Page 86 of The Laird's Masked Passion

She spent the morning avoiding him with such determination that even those who had no interest in domestic matters might have noticed she was always entering a room just as her husband left it, and leaving one just as his shadow darkened the threshold. If Colin noticed, he did not stop her.

That hurt most of all.

By afternoon, the castle had emptied itself toward the meadow as if the walls could no longer contain its need for relief. After smoke, blood, prison walls, and the ugly whisper of Munro’s name, the feast seemed less an indulgence than an act of defiance. The meadow lay beyond the lower slope, green from recent rain, bordered by rowan trees and heather, with the mountains rising dark and watchful in the distance.

Long boards had been set upon trestles. Cloths snapped in the breeze. There were roasted meats, trout laid with herbs, oatcakes stacked beneath linen, cheeses, honey, berries, and great pots of stew fragrant with barley, onion, and pepper. Smoke from cooking fires mingled with the sweeter scents of crushed grass and heather bloom. A fiddler tuned his instrument near a circle of young men already arguing over whose feet would disgrace the clan once music began.

Elspeth walked beside Colin because custom demanded it, and perhaps because the entire castle seemed to have arranged itself so that they could do nothing else.

He offered her his arm. She took it, because refusing before half the clan would have made her appear wounded, and she would rather have stepped into a bog than let anyone think Colin MacKenzie had the power to wound her.

“Ye are quiet,” he told her.

“How fortunate that one of us has achieved variety of emotion.”

His mouth moved almost imperceptibly. “Are ye angry?”

“Why should I be angry?”

“That wasnae an answer.”

“It was an invitation fer ye tae consider yer sins and select the most likely.”

“Only one?”

“Begin where ye feel strongest.”

He looked ahead, but she saw the brief shadow of amusement in his expression. She had wanted him to laugh, and because she wanted it, she resented him for nearly doing so.

As they stepped into the meadow, the clan turned toward them. The cheer that rose was not polished. It was not the delicate applause of halls where ladies praised one another’s sleeves while judging their fortunes. It was rough, warm, and full-bodied. Men lifted cups. Women smiled openly. Children shouted Colin’s name, then hers, though some mangled Lady Elspeth into something much less dignified. She found, to her own surprise, that the sound moved her.

These people had lost a man. They had seen smoke and danger. They knew an enemy waited beyond the hills. Yet here they were, determined to eat, sing, compete, and laugh as if joy itself were a shield hammered from stubborn Highland hearts.

Colin’s arm shifted beneath her hand. Only then did she realize she had tightened her grip.

“Dinnae look so pleased,” she murmured without looking at him. “It will make ye unbearable.”

“I am told I manage that without assistance.”

“A rare talent.”

They were greeted by older clanswomen who pressed food upon Elspeth as if thinness were a moral failing. A little girl with dark braids offered her a chain of daisies. Breac bowed with excessive gravity and declared the day would go down in history if their laird could pass three hours among his people without frightening the bread into staleness. Murdoch, less smiling but not unfriendly, informed Elspeth that there would be archery later and asked whether Frasers could shoot straight.

“Only when properly provoked,” she answered.

“I shall stand elsewhere, then.”

“That would be wise.”

Colin watched the exchange with that unreadable expression which made her want to shake him, kiss him, and strike him with a trencher in equal measure.

The games began soon after. There were contests of strength, which men approached with the solemnity of priests handling sacred relics, though the sacred relic in question was usually a large stone or an even larger log. Boys raced across the grass, falling over one another and rising muddied but triumphant. Women judged a baking contest with ferocity enough to settle borders. A group of young men competed at throwing knives at a painted board, while old men nearby explained loudly how much better it had been done in their youth.

Elspeth ought to have enjoyed herself without complication. Indeed, she tried.

She tasted honeyed berries. She admired a child’s carved wooden horse. She applauded when Breac won a wrestling match and laughed when his opponent insisted the grass betrayed him. Yet wherever she went, Colin’s presence followed. If she crossed toward the singers, she felt his gaze upon her. If a young man bowed too long while offering her a cup, Colin appeared beside her before the man finished speaking. If she stepped near the edge of the crowd, one of his guards shifted casually closer.

It seemed as though the man had marked the world around her and made it answer to him. Elspeth told herself she found this insulting. Her pulse refused to agree.