When a Scot Ties the Knot (Castles Ever After #3)(29)

Maddie had to press a hand to her mouth to keep from laughing aloud. She was ever so glad her talents ran to sketching and not poetry. Every verse she’d penned in adolescence was trite and insipid. As an adult, she would never willingly put her name to the horrid things.

Fortunately, she’d put Logan MacKenzie’s name to every last one.

“ ’To my truest love,’ ” he began.

“Go on,” she urged. “I remember it precisely, if the ink is smudged. Let me know if you need help.”

“I won’t.”

She leaned forward. “It begins like so. ‘Were I a bird . . .’ ”

He exhaled with a sound of finality. Like a trapped hare with no escape, settling down to await its death.

Then he began to read aloud in that deep, resonant Scots burr.

“Were I a bird, I’d sing for thee.

Were I a bee, I’d sting for thee.

Were I a peak, I’d tower for thee.

Were I a tree, I’d flower for thee.

Were I a flute—-”

The reading was interrupted as Callum began to cough with alarming violence. Rabbie slapped him on the back with vigor.

“Do I need to stop?” Logan asked. “Are you dying?”

Callum shook his head.

“Because I wouldna mind it if you were dying.”

“No, no.” At length Callum looked up with a reddened face and choked out, “Dinna mind me. Do go on.”

“Were I a flute, I’d play for thee.

Were I a steed, I’d neigh for thee.”

Now the coughing was contagious. All the men had succumbed. Even the servants had been afflicted. Maddie was fighting a powerful tickle in her throat, too.

Logan plowed on, no doubt hoping to kill them all dead. Then there would be no witnesses.

“Were I a fire, I’d burn for thee.

But being a man, I yearn for thee.”

He flung the paper down on the table and whipped off his spectacles. “All my love and et cetera. That’s the end.” She thought he heard him mutter bitterly, “The end of all dignity.”

Quiet reigned for a long moment.

“I have a most excellent cough remedy in my medicine box,” Aunt Thea finally remarked. “Captain, I think several of your men could do with a dose.”

Maddie motioned to the servants to clear the plates and bring dessert.

“There’s one thing I’m not understanding,” Rabbie said, leaning both elbows on the table. “Why did she get the idea ye were dead?”

Maddie paused. She’d never needed to think through this part. “Well, I . . .”

“There was a farewell letter in my sporran,” Logan said. “To be sent in case I died in battle. I thought I’d lost it, but evidently I’d posted it by mistake.”

Rabbie’s brow wrinkled. “But that explains why she stopped writing you. Why’d you stop writing her?”

Callum put in, “It isna obvious? He believed she’d lost interest. So many of our sweethearts did.”

“He should have had more faith in me.” Maddie reached over and squeezed Logan’s hand. “You dear, silly man.”

He gave her a stern look: Now you’re pushing it too far.

A prickle of awareness went through her. She didn’t doubt that the moment they were alone, he was going to push back.



Chapter Nine

Suddenly, dinner couldn’t last long enough.

It was with a heavy sense of foreboding that Maddie bid her aunt and Logan’s men good night. As she and Logan mounted the stairs together, she felt the unspoken tension between them reaching new levels.

“I had Becky make up a proper room for you,” she told him, pausing at the door of her bedchamber. “It’s just down the corridor.”

He shook his head. “We’re going to share a room, lass.”

He opened the door and walked through, making himself at home.

She said, “Where I’m from, most married -couples don’t share a bedchamber.”

“Well, you’re in the Highlands now.” He flung his boot to the corner. It landed with a thud. “And here, we do. If you think I suffered through that bloody poem of yours just to leave you at the threshold, you’re gravely mistaken.”

He pulled his other boot loose and set to work on his clothing next.

Maddie couldn’t help but stare. She wondered if he had any idea how attractive he was right now, just going about the everyday business of preparing for bed. His every motion fascinated her.

He pulled his shirt over his head and cast it aside. The muscles of his shoulders and back were perfectly defined by the firelight.

He moved to the washstand and poured water in the basin, then went about soaping his face and swabbing his neck and torso with a damp cloth.

He would smell of that soap if he joined her in bed and pulled her close. Soap and clean male skin.

She shook herself.

“You really need your men to believe in this, don’t you? Our marriage.”

He rinsed his face, then pushed damp hands through his hair. “They’ve had a rough time of it, marching from one hellish place to another, then coming home to find they’ve no home left. I dinna want them to worry they’ll be forced to move on from here.”

As always, Maddie found his devotion to his men distressingly sympathetic, but she could not let it distract her from the topic at hand.