Chapter 26

26

S o, ye’ve finally decided to flee? Now that there’s nay danger, ye’re runnin’?

From the battlements, Doughall watched the cloaked figure weaving through the evening crowd that had gathered in the main courtyard. The castle residents were beginning their celebrations early, sharing drinks, offering food, striking up lively music, and hailing the new beginning that the next day’s festivities would bring.

Aside from the most necessary servants, none of them were required to work during the wedding day. That had been a last-minute decision from Doughall, spurred on by Ersie, and it looked like his people were making the most of it.

They willnae thank ye for ruinin’ their day of leisure, lass.

For if there was no wedding, they would have no holiday.

Not that Doughall planned to allow Freya to embarrass him by not attending their nuptials. He had promised Adam, and though he did not normally pay much attention to keeping promises, this was one exception.

Ye cannae run from me, lass. Nae now.

“Calston!” he barked at a nearby sentry.

The man hurried to his Laird, bowing his head. “Aye, M’Laird.”

“Tell Ersie that I’ll be away from the castle for a while,” Doughall said, his gaze trained on his betrothed.

Freya had made it to the gates, and though Doughall waited for his guards to prevent her from leaving, the stream of bodies in and out made it easy for her to sneak through undetected. The early festivities were drawing people from the village, while others from the castle were going to visit friends and family. Freya could not have picked a better time to escape.

I’ll admonish every last one in the trainin’ yard, but that’ll have to wait.

“Leavin’ the castle?” Calston stared at him, wide-eyed. “But… what about the weddin’?”

Doughall leveled the man with a sharp look. “I wouldnae miss it.”

Grabbing his cloak from the battlement wall, he threw it around his shoulders, slung his bow over his head, and took off in pursuit of his fleeing bride.

He wished he could say that he had expected more courage from her, but if she had believed him to be a monster for all these years, capable of killing a man for no reason at all, then perhaps it was not so surprising that she had lost her nerve.

Keeping her hood low over her head, her chin to her chest, Freya skirted around the edge of the nearby village. No one paid her any attention at all, too involved in their merrymaking to notice a stranger in their midst.

However, there was a stretch of open grassland between the castle and the forest where she had no choice but to be exposed. The guards up on the castle walls would assuredly see her, but perhaps they would not care about an unknown, cloaked figure now that the threat of Lewis Brown was gone, especially as she was heading in the opposite direction.

Nevertheless, she quickened her pace, walking as fast as she could toward the distant shadows of the trees.

This must be beautiful in the summer…

Her fingertips grazed the long, bare stalks that unmistakably belonged to wildflowers. The entire span of grassland would be bursting with them when the season warmed. The thought of so much color and life chased away a sliver of her unease about the wedding.

Even if her marriage ended up being a lonely, dull thing, there would still be beauty in the world for her to admire and enjoy. She would just have to become more determined to find it.

With a spring in her step, she hurried to the forest, following the faintest semblance of a path through the ancient oaks, slender silver birches, and berry-laden rowan trees. It was not yet truly dark, dusky twilight offering a bluish light that easily pierced through the thinning canopy.

Crispy leaves crunched underfoot, the sound adding another layer of unexpected joy to Freya’s progress.

I should’ve done this sooner—sneakin’ away to do as I please, with nay one stoppin’ me.

It was not entirely lost on her that that was the reason she was in this situation in the first place, but this was a different kind of sovereignty.

At last, she glimpsed the loch, so beautiful in the ethereal glow of dusk. The clear sky overhead would soon be filled with starlight, and the gibbous moon would cast the full strength of its silver illumination on the water.

Freya could not wait, a naughty thrill coursing through her. Back at MacNiall Castle, she swam when she could, usually when the weather was fine and she had someone to escort her and watch from the shore, but she had never gone swimming at night before.

I wish Doughall was here.

“Nay, I dinnae,” she replied to her foolish thoughts, shedding her cloak and then her dress, before placing them on a larger rock nearby.

There, she hesitated. She could swim well enough in her undergarments, but the tranquility of the loch and the rustle of the lingering autumnal leaves whispered, Ye are alone. Why restrict yerself?

Biting her lip and glancing around, just to be entirely sure there was no one watching, she awkwardly unfastened the laces of her stays and let them drop. Next, she pushed her drawers down her legs and stood there for a moment, entirely naked, letting the chilly breeze wash over her.

It was exhilarating, caressing away the majority of her troubles. Surrounded by so much beauty, how could she possibly worry about tomorrow?

Taking off her spectacles and setting them on top of her clothes, she picked her way across the uneven shingles and braced herself for the biting cold of the water. The first touch of the shallows against her feet made her gasp, but she would not back down, wading deeper and deeper until the water was chest-deep, the freezing temperature of the loch stealing her breath away.

“Put yer head under first. It’ll nae feel so cold once ye’ve done that.”

Laura had told her that years ago, and she had never forgotten it.

Sucking in a deep breath, she rallied her courage and dove underneath the water.

All was silent beneath the surface, her arms swinging in two arcs, her legs kicking to push her further through the water. Nothing else mattered, the world above fading into irrelevance, the cold and the lack of air forcing her to focus solely on the movement of her limbs and the glide of the water over her bare skin.

