Page 32 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander

She inhaled once, sharp and measured, through her nose.

“That is a wonderful idea.”

He stepped closer.

She did not step back. She refused to yield. But he moved with so much confidence that he dropped his head. When he spoke near her ear, his voice dropped to just above a murmur, warm and rough against the cold air of the kitchen.

“Aye?”

Heat climbed her throat without her permission. It settled hot in her face, and she was furious at every single inch of it.

“I am sure the MacGregor women will look beautiful in these dresses,” she said. Her voice came out perfectly even. She was proud of the steel in it.

“I imagine so.” He did not step back. The warm glow he emitted reached her through the kitchen air, close enough that she could smell woodsmoke, cold wool, and that intoxicating quality that was simply him. “I imagine ye’ll look especially lovely greetin’ guests in nothin’ but yer chemise.”

Her breath caught.

It was one small, entirely involuntary hitch of air in her chest. She felt certain he heard it; he was standing close enough to hear her pulse. She had something ready; she always had something ready, but the words dissolved before they reached her tongue. For one humiliating half-second, she simply stood there with warmth flooding her cheeks and his low voice sitting exactly where he’d placed it.

Sebastian straightened. She braced herself.

“Ah, daenae worry, lass.” The corner of his mouth curled. It was not quite a smile, not quite a smirk, but something that sat between the two and was far more insufferable than either. He glanced toward the crates. “Ye still have plenty of dresses left.” A pause. “Even if I wanted to give them all away, I wouldnae have enough people to do so.”

He laughed softly, effortlessly, as if it was all a joke he was in on. He seemed completely unfazed by the fact that she was standingtwo feet away with a look that could kill. Then he stepped aside, gestured cheerfully toward the hallway, and waited.

Alba walked past him, her chin held high. Her hands hung loosely at her sides, and every muscle in her body strained painfully to look unhurried. She avoided looking at the crates and at him. Her pace was steady, and her back stayed straight all the way to the turn in the corridor.

His voice followed her around the corner, perfectly pleasant.

“The bronze silk should suit Hamish’s wife particularly well, I think.”

She turned the corner.

The moment she was out of sight, she pressed her back flat against the freezing stone wall. She closed her eyes and let out one long, silent breath through her nose.

He had outplayed her at her own game. Using her maid, who freely offered information during the usual morning routine without suspecting any need for caution. With her own generosity, which he had taken and arranged, standing in a kitchen doorway, waiting to act, his face showing that unbearable calm.

She pressed her fingers briefly to her lips.

The chemise comment. The wicked timing of it. The half-second before she’d recovered. He had seen her break. She knew he had seen it, and he would almost certainly file it away to use again.

She opened her eyes, straightened her spine, and walked back toward the Great Hall.

She had a dinner to organize. The bread was rising. Ale was coming up from the cellar. She had thirty things demanding her attention before sundown, and none of them involved Sebastian MacGregor’s mouth. None of them involved his laugh. None of them involved the way he said “lass” like it was a weapon sharpened specifically for her skin.

She was already thinking about all three.

Chapter Twelve

This was a quieter gathering than the celebration a few nights before, a supper, not a dance.

Alba stood near the far end of the second table and listened to it for a moment before she let herself move.

Overlapping noise filled the space from stone wall to stone wall. Laughter cut sharply across the scrape of a fiddle. Horn cups clattered against heavy oak. A MacGregor boy and a MacLaren boy scrambled between the trestle legs, chasing each other with ferocity until a kitchen girl caught them both by the back of their collars and deposited them firmly on a bench with thick crusts of bread shoved into their fists.

She had done this. The bread, the ale, the fires burning from the Great Hall to the upper corridor, all of it. The rushes changed, and the tables were pulled together end to end so no Clan sat separate from the others.

She moved into the crowd.