Page 93 of The Laird's Masked Passion

It should have been a happy scene. Itwashappy. Yet Colin’s attention had gone beyond her, to the edge of the meadow where his councilmen stood stiff and pale.

Elspeth followed his gaze. “What did they say?”

His eyes returned to her too quickly. “Naething ye need hear.”

“That is a very lordly way of saying they said something I absolutely need tae hear.”

“Elspeth.”

The warning in her name might have frightened a more obedient woman. She stepped closer instead.

“Tell me.”

His jaw worked once. “Nay.”

“Husband,” she said sweetly, and saw the word strike him as she had intended, “I won the right tae ask anything.”

“Aye. And I answered.”

“Poorly,” she supplied.

For a moment, something warm flickered between them. It was not ease, exactly, for they were not made for ease. But, it was something like recognition of his darkness, her defiance, and the strange thread that had begun to draw between them no matter how sharply each tried to cut it.

Then Colin sighed in a small surrender disguised as impatience.

“They spoke of ye poorly.”

The warmth vanished.

Elspeth felt herself go very still. “How poorly?”

“Poorly enough.”

The meadow seemed to tilt by a fraction. She looked again toward the men, but they had turned away, their shoulders rigid.

It had been foolish to think one thrown dagger could make her belong. She was foolish to be moved by cheers, by children calling her name, by old women pressing food into her hands. She was still the bought bride, still the Fraser girl brought to them through bargain, still an intrusion dressed in fine cloth and expected to learn gratitude for her cage.

Elspeth swallowed. “I didnae need ye tae protect me from words.”

“Aye,” he agreed quietly. “Ye didnae. But I needed them tae understand I would.”

The air between them changed. It was absurd that such words should affect her more dangerously than his hands had done. His hands made her body tremble. This… this reached some unguarded place in her.

She looked away first, because gratitude felt far too near tenderness, and tenderness toward Colin MacKenzie was a cliff one did not approach without worry.

“Then I shall ask me true question,” she continued.

His expression shuttered again, but not before she saw the slight quickening of interest.

“Ye have already asked one.”

“I won against a man who cheated himself. I believe I am owed a correction.”

“Convenient.” The faintest smile touched his mouth. “Ask, then.”

Elspeth’s courage wavered. It was one thing to challenge him before the clan with blades in hand. It was another to stand beneath the rowan trees, with music and sunlight around them, and lay bare the small hurt she had carried since morning like a stone beneath the tongue.

She glanced toward the dancers, toward Skye laughing with two young women near the tables and toward the children arguing over whether her throw had been luck or divine intervention.