Page 37

Angus had finally succumbed to exhaustion, sprawled asleep across Douglas’s broad shoulder, his small mouth open as the old captain carried him up toward the lower courtyard gate.

Brodie stood near the edge of the light, his arms crossed over his chest, his broad shoulders braced against the cold. His dark eyes searched the crowd, cutting through the swirling smoke and the shadows of dancing bodies, until he found her.

Sheona stood slightly apart from the wild celebration, near the roots of an ancient rowan tree whose leaves had turned to copper. The amber glow of the bonfire bathed her profile in warm light, but she took no part in the dancing. She was motionless, her fingers clutching the dark wool of her cloak tight around her chest as she watched the roaring flames in complete silence.

Brodie stepped away from the crowd. His heavy leather boots made no sound against the damp earth as he approached her, closing the distance between them until he stood at her shoulder. He did not speak. He stood beside her, his tall, broad frame shielding her from the biting wind blowing down off the ridge.

The heat of the bonfire washed over them, bringing with it the crackle of snapping pine and the smell of sweet resin. Up close, Brodie noticed the subtle shift in her expression. The warm, luminous joy she had worn all afternoon—the bright laughter that had charmed the elders and drawn the children to her feet—had completely vanished.

Her gaze was fixed on the shifting heart of the blaze, growing darker and darker with every passing second. Her dark lashes cast long shadows across her pale cheeks, and the rise and fall of her chest was shallow, constrained by a deep, invisible weight.

“Is there somethin’ wrong?” Brodie asked, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that barely carried over the screech of the fiddles.

Sheona did not flinch at his voice. She remained still for a long moment, watching a shower of bright embers burst into the night sky before her shoulders dropped half an inch.

“Me brother, he would have loved this fair,” she whispered. Her voice was thin, fragile as dry leaves, lacking the sharp, spirited edge she usually turned against him.

Brodie’s jaw tightened. The young MacFaris heir who had perished in the bloody siege that had brought down her father’s house, his body lost somewhere out there.

She slowly turned her head to face him.

The firelight caught the vibrant, startling blue of her eyes, making the tears pooling in them shine like liquid glass. A single drop slipped free, tracing a slow path down her cheek, but she made no move to brush it away.

“There was never a funeral,” she whispered, her voice trembling slightly as she held his gaze. “Nay prayers spoken over his bones. Nay cairn built on the hillside. There is nowhere for me to mourn him.”

The raw grief in her words struck Brodie straight in the chest, heavy and unyielding as an iron fist. He had seen men die on the battlefield and had buried his own kin beneath cold, unyielding granite, but the quiet, hollow agony in her blue eyes cut deeper than any blade he had ever faced.

Brodie held her gaze, refusing to look away from her pain. He didn’t offer empty words of comfort—he was a warrior, not a priest, and he knew words were useless against the weight of true loss. Instead, he gave her a single, firm nod. A silent, unyielding acknowledgment of her grief, letting her know that he heard her, that he understood the dark shadow she carried.

Sheona stared up at him, her lips parting. As she looked into his face, something between them shifted. The defensive wall she always kept raised around him—the sharp, prickling pride of a captive noblewoman—crumbled entirely. In its place was an absolute, unguarded trust. She looked at him not as a dangerous warlord or a captor, but as the one solid, unshakeable pillar keeping her from sinking into the dark.

Brodie’s pulse hammered against his throat. Looking down into those clear blue eyes, he realized the profound, terrifying trust shining in them made him worry far more than the fierce, burning desire he felt for her.

Desire was simple. Desire was a hot, wild flame he could master or indulge—the thought of her flushed skin beneath his fingertips, the memory of her soft lips parted under his, the fragrance of her dark hair that had haunted his dreams for three endless nights. He could fight desire. He could set his teeth and endure the ache in his blood.

But trust? Trust was a dangerous, deadly thing.

She shouldn’t trust me.

She was looking at him as if he were a protector, a sanctuary in the storm, forgetting what the rest of the glen knew all too well. He was the Laird of MacKinley. He was the man whose hands were stained with blood and iron, the man whose very bloodline was whispered about in frightened tones over hearth fires.

He was the Cursed one.

A cold breeze swept across the green, whipping a stray lock of dark hair across her face. Brodie reached out, his broad, calloused hand moving before his mind could stop it. His thumb gently brushed the cold tear from her cheekbone, his skin rough against her silk-soft skin.

She leaned slightly into his touch—a tiny, almost imperceptible gesture that made his heart hit his ribs like a battering ram.

“Come,” Brodie rumbled softly, his voice dropping into a dark, protective rasp as he pulled his heavy, fur-lined cloak from his shoulders and draped it around her, wrapping her tight against the cold. “The night grows late, Sheona. Let me walk ye back to the keep.”

The morning air carried the sharp, lingering smell of last night’s ash, but inside the solar, the world was quiet. Sheona sat by the tall stone archway, pulling a horn comb through her damp, dark hair while pale autumn sunlight bled across the oak floorboards.

Behind her, Mairi bent over the washbasin, wringing out the hem of Sheona’s heavy woolen kirtle. The water sloshed in the copper tub, rhythmically splashing against its high sides.

“They say the shepherd spent half the night lookin’ for his prize ram,” Mairi chuckled, her gray braids swinging over her shoulders as she worked. “Found the beast fast asleep behind the ale barrels, full to the burst on sour apples!”

Sheona let out a soft laugh, resting the comb in her lap. “He looked ready to lock the pen with three iron padlocks when Angus and I left him. The lad was convinced the sheep could understand every word he said.”

“Oh, Master Angus was runnin’ wilder than a red deer,” Mairi said, wiping her wet hands against her apron as she came to stand behind the chair. She took the comb from Sheona’s fingers, her hands practiced and gentle as she gathered the long locks into a neat braid. “Cook told me he fell asleep right atop Captain Douglas’s shoulder, holdin’ onto a wooden whistle.”