Page 81 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander

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Victory tasted mostly like blood and exhaustion by the time they rode back through Dunalasdair’s Gates near dawn. The sky was still a bruised gray, rain finally thinning to a fine mist that clung to everything it touched; hair, cloaks, the flanks of the exhausted horses picking their way through the last stretch of mud toward the gatehouse.

Margaret and Isobel were already waiting in the courtyard, blankets bundled in their arms, a pair of healers hurrying out from the keep behind them with baskets of linen and salve. Torches guttered along the walls, half-drowned by the damp, throwing more smoke than light across the churned mud of the yard. Somewhere behind them, a dog barked twice, sharp and anxious, before a stable boy hushed it.

The moment the gates swung wide enough to show the riders coming through, Margaret’s hand flew to her mouth.

“Fergus!” She was moving before anyone could stop her, skirts hiked clear of the mud, and she reached him just as he swung down from his saddle, throwing both arms around his neck hard enough to nearly topple both of them off.

He caught her against him, one hand cradling the back of her head, his face pressed into her hair like he meant to stay there a while and had no intention of being rushed out of it.

“I am whole,” he murmured against her ear, voice rough. “I am whole, lass.”

“Ye’d better be, ye great fool, ridin’ off into the dark without so much as a proper goodbye.”

“There wasnae time for a proper goodbye.”

“There’s always time for a proper goodbye.” She pulled back just far enough to look at him, eyes wet, hands still fisted in his tunic.“Ye send word next time. Ye hear me? A note, a boy on a fast horse, anythin’.”

“Aye. I hear ye.”

“Ye’re only sayin’ that to end the argument.”

“I am sayin’ it because it’s true, and because ye look about to weep again if I argue further, and I have had enough weepin’ women for one night to last me a year.”

Margaret let out a wet, indignant laugh and swatted his shoulder before finally letting go of him, although her hand stayed against his chest a moment longer, as if she needed the proof of his heartbeat beneath her palm before she could fully believe it.

Then her gaze found Alba, still on horseback, mud-splattered and bruised and swaying slightly. Margaret crossed the yard in four sharp strides, reaching up to seize Alba’s arm the moment she’d swung down from the saddle, boots sinking into the mud.

“Ye stubborn woman.” Margaret’s voice cracked, more furious than relieved, or perhaps entirely both at once. “Ye rode into battle.”

Alba laughed, a short, shaky sound that pulled at a bruise along her ribs she had not noticed until that exact moment. “Apparently, I did.”

“Ye could have died. Ye could have…” Margaret’s grip tightened on her arm, and then, without any further warning, she hauled Alba into an embrace fierce enough to drive the air from both their lungs. “Daenae ever do that to me again.”

“I make nay promises.”

“Alba.”

“I make nay promises I daenae intend to keep, Margaret. Ye ken that about me by now, surely.”

Margaret pulled back, swiping roughly at her own eyes with the heel of her hand, half a laugh breaking loose despite the tears still standing in them. “Aye. I do. Doesnae mean I have to like it one bit.”

“Ye daenae have to like it. Ye only have to forgive me for it, eventually.”

“Give me a week at least before I manage that.”

Nearby, Isobel had reached Alasdair with rather more composure than Margaret had managed, though her hands shook faintly as she took his face between them, inspecting the shallow cut along his cheekbone.

“Ye’ll want that stitched,” she said, voice steady even as her thumb brushed just beneath the wound, gentle enough to belie the briskness of her tone.

“It’s naught but a scratch.”

“It’s naught but a scratch that will scar if left untended, and I will nae have ye lookin’ more roguish than ye already do, else I will spend the rest of me days fendin’ off every lass in the glen.”

“Would that trouble ye?”

“Immensely. Now hold still.” She pressed a kiss to the uninjured side of his jaw before he could argue further, brief and certain. Then she allowed the healer forward to see to the injury properly, though she kept one hand resting against his shoulder the entire time, as if letting go entirely was still one step further than she could manage yet.