stable floor, she was certain he meant to break the promise he’d made her not four days ago.

She did not step back.

He didn’t kiss her. Instead, he reached for her hand—the one not fisted in her ruined cloak—and turned it gently in his own, his thumb brushing once across her knuckles before he bent his head and pressed his lips to them, slow and deliberate, his eyes never leaving hers as he did it.

“Ye’re welcome, me Lady,” he murmured against her skin.

Then he straightened, released her hand, and was gone, crossing the yard toward the keep at a pace that suggested he trusted himself considerably less than his measured exit implied, disappearing through the door without a single glance back.

Elspeth stood alone in the stable yard, rain hammering the cobbles beyond the roofline, her cloak soaked through and her slippers ruined beyond any hope of saving, and found she could not move.

Her hand still burned. Not painfully. Not in any way she could have explained to Mrs. McAulay , or Becky, or anyone who might have asked what was wrong with her that she stood dripping in an empty yard staring at her own knuckles as though they’d done something remarkable.

But the mark of his mouth sat there regardless, warm against skin gone otherwise cold from the ride. She found herself curling her fingers inward, as though she might hold the feeling there a moment longer before the rain and the cold and the ordinary business of the day inevitably washed it away.

A stable boy hurried past her with an armful of dry blankets for the horses, glanced at her standing motionless in the downpour’s shelter, and paused.

“Ye alright, me Lady? Ye’ll catch yer death standing about soaked like that.”

“Aye.” She didn’t move. “I’m quite well.”

He didn’t look convinced, but he had horses to see to and didn’t press the matter, hurrying on toward the stalls.

Elspeth remained where she was a moment longer, listening to the rain drum steadily against the roof above her, thinking that a man who’d promised not to touch her had somehow found a way to leave her considerably more unsettled with a kiss to her hand than any number of stolen kisses to her mouth might have managed.

She also thought of the way he’d looked at her in that suspended moment before he’d bent his head.

She wasn’t certain how many more such margins either of them had left in them.

Chapter Twenty

The carriage came up the drive at a pace that suggested whoever was driving it had never once considered the weight it was hauling, wheels groaning under a load that had no business belonging to a single family making a short journey between two castles.

Magnus stood in the courtyard and watched it come, and felt, for reasons he couldn’t yet name, considerably less prepared for this than he had been for the fire two nights ago.

“That’s a great deal of carriage,” Duncan said from beside him.

“Aye.”

“For three people.”