Page 92 of The Highland Laird’s Hellion Bride

“It’s reason enough.” Magnus crossed to the door and pulled it open, letting the noise of the yard back in. “Get the men sorted before supper. I daenae want a single unaccounted soul on this land by nightfall.”

He stepped back out into the light without waiting for the answer, and didn’t look up at Elspeth’s window as he crossed the yard.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Supper had been warm and loud and exactly what Elspeth needed, and now she couldn’t sleep.

She lay still for several minutes, listening to the castle settle around her. The distant drift of music from the hall where two of the musicians had started a slow reel that nobody had asked for. The creak of the floor above where Duncan was still moving around.

Beautiful sounds, indeed.

She watched the ceiling and counted the reasons she should stay in bed.

I need me strength tomorrow.

A bride-to-be shouldnae be seen wandering the castle.

I can think about when we were intimate.

Nay, nay, I shouldnae do that.

She got to four before she gave up and reached for her cloak.

The stone circle sat on the high ground above the castle, a short climb up a sheep track she’d found three weeks ago when she’d needed somewhere the walls couldn’t follow her. She knew the way well enough to manage without a candle, and the sky, when she pushed through the door in the west wall, stopped her where she stood.

No moon tonight.

Only stars, wall to wall, the kind of sky she’d read about in the poetry book she’d given Magnus, the kind of sky the poets had apparently been telling the truth about after all.

She stood with her cloak pulled tight and her head tipped back, and felt the cold come down against her face, clean and sharp, and thought that tomorrow she was getting married.

She climbed.

The track was steep enough that she had to watch her feet for the first stretch, the grass wet from yesterday’s rain, and by the time she reached the flat ground inside the circle, her breath plumed in the cold air. She found the broad stone she’d sat on before, brushed it with her sleeve, and settled.

The stars above Ben Cruachan were magnificent and indifferent and exactly right.

I cannae get enough of this view.

She’d read once, in a very dramatic poem Katherine had pressed into her hands the winter before, that a woman standing beneath the stars on the eve of her wedding ought to feel like the heroine of her own story.

At sixteen, Elspeth had believed that completely. She’d imagined something with more ceremony to it. A prince, possibly. A declaration. Someone with good hair arriving on horseback to announce that she was worth wanting.

Instead, she had a man who talked to his sword and kept a blackened cup like it was made of gold and had nearly upended an inkwell while reaching for her last night in his study, and her stomach had been turning over slow and warm ever since.

I daenae feel so much like a heroine right now.

Her lips curled into a smile.

She knew the poem by heart, had known it since she was fourteen and had spent a solid week copying it into her journal in different colors of ink. She said it quietly, to the dark, to the stones, to no one.

“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”

She stopped. Pressed her lips together. Thought about their intimacy in the study. Thought about Magnus’s hands on her waist this afternoon, the way he’d watched her face when the counting stopped, the way he’d let go the moment he noticed the room watching.

She said the next line.

“And if ever stars were kind, they were kind to those who stood beneath them and asked for nothing more than this.”