Page 18 of Promised to the Wicked Laird

"I can see that, lass, thank ye fer pointing it out."

"Nandag?" Mairi's voice again, closer now, a hand audibly testing the latch. "Are ye decent? I'm coming in."

Nandag hauled him back out by the wrist, ignoring his muttered protest, and cast one wild look around the room. The bed. It was the bed or nothing.

"Under. Now," she hissed.

"I'm nae a hound, ye cannae just expect me tae hide in there."

"Fearchar."

He dropped, folding himself down with considerably less dignity than a man who'd led warriors into war. He wedged himself beneath the bed frame with a grunt that suggested it hadn't been built with a man his size in mind.

Nandag caught the trailing hem of a bedsheet, yanked it down to cover the gap, and had just enough time to smooth her own skirts and arrange her face into something resembling calm before the door swung open.

"There ye are." Mairi stepped in, eyes sweeping the room once, twice, like she suspected something was wrong. "Ye look flushed."

"I was in the gallery. It's warm."

"It's the middle of autumn."

"The stairs. I climbed them quickly."

Mairi's gaze drifted, slow and deliberate, toward the wardrobe, where one sleeve of Fearchar's discarded shirt had somehow ended up caught in the door, dangling out like a pale flag of surrender. Nandag's stomach dropped straight through the floor.

"Is that a man's shirt hanging out yer wardrobe?"

"It's a rag. Fer polishing."

"Fer polishing." Mairi crossed her arms, one eyebrow climbing toward her hairline in an expression Nandag had seen turned on stable boys caught stealing apples. "Ye polish things with fine linen now."

"I've taken up new habits."

From beneath the bed came the faint, unmistakable sound of someone trying very hard not to laugh and mostly failing, disguised badly as a cough.

Nandag's eyes went wide. She dropped instantly into a fit of coughing of her own, loud and thoroughly unconvincing, one hand pressed to her chest. "Dust. This room's full of it. I should have someone sent up to clean it."

"Nandag." Mairi's voice had gone flat and mocking. Nandag saw she was choosing, for reasons of her own, not to finish investigating a mystery she'd already half solved. "I only came to tell ye yer faither wants ye at the noon meal. He's asked Cook tae prepare something proper, seeing as last night's feast went so poorly. That's all. I'll leave ye tae yer... dusting."

"Thank ye, Mairi."

Mairi turned for the door, then paused halfway through it, glancing back over her shoulder with the ghost of a smile tugging at her mouth. "Fer what it's worth, whatever ye're daeing in here. I hope it's worth the coughing fit."

The door shut behind her.

Nandag stood frozen for the length of three full breaths, listening to Mairi's footsteps recede down the corridor, before she dropped to her knees and lifted the sheet.

Fearchar lay wedged beneath the bed frame at an angle that could not possibly have been comfortable, one arm bent awkwardly behind his head, the other pinned against his side, his expression somewhere between long-suffering and thoroughly entertained.

"Ye can come out now."

"Can I? Or is there another wardrobe I should be acquainting meself with first."

"Out. Now. Before I change me mind and leave ye there till supper."

He hauled himself out from under the bed frame with considerably more grace than he'd managed getting in, unfolding to his full height and rolling one shoulder with a wince. "Remind me nae tae let ye hide me anywhere again. I have a bruise coming up on me ribs that I dinnae get from Duncan's blade."

"Ye were the one who couldnae fit in a simple wardrobe."