Page 93 of The Highland Laird’s Hellion Bride

That one wasn’t in the poem. She’d added it herself, at fifteen, in green ink, because the original hadn’t gone far enough.

She pulled her knees to her chest and looked up and thought about the stone circle and the fact that she hadn’t once, not in the last week, thought about princes.

She’d thought about a man repairing a henhouse door in the rain because he didn’t like leaks. She’d thought about the way he’d said it’s nae nothin’ about a cup he’d never once explained, in a voice that had given away everything he’d meant to keep to himself.

She’d thought about tomorrow, and she’d felt her chest lighten rather than tighten, and she wasn’t sure exactly when that had happened, but it had.

She tipped her head back and found the brightest star above the eastern hill and said quietly, “I believe I’m going to be all right.”

The wind moved through the standing stones, and she smiled at herself for saying it out loud.

A sound came from behind her. Low, soft, a boot heel finding rock rather than grass.

She turned.

A man stepped out of the dark at the edge of the circle, where the shadow of the far hill reached longest. He was broad and dressed in rough dark wool with no clan colors she could see in the starlight. He moved with so much ease.

He stopped three yards from her.

Elspeth did not stand. She pressed her feet flat to the ground and sat very straight and said nothing, because the only sounds available to her right now were wrong ones and she could feel that clearly.

The man looked at her the way a man looked at something he had expected to find.

“Lady Elspeth,” he said. “A pleasure to finally meet ye.”

* * *

Morag had ribbons in her beard.

Magnus noticed this first because Morag was standing in the middle of the Great Hall where no goat had any business standing, and second because someone had tied three of them—green, white, and a yellow one that matched the flowers Mrs. McAulay had won out of Katherine—into the coarse fur beneath her chin with what appeared to be genuine effort.

He looked at the goat. The goat looked at him.

“Nay,” he said, and pointed at the door.

Morag ate the yellow ribbon and walked toward the kitchens instead.

The hall was unrecognizable. Every surface Mrs. McAulay could reach held flowers, candles, or a village woman arranging one or both, and three of them were arguing pleasantly about the height of the centerpiece while a fourth added more heather over their objections.

The musicians had arrived before dawn and were presently debating something fierce near the hearth, one of them tapping the rhythm of his point on the flagstones with his boot heel. Two boys chased each other between the table legs and were collected and redirected by passing adults without anyone breaking their stride.

From the far end of the hall came Katherine’s voice. “Mrs. McAulay , I am nae sayin’ the heather isnae beautiful. I’m sayin’ it’s below the roses.”

“The heather,” Mrs. McAulay said, “has been at Ben Cruachan handfastings since before yer mother was born, Lady MacDougal, and it willnae be put below anythin’.”

“The roses are taller.”

“Then the roses can stand straighter.”

“They’re flowers, Mrs. McAulay , they cannae stand.”

“They can try.”

Magnus turned away before either of them could catch him watching and stepped back into the corridor, where Duncan and Liam had taken up residence at the small table outside the solar with two cups and a settled air that suggested they’d been there since before the goat incident.

Duncan looked up. “How’s the hall?”

“Mrs. McAulay and Katherine are debatin’ flowers.”