He had not meant to watch.
He had wandered through the east wing for no particular reason, or at least no reason he was willing to consider, and had seen them at the far end of the garden path, where he had stopped.
He told himself he was checking to see if Mrs. Alexander’s boy was causing trouble.
Isobel was crouched to Euan’s level, and the boy was showing her something in his palm. She was looking at it as though whatever he held was the most interesting thing she had encountered all week.
She doesnae have to do that.
He watched her agree to the race with a flash of something unguarded and bright, and felt it land in the center of him before he had finished registering what it was.
Daenae.
She ran. His body lurched forward as he recalled the horror of watching her fall all those days ago. He knew that her ankle had healed, and she no longer showed so much as a limp or hobble, but Alasdair still worried over her safety.
The race was over before he had the chance to intercede and Alasdair blew out a sigh of relief.
We live to fight another day…or rather race another day.
He lingered by the garden path and waited for Isobel to join him. When she looked up and spotted him, he noticed the way her eyes burned with elation. “Ye lost the race to a young lad. Not feelin’ much like yer friend the hare today, are ye?”
Her eyes continued to twinkle as she laced her arm through his and cupped her hand around his elbow. “I thought it best to conserve my strength.”
He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “For our wedding day?” The words, laced with promise, slipped out of his mouth before he could check himself and make sure that he would not offend her by loosely referring to their wedding day and hinting toward their wedding night as well.
But Isobel surprised him as always by tipping her head back and laughing boisterously. “Come along, me Laird.” She squeezed his elbow. “We must make preparations for our nuptials.”
Alasdair thought twice about teasing her a second time but then bit his lip.
There will be plenty of time for that sort of playfulness once we’re wed.
The thought was wicked…but also hopeful. The very best kind of notion.
Chapter Fifteen
She came back from the glens with mud on her boots and her arms full.
Yarrow, dried thistle, a bundle of something dark and sharp smelling that Jane would know the name of, and she had taken on trust from the woman in the village who had pressed it into her hands with a firm nod. The morning had been cold and clear, and she had walked further than she intended, which was becoming a habit here, and her cheeks were wind-burned, and her fingers were numb at the tips.
The kitchen garden gate was unlatched, and she pushed through it with her elbow and nearly walked into him.
Alasdair was standing at the far end of the path near the rowan tree with no coat on, which struck her as both deliberate and impractical, his sleeves rolled to the elbow and his arms folded, looking at the garden with the expression of a man who had come outside for reasons he had not fully explained to himself.
“The gate was open,” she said.
“I ken. I left it open.”
She looked at him. He looked back at her with his arms still folded and the particular expression he wore when he had done something he was not entirely prepared to explain. She decided, charitably, not to point this out.
“You’ve been in the garden a while,” she said.
“I was passin’.”
“You have no coat.”
“It’s nae cold.”
“It is freezing.” She shifted the bundle in her arms.