Page 51 of Promised to the Cursed Laird

"For a walk," Marcas said, already through the door, Lachlan's laughter following him down the corridor, "before ye talk me intae saying something I'll regret."

He walked fast, out through the inner ward, needing the cold morning air to clear the unsettled heat still sitting in his chest since last night's rock and this morning's paddock both. The memory of her mouth against his under a sky full of stars made his mind swirl with desire.

Lachlan's right, damn him.

Marcas crossed the yard with no destination in mind, needing only to put one foot in front of the other and give his thoughts somewhere to go.

He had spent fifteen years knowing precisely what was required of him. A decision. A command. A course of action.

Neilina Chisholm had somehow made all three considerably less certain.

He exhaled sharply and kept walking.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Marcas was still chewing on his thoughts, boots eating up the distance across the inner ward with no clear destination, when something caught his attention towards the open stable and something in him went instinctively wary before his mind had even caught up to why.

Neilina. She was inside, moving between the stalls with quick, purposeful steps, gathering something off the tack wall.

She's saddling a horse.

Every old instinct fired at once. It was the same cold, precise alertness that had gripped him on the road two mornings past, except this time the enemy wasn't an archer in the brush.

It was worse. It was her, slipping away again, the way she'd slipped through a window at MacRath's, the way she'd slipped out of Struan's inn into a dark street with a drunk man waiting.

He was through the doors in an instant.

"Ye're nae riding out alone," he said, low, hard, already scanning the stalls for which horse she meant to take. "Nae after the ambush. I dinnae care how much ye⁠—"

"I'm nae running away, MacKinnon."

She said it without turning fully around, amusement threaded plainly through her voice, and he stopped short, the readiness draining out of him slower than it had risen.

"What are ye doing, then." He heard how rough it came out and didn't fully manage to soften it.

"Fetching tack." She held up a small saddle in one hand, a coil of leading rein in the other, and gave him a look rife with the dry patience of a woman explaining something to a man who ought to have worked it out for himself. "For the children. I mean tae keep at it. Did ye think I'd taken up horse thievery as a hobby between escapes."

He felt the heat climb up the back of his neck, equal parts embarrassment and relief, though mostly it felt like irritation.

"I saw ye moving fast and reaching for a saddle," he said. "Forgive me for assuming the worst, given the week we've had."

"Forgiven." She hefted the small saddle onto her hip, entirely unbothered, and reached past him for a second coil of rein hanging just behind his shoulder, close enough that he caught the scent of hay and horse and something underneath it that was only her. "Though I'll note ye came through those doors like a man expecting a swordfight. I'm flattered ye thinks escaping ye takes that much effort."

"It took considerable effort at MacRath's."

"MacRath's had a locked gate and men who'd have run me down. Ye've an open stable and a laird who'd rather chase me across half the Highlands than admit he only came in here because he saw me and panicked." She said it lightly, testing, watching him from under her lashes to see how far the barb would land.

It landed precisely as far as she'd intended.

"I didnae panic."

"Ye came through that door like the building was on fire."

"I came through that door," he said, "because the last few surprises involving ye have included an ambush, a locked storeroom, and a stranger's hand on yer arm. I'll grant ye it's made me somewhat quick tae assume the worst."

Her face softened at that, the teasing easing back a fraction, and she looked at him a moment longer.

"Fair," she said, quieter. "I'll try tae be less alarming in future."