When a Scot Ties the Knot (Castles Ever After #3)(68)

She lost her balance and careened away, still twirling and laughing.

Until she collided with someone. Someone helpfully big and solid and impossible to knock over.

“Oh, goodness. I’m so sorry, truly. I—-” She looked up. Her stomach sank. “Oh. It’s you.”

Logan.

“Are you enjoying yourself?”

“I am, quite. Thank you for asking.”

Suddenly she was every bit as nervous with him as she would have been at sixteen. Who could help it?

Tonight he carried with him a new air of . . . not swagger. Swagger was nothing more than bluster arranged to mask uncertainty. Tonight, he looked confident. Protective. Ready to lead.

Lairdly, in the truest sense of the word.

Dressed in his full great kilt and a crisp ivory shirt, he also looked ready to pose for an illustration in Sir Walter Scott’s next novel.

The dance ended, and Callum came to find her. He gave Maddie a grin. “Sorry to have stolen you from her, Captain.”

“No need to apologize,” Logan replied. “Madeline belongs to herself.”

“We were just dancing,” she said.

“I saw.”

“Not very well.”

His mouth quirked. “I saw that, too.”

“Yes. Well. I’m sorry to have collided with you. It’s just so dark.”

She looked around, desperate to avoid the confusing look in his eyes. There were no other lights, anywhere. Not at the castle, not at the baile on the riverbank.

The world had collapsed to the orange--red glow of the bonfire and the vast, starry sky above.

“ ’Tis the tradition,” Callum said helpfully. “On Beltane, we douse all the fires in every home. At the end of the night, each family will take coals or a torch and relight their hearth from this bonfire. ’Tis a fresh start.”

“A fresh start. What a lovely thought.”

It helped her understand why Logan had been so determined to have the land in his ownership before Beltane—-he wanted his men and the tenants to know this was a fresh start.

It also made her wonder what she and Logan could be to each other if only they could make a fresh start of their own.

He was a good man. Caring, protective, intelligent, loyal.

And on a shallow level, so attractive.

Maddie was going to forever regret not having made love to him. At least Aunt Thea had been properly ruined by the Comte de Montclair. Feathers and all.

But it was no use pining after what couldn’t be.

Logan didn’t love her. He couldn’t love her. Some other woman had gotten to him first and left him ruined for all others.

She hoped this A.D., whoever and wherever she was, properly appreciated what she’d missed. Maddie hoped the woman rued her mistake daily. Maddie was also not above wishing her to be a frequent sufferer of boils.

“What was that?” Logan asked.

Had she spoken aloud? “Oh. Nothing.”

A woman cloaked in a traditional arisaid approached them. She began speaking to Logan in fervent Gaelic, and before Maddie knew what was happening, the woman had placed an infant in her arms.

Wonderful. This was exactly what her heart didn’t need right now.

She started hoping that the infant would squall or soil its clout or vomit up soured milk. Something, anything to stop her womb from turning these frantic use--me cartwheels.

But the babe refused to be anything less than entirely adorable. He was an angelic little bundle in Maddie’s arms, swaddled in a length of cozy flannel.

Meanwhile, the babe’s mother thanked Logan—-even without knowing the language, Maddie could recognize the look of gratitude, and Callum translated the rest. The young woman had been recently widowed, and she had thought she would be forced to leave Scotland. Apparently Logan had engaged her ser-vices to do laundry and cook for the men while they completed their new cottages. She and her son would be able to stay.

Maddie’s heart wrenched. She stared down at the little bundle, who cooed and waved his tiny fists.

A bright something winked at her from the child’s bunting, and Maddie peered at it.

“He’s wearing a luckenbooth.” She showed Callum. “But surely he’s a bit young to be engaged. And I thought those were for lasses.”

“He’s not engaged.” Callum tickled the little one’s cheek. “ ’Tis the custom. A man gives the luckenbooth to his bride on their betrothal, and then ’tis placed on the bunting of the -couple’s firstborn child. -People believed it wards off evil.”

“How interesting. So that means these markings here . . .” Maddie fingered the tiny markings scratched on the heart--shaped brooch. “They’re not the child’s initials.”

“No, no. Those would be his mother and father’s.”

“I see.”

She stared down at the babe in arms, and that heart of gold that flickered in the light of the bonfire.

L.M. and A.D.

The world slowed down. Her heartbeats thumped singly in her ears.

Did you love her?

As much as I knew how. It wasn’t enough.

So she left you.

Yes.

A clever woman, then.

Maddie cringed at the memory. Oh, good Lord. If her suspicions were correct . . .

The widowed woman had joined in the dance, and Logan had moved away. When Maddie looked up, she locked gazes with him over the bonfire. His eyes narrowed, intent and searching. The red firelight played over his furrowed brow.