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“That’s me cousin,” he said, sitting back with poor grace. “Let a man be proud of his own kin.”
“I’m nae stopping ye. I rather like it.” She watched the field erupt around Rory, men clapping him on the back. “Ye’re proud of all of them, arenae ye? Nae just yer kin.”
“They’re all me kin in the way that matters.” He nodded toward the weight-for-height post. “Watch this one. The young one’s turn.”
A lad of perhaps sixteen spat on his palms and sent the sandbag clean over the bar to a roar twice as loud as before.
Evander laughed heartily, and Freya found she liked the sound far better than she cared to admit.
“His faither tosses the caber. Yers throws sandbags over his head. Is there a man in this clan who isnae trying to prove something?”
“Nay,” Evander said, with no bitterness in it, only something like affection. “That’s rather the whole of it.”
The games gave way to something quieter, and Callum led forward a line of folk to be presented: weavers, a blacksmith’s wife, an older man who’d fought beside Evander’s father. Each one bowed low before Freya, and more than one pressed dry lips to the back of her hand before straightening, murmuring some blessing she didn’t understand, but smiling all the same. She clapped for each of them, genuinely delighted.
She didn’t notice at first the way Evander had gone rigid at her side.
“Ye’re crushing me fingers,” she murmured when the seventh or eighth hand found hers.
“I’m nae touching yer fingers.”
“Ye’re glaring hard enough to bruise them from three feet away.”
He said nothing, jaw set, watching a young farmhand linger a moment too long over her knuckles before Callum ushered him along.
“Evander.”
“I’m fine.”
“Ye are many things right now, but fine isnae one of them.”
Before he could answer, a low drumbeat rang out across the field, and Callum’s voice rose above the crowd. “The sword dance, for our new Lady!”
Four dancers stepped forward, crossed blades laid in a bright pattern on the grass, and the eldest of them turned to Freya with a solemn little bow.
“For Lady Freya,” he said, “and long life to her and the Laird.”
The crowd cheered.
Freya felt her face warm. “They’re dancing for me?”
“They’re dancing for the clan,” Evander murmured, his shoulders relaxing slightly. “Ye’re the next step toward becomin’ one.”
“That’s nae the same as being glared at for it.”
“I wasnae glaring at ye.”
“Nay,” she agreed, watching the dancers begin their careful, precise steps between the blades. “Ye were glaring at every man who touched me hand. Which is a very different thing, and ye ken it.”
He didn’t answer that, but he didn’t deny it either.
He ignored the smug little smile that flashed across Freya’s face. She bit back a laugh. He could imagine how it sounded; she hadn’t laughed much around him.
“Ye and yer people certainly have spirit.”
He chuckled. “Is that a compliment, wife?”
“I am capable of compliments,” she bit back, her eyes narrowing ever so slightly.