At last, the pressure in her lungs and the need to breathe urged her up to the surface. She broke through, sucking in a deep breath of the crisp evening air, brimming with such vitality that she could not keep a grin from spreading across her face. It was the wildest thing she had ever done, and she rather liked the feeling.

“What the hell do ye think ye’re doin’ in there?” a rumbling voice rippled across the water to her, a prickle of unexpected warmth rushing up her spine. “Is the thought of gettin’ married to me so bad that ye wish to drown yerself?”

She jumped and turned slowly, her arms covering her bare breasts as the water trickled down her skin. “I was just swimmin’. Had I kenned I had company, I might’ve stayed under.”

Doughall sat on a rock by the shore, his arms crossed over his chest and a smirk playing on his lips as if he had been enjoying the view. But his voice was cold as he commanded, “Get out, now.”

“I dinnae want to,” she replied. “I’ve barely had a chance to swim.”

“Out. Now.”

She turned fully, still covering her breasts. “I cannae. I have nothin’ on, and as we’re nae yet married, ye cannae see me this way.” She resisted the urge to smile. “And before ye say it, a torn nightdress counts as clothin’. This is different.”

“I willnae tell ye again,” he growled, getting to his feet.

“Neither will I.”

His eyes flashed. “I cannae protect ye in the water. Get out.”

“Protect me from whom?” she replied, making a show of looking around. “If ye want me to get out, ye’ll have to come and get me. Unless… ye cannae swim?”

Was that what he meant by not being able to protect her in the water? Living so close to a loch, she had assumed he would make the most of swimming. As she thought it, a realization dawned on her—he had watched his mother and father die on the shore of this loch. It stood to reason that he might not want to learn to swim here.

Doughall’s lip twitched, clearly irritated by her defiance. But his next action proved that he knew perfectly well how to swim and was not afraid of the loch at all.

Freya’s eyes widened as he tossed his cloak aside, peeling off his shirt and belted plaid until he stood naked on the pebbled shore, bathed in otherworldly moonlight. The silver glow glanced off those breathtaking, sculptured muscles, revealing more of him than she had ever dared to imagine.

The sight of his ridged abdomen made her stomach flutter, and the hard lines of his broad chest made her breathless. His powerful arms and corded neck finally made her understand why he had bitten her in the library. At that moment, she would have given anything to sink her teeth into him. Meanwhile, his thighs turned her thoughts feral, her fingernails longing to dig into that hard flesh.

Her gaze flitted to the part of him that had driven her imagination wild before, the part of him she was certain she had once felt, straining against the heat of her, hard and demanding. Her throat constricted, pushing out a startled gasp. It was no wonder she had felt it so keenly through his plaid and her undergarments, that thrilling flesh so thick and long that it took away what little breath she had left.

“Are ye goin’ to get out?” he asked in a throaty voice, his eyes blazing.

Freya shook her head, unable to form words.

“Then this will be yer last mischief before ye’re mine.”

He walked forward, not flinching at all as he moved through the shallows, the icy cold water rising higher and higher as he waded toward her.

Torn between diving into the water to escape him and letting him come, she braced herself against the shivers that coursed through her, and her body made the choice for her. Nothing could have compelled her to swim away from him, not when he looked like a god in the moonlight, the water like silver around him, caressing him. She had read enough tales of the old gods to know not to run when one approached.

“How did ye ken where to find me?” she asked through chattering teeth.

He grabbed her by her pale, goose-fleshed arm, pulling her to him. “I was guardin’ from the battlements and spied a Selkie in human form leavin’ the festivities before someone could steal and hide her sealskin.”

His arms enveloped her, his slippery, muscular body warming hers. Peering up anxiously, trembling—though not entirely from the cold—she was too overwhelmed by his closeness, his bareness, to remark on the joke he had made. It was not at all like him to speak with any whimsy.

“Truth be told, I thought ye were fleein’,” he continued, his gaze darkening.

“Ye were chasin’ me down, then?”

He held her tighter, those muscular thighs and that intimidating length pressing against her, holding her lungs and thoughts prisoner.

“I was curious to see how far ye’d get this time,” he replied, brushing the wet hair from her face. “What were ye thinkin’, goin’ swimmin’ at this hour? It’s almost winter, for pity’s sake. Ye’ll catch yer death.”

She put her palms on his chest, his shoulders curving as if to shelter her from the cold that was all around them. “It was refreshin’,” she said shyly. “And it’s a beautiful night. I wanted to swim in the starlight.”

“Ye like the starlight,” he repeated.

She nodded, shivering in his embrace. “Aye. Who doesnae?”

All of a sudden, he picked her up, one strong arm clamped around her waist. She gasped in surprise, the chilly breeze cooling the water that slicked her skin, making it feel twice as freezing.

“What are ye doin’?” she croaked. “Put me down!”

He ignored her, wading back through the water to the shore, surefooted and apparently unbothered that both of them were stark naked. She thought about hitting his back and thrashing, as she had done the night he rescued her, but whether it was the biting cold or the warm intimacy of his embrace, she did not struggle. In truth, she found she did not want to.

Instead, she longed to find out what he planned to do with her once they reached the shore.