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Women hurried past with heavy baskets, children clinging to skirts or racing ahead in shrieking bursts of energy. Sheep dotted the surrounding hills, tufts of white against the green grasses. Beyond the blacksmith’s shop stretched the forest, dark and inviting, and farther still the stone towers of Keep Ross rose against the horizon. To the opposite side drifted the faint tang of salt air from the sea. Effie loved Tokavaig. Every noisy, vibrant, comforting part of it.
Across the way, two men stopped their work and glanced in her direction.
Which was why it was particularly humiliating to trip like a distracted fool and tumble off the edge of the path. She landed hard and gasped. Pain shot through her ankle and her elbow scraped against the rough earth.
“Of all the daft…!” She bit back a more colorful word and instead scolded herself. “Now how are ye getting home, ye goose?”
“Do ye require help?”
The deep voice sent a prickle of annoyance down her spine before she even looked up.
Gowan.
Of course it would be him.
“Nae,” she said stiffly, sitting upright and inspecting the blood welling on her elbow. She avoided testing her ankle, the throbbing already told her all she needed to ken.
“Then how do ye plan to get home?” he asked evenly.
Effie glared up at him. Tall. Broad. Entirely too solid. He stood like an immovable wall of calm practicality that she found endlessly irritating.
“I will walk.”
His arms crossed over his chest, muscles shifting beneath his tunic in a way she very pointedly ignored. “Ye cannae walk,” he said. “I will take ye to the healer.”
She pushed herself upright out of sheer stubbornness and immediately cried out as pain exploded through her ankle, sending her collapsing back into the dust.
“Cursed chickens and cows!” she snapped, refusing vulgarity even in misery.
Before she could protest further, the ground vanished. Gowan lifted her as if she weighed nothing at all.
Effie stiffened, outrage colliding with something far more unsettling, as he lifted her without warning. One arm braced beneath her knees, the other firm and unyielding at her back. He held her as though she weighed nothing at all.
The scent of leather and clean air clung to him, and his warmth surrounded her—steady, implacable, entirely too noticeable.
“People will see us,” she whispered fiercely, blinking against the sting of tears. Entirely from pain, she assured herself, nae humiliation.
He didnae falter. Didnae hesitate. Didnae so much as quicken his stride.
“Aye,” he said simply. “They will.” He glanced down at her, his expression as grave as if delivering a sermon.
“Sadly, I have nae cloak to drape over ye. Else they might assume I carried a corpse and grant ye privacy.”
Despite herself, a laugh escaped her. “I am nae dead.”
“Yet,” he replied, his tone dry. “Though if ye persist in leaping from paths like an untrained colt, the possibility remains.”
She sniffed. “Insufferable oaf.”
He didn’t respond. He merely continued walking, steady and unbothered by her indignation, as though carrying stubborn, injured women was a tiresome but unavoidable duty.
For the next while, Effie devoted every ounce of her considerable willpower to keeping her head upright, rather than surrendering to the dangerous temptation of resting it against his shoulder. Against the solid certainty of him.
Chapter Eighteen
Even after reaching Anne’s cottage, neither of them seemed eager to part. The small dwelling sat warm and welcoming beneath the late afternoon sky, its thatched roof catching the golden light while hens clucked and scratched about the yard as if they owned the place. The scent of damp earth and florals lingered in the air, mingling with the faint sweetness drifting from her doorway.
Camden lingered near the threshold, speaking of whatever came to mind simply to delay the moment of having to leave. He commented on the weather, the condition of her garden, the stubborn weeds along her fence. When he asked how many chickens she kept, both of them burst into laughter at once, the absurdity of his question dissolving the tension between them.
