Page 30
He caught himself wondering what it would take to make those eyes go soft for him.
It infuriated him more than he cared to admit. He had a plan. He and Callum had a plan. But did that mean he couldn’t enjoy himself?
No, it didn’t.
Evander could tell Freya’s opinion was already changing, even if only slightly. She had stopped clutching her cup and was tapping her foot in time with the fiddle.
Her arm brushed against his as she shifted, and she jerked away, a faint flush spreading across her face. “Stop looking so smug.”
“This is me face, wife.”
She huffed. “Well, yer face is naturally smug, then.”
Evander couldn’t help it. He laughed.
11
The fires had been built up twice already, and still his men found reasons to feed them a third time, as if the flames themselves needed convincing that this was a night worth burning bright for.
Evander sat at the center of it all with his wife beside him, and he had never in his life felt less like celebrating.
It should have pleased him. That was the maddening part. His people—God help him, he still tripped over the words—had built her a feast out of borrowed trestles and whatever the hunters had brought down that morning, and they were doing it gladly.
They deserved this. He’d told himself so three times already.
And yet…
The caber toss had gone well enough. He’d watched with something like pride as young Rab put a log through the air that any MacArthur man twice his age would have envied. Freya had leaned close to ask what in God’s name they were meant to be proving by throwing a tree, and he’d found himself explaining it more patiently than he explained anything to anyone.
That alone should have told him something was wrong with him.
Then the sword dance had started.
Four of his best men, blades crossed on the ground, feet flying between them quick as thought. Callum had stood and announced loudly, grinning like the fool he was, that the dancers dedicated the steps to their new Lady, and every man in the circle had turned to look at her when he said it.
Freya had laughed and clapped, delighted, the firelight catching gold in her hair, and something ugly and unfamiliar had coiled in Evander’s chest.
He did not like the way the men looked at her.
He was distantly aware that this was unreasonable. They were his men. They were happy for him, or happy for themselves, or simply happy to be somewhere they could build a fire without watching the treeline for an enemy’s torch. Nothing on their faces deserved a blade through it.
He wanted to give several of them a blade through it regardless.
“Ye’ve gone quiet,” Freya noted, still watching the dance.
“I’m often quiet.”
“Ye werenae quiet earlier. And ye’ve gone quieter than quiet. There’s a difference, ye ken. I’m becoming something of an expert on the varieties of yer silence.”
How dare she think that she was an expert on him after spending so little time together?
Evander wasn’t going to respond. It was what she wanted. What she was waiting for. He said nothing, which proved her point better than he’d have liked, and stood instead.
Freya looked a little smug this time. Perhaps he should’ve said something. It would’ve been better if he’d said something, even to prove a point to himself.
The dance was ending. Callum caught his eye across the fire with a look that said plainly, Go on, then.
Evander crossed the circle before he’d fully decided to, took his place among the dancers, and did the thing he did better than any man in three clans: move a blade through the air like it weighed nothing.
