Page 78 of A Constant Blaze

“I’m not wedded to that idea. We could go anywhere.”

He reached out, his fingers covering hers on the reins. She turned her hand, gripping, before slowly turning to meet his gaze. His eyes were intense and excitingly warm.

“It isn’t raining,” he observed. “But I could take you into those trees. If you wished.”

Blatantly, Mairead lifted their joined hands to her lips. “I do wish,” she admitted, just a little shakily.

Chapter Nineteen

“This is whatmy homecoming should have been,” Malcolm said as their horses walked together up the Peffery river bank. “If I had been capable of thought, I would have known it the first time.”

Halla gained the top and pulled up beside him as Donald and most of the men poured over the river behind them. “IfI’dbeen capable of thought, I would have known to meet in private first.” She smiled faintly. “Where we first met, perhaps, by the waterfall.”

“So that you could shoot me?”

“Just to remind you who truly rules Ross.”

“I used to dream of coming home,” Malcolm said. “Riding up to the gates of Brecka, with Donald on one side of me and Adam on the other, even if I couldn’t see their faces. And then you would be there, and our daughter, to greet us.”

“This is close,” Halla said. “Send a man to Adam at Tirebeck. He’ll come and bring Gormflaith back.”

“Or I could go and fetch them. See where our son lives with his strange, brave lady. Donald and I had time at Roxburgh. Adam is more…enigmatic.”

“I’m afraid he will always seem like that.”

“Even to you?”

“Yes, even though I watched him struggle to become what he is. But he is always worth every moment you spend with him. Go to Tirebeck.”

“Come with me.”

Halla hesitated. She had a better plan. “No. Make this time for Adam and Gormflaith. And then bring them home. We’ll plan a feast when you do. Donald and I will go to Brecka and wait for you.”

He considered her. She wondered if he were doubting her, gauging her motivation. She hadn’t yet learned to read his face when he chose to close it.

“One night in Tirebeck,” he said at last. “And then we’ll ride for Brecka together.”

“Then go.” She held out her hand, and he took it and kissed it, still watching her face. Her fingers clung to his lips. How ridiculous that she’d miss him for these few days. Until very recently, there had been twenty years and so many more miles between them.

He lowered her hand but didn’t at once release it. His eyes, warm and serious, continued to hold hers, causing her heart to beat and beat. There had been no repeat of their one night of intimacy in the wood, and now she could think of little else.

“We are more than we were before,” he said softly. “And I think…what we have between us could be more, too.”

“Perhaps,” she said huskily because emotion choked her and wouldn’t let her say more. Her fingers twisted, clasping his. “You will come home.”

It wasn’t a question. But he answered anyway. “I will come home.”

And then her hand was free and cold, and he was riding away from her again. Two days, no more, and they would be together at Brecka at last.

Or perhaps there was a better way.

*

Tirebeck, like somuch of Ross, was full of ghosts for Malcolm. People who seemed half-familiar ran in from the fields and from the harbor, just to trot beside his horse. Children peeped from doorways and from behind their mother’s skirts as if they couldn’t quite believe that Malcolm MacHeth, their earl, was real.

Rhuadri of Tirebeck had been his friend and follower. He’d survived all the battles of the war with the King of Scots and then, while Malcolm was captive in Roxburgh, had burned his hall down around himself. Because his unfaithful wife had left him for one of the king’s soldiers, taking their daughter with her. It was this girl, Rhuadri’s daughter, now grown to womanhood, Malcolm’s daughter-in-law, who welcomed him back to Tirebeck. She didn’t banish the ghosts, but somehow, she made them friendlier.

His son, Adam, however, emerging from the hall behind her in a rough leather tunic, looking wild and unfocused, was, surprisingly, less than welcoming.

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