Page 40 of Promised to the Cursed Laird

"Easy, my lady. That was a hard ride tae come off of standing straight."

She looked up into an unfamiliar face. He was young and very handsome in the open, easy way of a man who knew it and used it without much effort. His dark hair fell across his brow, a grin already forming before she'd even found her footing properly.

"Domhnall," he said, by way of introduction, still steadying her elbow a beat longer than required. "I've heard a great deal about ye this past week, my lady. None of it did ye proper justice, if ye'll forgive my saying so."

"Oh—"

"Ye may release her arm now, Domhnall."

Marcas's voice, close behind her, carried none of the easy warmth Domhnall's had. She turned, and found him crossing the yard toward them with a determined stride that had nothing to do with the ambush they'd just outrun.

Domhnall released her arm immediately, stepping back with his hands raised in the same easy, unbothered manner Lachlan favored, though there was rather more caution in his eyes now than there had been a moment before.

"Only helping the lady, laird. She near stumbled."

"I saw." Marcas came to stand beside her, close, one hand settling at the small of her back in a gesture that looked, to her eye, considerably less like concern for her balance and rather more like a man marking territory he had no actual claim to. "I'll see tae her from here."

"Aye, laird." Domhnall's grin had gone carefully neutral, though something in his eyes suggested he understood exactly what he'd just witnessed and was finding it enormously entertaining despite his better judgment.

He bowed briefly to Neilina "My lady" and withdrew toward the stable with a last glance back that made Marcas's jaw visibly tighten.

Neilina watched the whole exchange with rising, unexpected delight.

"Ye're angry," she said, once Domhnall was safely out of earshot.

"I'm nae angry."

"Ye're standing there with yer jaw set like a man chewing iron, and yer hand hasnae left my back since he touched my arm." She tipped her head, studying him properly now, something warm and mischievous stirring under the last of her fright from the road. "That looks a great deal like angry tae me, MacKinnon."

"There were archers in the wood not a quarter hour past," he said, clipped. "I'm nae in a humor tae discuss my warriors."

"Ye brought it up yerself. Ye told him ye'd see tae me from here," she said, "in a voice I've nae heard ye use since ye broke that man's jaw in Struan."

"Domhnall's harmless."

"Then why does yer hand look fit tae find his jaw next."

He said nothing to that, which she was rapidly learning was its own kind of answer where he was concerned, and she felt something unfamiliar and rather delicious uncurl in her chest. The realization was entirely new to her. She hadn’t known that she could provoke this reaction in him on purpose, or that she would want, quite badly, to do it again.

"We should go inside," he said instead, steering her toward the keep with his hand still at her back, "before this conversation becomes something I regret."

"Which conversation? The one about archers, or the one about Domhnall's hands on me."

"Neilina."

"Relax, laird. I'm only asking."

"Ye're enjoying this."

"I am," she admitted, and felt a genuine, startled laugh escape her. It was the first true lightness she'd felt since the arrow had split the air beside her."A great deal more than I expected tae, given the morning we've had."

He glanced down at her, and despite the tension still sitting visible in his shoulders, something in his eyes warmed briefly at the sound of her laugh. Then he caught himself and put the sternness back over it like a man closing a door he'd left open too long.

"Inside," he said again, though gentler now.

She went, still smiling, and didn't miss the way his hand stayed at her back the whole way through the yard, nor the way Domhnall, watching from the stable door, grinned outright at the sight of it.

The study fire had been built back up since the night before, and she noticed, gratefully, that whatever had closed over him at the sight of the embroidered kerchief seemed, for the moment, set aside beneath the more urgent business of arrows and unsafe roads.