Page 25 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander

“Send the letter,” he said.

She blinked. Her hands went completely still against the paper. It was the first time in five days he had seen her surprised by him, and the smallness of it, the brief, sudden parting of her lips and the quick expansion of her dark eyes, did something entirely unhelpful to his chest.

“I am nae stoppin’ ye,” he said. He took a step backward, straightening his shoulders as he turned toward the door. “But ye’ve two days left on our agreement. Send yer letter. And thencome to the celebration ye planned and remember that whatever ye decide, these people deserve one good evenin’.”

He turned and hauled the heavy timber door open, stepping out into the drafty corridor before she could find the response she was already reaching for.

* * *

His people had not sounded like this since before the fire.

Sebastian stood near the stone entrance, his shoulder propped against the masonry, a horn cup of whisky held loosely in his right hand. He watched his people, his and hers both, mixed across the long tables, MacGregor tartan overlapping MacLaren wool.

The initial, stiff caution softened into the loud, competitive noise of two clans realizing they shared the same names and the same complaints. He felt something in his chest that he could not quite identify. Not happiness. Not quite. Something more cautious than that. The awareness of something good that was still very frail.

The music helped. A MacLaren fiddler had found two MacGregor pipers near the hearth, and the three of them had apparently decided that their respective repertoires were more complementary than competitive.

The sound they were making was filling every corner, bouncing off the ceiling, getting into the blood whether you intended it to or not.

“Ye look furious,” Hamish said, dropping his weight against the wall beside him.

“I am fine.”

“Aye.” Hamish lifted his own horn cup, taking a slow sip without breaking his gaze from the crowd. “Same thing with ye.”

Sebastian looked across the Hall.

Alba was at the far end, near the second long table, and the distinct quality of the problem became instantly clear. She was wearing the green dress. He had seen her in it before. It was the same dress—the same heavy silk, with the same square cut across the collarbone.

But the high candlelight from the iron chandeliers was doing something to it tonight that it had not done in the dim corridors or the frozen courtyard. It moved with her; the fabric was shifting from dark moss to bright emerald. It caught the light along the curves of her waist and the small of her back, beckoning his gaze back to her time and time again.

Her dark curls were loose around her shoulders, bouncing as her head moved. She was laughing at something one of his men had said, her head tilted back, one hand rising to touch the bare skinat her throat—completely unguarded in a way she rarely was when he was nearby.

The sound of her laugh reached him across the roaring Hall. He felt it like a cold draft at the base of his neck.

The man beside her, a MacGregor smith by the size of his shoulders, said something else, smiling broadly. As he spoke, his hand came out and rested briefly, familiarly, on Alba’s forearm to draw her attention.

Sebastian was moving before the thought had fully formed in his mind. He covered the length of the Hall in a straight, unbroken line, his size clearing a path through the servants without him having to glance at them, and stopped beside Alba.

The young smith saw Sebastian’s clenched jaw and the dark look in his eyes and immediately stepped back into the crowd. Sebastian paid him no particular attention; he merely acknowledged the fact of his presence, which seemed to be enough.

Alba looked up at him. Her expression shifted from surprise to instant recognition, then to something much more complicated and tense—all within a single breath.

“Dance with me,” Sebastian said.

She blinked once, her hand dropping from her throat. “That sounded remarkably like a command.”

“Aye.”

“And if I refuse?”

“I willnae ask again.”

Her eyes narrowed, the warmth of her previous laughter vanishing into an instant spark of resistance. She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could finish deciding what she intended to say, he put his large hand flat against the curve of her waist and moved her toward the center of the room.

She followed, her silk skirt swirling against his boots, which he took as consent.

The music shifted as they reached the floor; the fiddle started playing a slow, deep, circular melody that the pipes followed, transforming the lively reel into a heavier, rhythmic tune. The other dancers made space without being asked, moving toward the edges.