Page 23 of Desire of a Highlander

The valley could support the Steading as it stood, but not if refugees kept arriving in numbers like this. He’d been stretching stores for months already, trading tools and labor for grain, sending foraging parties farther afield than he liked.

And for what? So another village could be burned while the great men argued about crowns and kingdoms?

He’d spent years trying to keep clear of such troubles. He’d surrendered land rather than shed blood for it. Walked away rather than drag his people into another feud.

Yet trouble kept finding him anyway.

He raised the hammer again. “If this goes on much longer, we’ll be building cottages in the trees.”

“That might be fun,” Eamon said. “We could have rope swings between them all.”

“Remind me never to put ye in charge.”

Eamon laughed.

A shadow fell across the doorway and Ronan looked up to find Elodie standing behind him. She wore the same borrowed dress Faye had given her yesterday, her hair was coming loose from the braid she’d tied it into, and her hands were dirty. The boots she wore under the dress looked wholly out of place and yet on her they looked...right.

“Eamon,” Ronan said, “run to the smithy and fetch another pouch of nails. The big ones.”

The younger man glanced between him and Elodie, clearly sensing he was being dismissed, but wisely chose not to comment. “Aye, chief.”

Once he was gone, Ronan set the hammer aside. “Come in, lass.”

Elodie stepped carefully over the threshold, studying the half-repaired cottage. “This is for the new arrivals?”

“A family with four children.”

“It looks better already.”

“It looks less likely to fall on them. That’s not quite the same thing.”

That earned a brief smile from her.

Ronan wiped his hands on a rag. “I wanted to thank ye for helping those folks last night. For bringing them here and then helping organize them when they arrived.”

She looked almost uncomfortable at the praise. “What else could I do?”

“Ye could have continued on yer way and left them to fend for themselves. Many would have.”

Where were ye going, lass? he wanted to ask. Why did ye leave without even telling me ye were going?

But he didn’t. Most folk who ended up here had a past they’d rather keep hidden, him included. He sensed Elodie was the same.

She shrugged and Ronan found himself gazing at her. She had the deepest brown eyes, rich and earthy like forest loam.

“And as for yer little adventure last night.” He picked up a loose board and turned it in his hands. “I will take ye wherever it was ye were trying to get to. There was no need to sneak away.”

Color touched her cheeks. “I wasn’t sneaking!”

“No?”

She huffed out a breath. “All right, fine. Maybe I was. A little.”

“Well, ye shouldnae. It isnae safe out there on yer own.” He kept his tone calm, though worry still sat heavily in his chest. If anything should have happened to her...

“Ye have a healing head wound. Ye could have walked off a cliff, fallen into a bog, or met folk less friendly than the ones ye found.”

She opened her mouth as though to answer. For a second he thought she might reveal something: where she’d come from or where she’d been trying to get to. But the moment passed.