Page 25 of Promised to the Cursed Laird

"Aye," he said, quietly. "It is."

He didn't press her. She'd braced for some version of the wickedness from the night before, some remark about her hair or her flushed face or the linen at her palm that he'd tied by firelight with his mouth an inch from hers not eight hours past. Ir didn't come.

He rose, and gathered his sword belt, and said nothing at all about the fact that she wouldn't look at him, and something in her was furious about that too, unreasonably, because she'd wanted him to leave her alone, and now that he had, she found she didn't much care for it.

"I'll see tae the horses," he said. "Ye've a quarter hour."

She nodded at the shutter, and heard the door close, and let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding, and it felt like loss instead of relief.

The yard was cold and bright when she came down, the sky a pale gold thing before it properly became morning, and Marcas stood by the horses with a broad, weathered man she hadn't seen the night before. He was dark-bearded, built like a doorframe, with the easy stance of someone who'd spent a great deal of his life standing next to Marcas MacKinnon.

The man's eyes found her before Marcas's did, and his face was immediately and unforgivably delighted.

"Well," he said, to Marcas, not lowering his voice in the slightest. "There she is. I was starting tae think ye'd invented her."

"Lachlan." Marcas didn't look up from the girth strap he was tightening. "Dinnae."

"I havenae said a word."

"Ye're about tae."

Lachlan MacRae turned his attention fully on Neilina, and she had the distinct sense of being assessed by a man who had known Marcas long enough to read every single thing his laird wasn't saying and was thoroughly enjoying the reading.

"My lady." He inclined his head, entirely too solemn for the look in his eyes. "Lachlan MacRae. I've had the misfortune of soldiering beside this man for the better part of fifteen years, which qualifies me tae tell ye that ye look —" he paused, deliberate, cataloguing her face with a slow, wicked thoroughness that made her want the ground to open beneath her, "— verra well rested, for a lass who spent the night in a room with one bed."

Heat flooded up her throat so fast she felt dizzy with it.

"I slept fine," she said, and heard how flat and unconvincing it came out, and hated it.

"Aye. I imagine ye did, eventually." Lachlan's grin widened, entirely unrepentant, sliding a glance toward Marcas that was somehow both a question and a conclusion already reached. "Ye're looking verra pleased with yerself this morning too, laird. I dinnae think I've seen ye smile before breakfast in—actually, I dinnae think I've seen ye smile before breakfast at all."

"I'm nae smiling."

"Ye're doing something with yer face that's new tae me, and I've known ye since we were boys stealing apples off my mother's tree, so I'll credit myself a fair judge of it." Lachlan looked between them again, delighted, merciless. "Ye've got yer hands full there, Marcas. I can see that from here."

"Lachlan."

"I'm simply observing⁠—"

"Ye're simply about tae be walking tae MacKinnon land instead of riding it," Marcas said, not raising his voice, but there was something in the set of his jaw now that made even Lachlan's grin ease back a fraction, "if ye dinnae find something useful tae do with yer mouth in the next five seconds."

"Fair enough." Lachlan held both hands up in mock surrender, and swung up onto his own horse with the unhurried ease of a man entirely unbothered by the threat. "I'll say naething further." A beat. "Except tae welcome ye properly tae the clan, my lady. It's rare Marcas brings anything home from a raid worth keeping."

"Lachlan."

"Riding, laird. I'm riding." He was already turning his horse, still grinning, and Neilina caught, in the half second before he moved fully away, Marcas's eyes cutting toward her. His expression was neither apologetic, nor embarrassed on her behalf, it was something else instead, something quiet and pleased that he was making very little effort to hide.

He's enjoying this, she realized, mortification giving way, briefly, to outrage. He's enjoying that I'm standing here the color of a Chisholm banner while his friend interrogates my night, and he's nae going tae lift a single finger tae make it easier for me.

"Ye could have stopped him sooner," she said, low, as he came to lift her onto her own horse.

"I could have." His hands settled at her waist, businesslike and entirely too warm through the wool of her gown, and he looked up at her with the satisfaction of a man who had decided honesty cost him nothing this morning. "I didnae want tae."

"Ye're insufferable."

"Aye." He set her in the saddle, and did not immediately step back, and the look he gave her then had nothing businesslike in it at all. "Ye've mentioned."

She held his eyes for one long, unsteady moment, heat still climbing her throat, the memory of his mouth against hers sitting far too close beneath the surface of every proper, composed thing she was trying to be this morning, and thought, with a kind of despair she hadn't expected to feel at seven in the morning on a cold Highland road, this is going tae be a verra long ride tae yer land, MacKinnon.