Page 79

“Ye’re enjoying this too much,” Freya muttered.

Brigid smiled. “Aye, I am. We’ve spent a week scowling at that man as if he’d stolen yer horse. Now ye turn pink when I say his name. Forgive me if I’m entertained.”

“I daenae turn pink.”

“Evander.”

Freya glared at her, a blush creeping up her cheeks.

Brigid laughed so hard that Amelia joined in, and Archer, not wishing to be left out, squealed and smacked Freya’s cheek with one wet hand.

“Traitors,” Freya huffed. “The pair of ye.”

“They only ken what they see, me Lady. Same as the rest of the castle.”

Freya’s smile faltered at that. “The rest of the castle?”

“Aye, the maids saw the Laird carry ye off over his shoulder last night. They described it like carrying a sack of barley,” Brigid recounted. “There’s a wager going on in the kitchen already.”

Freya paled. “A wager on what exactly?”

Brigid only smiled sweetly.

“Brigid, a wager on what?”

“On how soon there’ll be a third bairn in the nursery, me Lady.” She had now picked up Amelia and tucked her more firmly on her hip and headed for the door. “I have put a shilling on midsummer.”

Freya stared after her, mouth open, cheeks burning all over again.

The hall was filling, but his wife was nowhere to be seen.

Evander stood at the foot of the great staircase with a bairn in each arm. He had been standing there for some time, and his mood had soured with every minute. Amelia was chewing on the brooch at his shoulder. Archer had a fistful of his hair and seemed determined to take it back to the cradle with him.

Every MacArthur man who passed took one look at the Wolf holding two infants and became suddenly intensely interested in the rafters.

Evander had barely seen his wife all day. He’d left her sleeping at dawn, curled on her side with one hand tucked under her cheek. Then the day had swallowed them both. There were the cooks and the casks, and a dispute between two crofters over a boundary stone. Every time he had turned toward the nursery, someone had stepped into his path with another question.

He had not liked it. He liked it less with every passing hour.

“Ye’re scowling, me Laird,” Callum noted, appearing at his elbow with a cup in each hand. “The guests will think ye intend to eat them.”

“Perhaps I do.”

“Ye cannae eat anyone with yer hands full of bairns.” Callum glanced at the stairs and then back at him, his grin widening. “She’ll come.”

“I didnae say anything about her.”

“Ye didnae have to.”

Evander shifted Archer higher and said nothing, which was its own answer.

Around them, the hall had grown loud. Torches flared in their sconces. The trestles groaned beneath venison and salmon, bannocks and crowdie, and great wheels of cheese from the summer shielings.

The pipers had begun to tune by the hearth. MacArthur folk and his own people stood shoulder to shoulder with more ease than they’d managed all week, and the smell of peat smoke and roasting meat filled the air.

It was a fine thing. He’d made something fine here, or the beginnings of it. And yet he still kept glancing at the stairs.

Then the hall went quiet.