Chapter 8 #2
Wanton panted in the center of it all—bonnet gone, soot-streaked, clutching the hammer as if she’d personally forged Scottish independence. She tried to look less dreadful, which was deuced difficult while folded at a right angle and emitting small noises of spinal betrayal.
He blinked once. "What in the bloody name o' Bannockburn happened here?"
"Attempted theft!" she declared. "Also—partial property damage, but in defense of cultural integrity!"
A chair crackled in the fire. A single ember had the audacity to pop.
Tavish exhaled through his nose, a sound that could have bent steel.
"I can fix it," she offered hastily. "The table, the tapestry, and… whatever that was." She pointed with her tongue at a melted, unidentifiable object. (The reader must understand that her hands refused to relinquish the hammer at this point.) "Though I fear there's no saving that."
He crossed to her. His frown was so deep that future natural philosophers might debate whether it was a canyon or simply Tavish MacTease reacting to her existence.
You're angry," she said, and stared at the etchings of the hammer. Perhaps she would stay in this position forever, atoning for her wrecking.
He crossed the floor to her side, boots echoing against the stone. "Angry? Lass, I've seen bar brawls wi' less destruction."
Muttering something in Gaelic that sounded suspiciously like Saints spare me from the mad Sassenach under my roof he lifted the Hammer of Ancestry as if it weighed no more than a teapot—an act so casually heroic it made her want to throw her thesis at him.
“Why in God’s Highlands are ye bent like a heron trying to lay an egg?”
Wanton winced.
“Because,” she said with dry dignity, “your ancestral weapon is inconsiderately heavy. No one warned me it was forged for men with thighs like architectural supports.”
He blinked. “Ye tried to lift it?”
“I tried to wield it,” she corrected. “There’s a difference. One is foolish. The other is… scientifically ambitious.”
“And which were ye?”
“A visionary tragically betrayed by physics.”
Grunting high enough to alarm nearby wildlife, he rubbed her back in a slow, grounding circle.
"Up ye get," he murmured, and when she swayed, he caught her elbow, guiding her upright with infuriating ease.
She wobbled.
Before she could protest, he steered her toward the couch, a battered piece of furniture that had clearly survived generations of Highland arguments.
Wanton sank down with a groan she would later classify as "scientific." Tavish crouched beside her, his big hands surprisingly gentle as he found the tense spot low on her spine. He pressed his thumb there, and she made a noise she hoped the ancestors could not hear.
The ache vanished in a pulse of heat. "What did you—"
"Learned it from a field surgeon. Works on soldiers and fools who pick fights wi' thieves."
"Fascinating," she managed, voice several notes too high for dignity.
He didn't look at her. Just exhaled hard, and dropped onto the couch beside her. The wood creaked beneath his weight.
"I don't care about the bloody hall. It's seen more fights than the Devil's public house. But you—"
He broke off, voice rough.
"You fought armed men wi' a poker and a bonnet. Saints, ye've no sense o' self-preservation."
Her heart gave a startled flutter. "I thought the hammer mattered."
“It does. But my people matter more. You matter more,” he said, and his gaze caught her.
She did? Wanton inhaled to answer—nothing came out.
Oh dear.
Her nervous system had clearly short-circuited.
A perfectly natural response to blunt-force back trauma.
Absolutely nothing to do with the man in front of her.
"He reached for her hand, rough fingers closing around ink-stained ones. "I thought ye didn't believe in symbols."
She looked up at him, throat tight and treacherous.
“I don’t believe in symbols,” she managed, “or ancestral totems, or the sociopolitical potency of metal objects…”
Her voice thinned, but she forced the words out anyway.
“…but I believe in you.”
The world paused. Even the fire seemed to stop mid-crackle, scandalized.
Oh, splendid. She had done it now. One moment of dignified restraint, and then—truth leakage everywhere.
He kept looking at her, this Highlander entirely too noble for her respiratory stability, and something fluttered traitorously beneath her stays.
Warm. Expansive. Alarming.
She dearly hoped it was poor digestion.
Was it possible to sprain one’s corset with infatuation?
"Oh, dear heavens,” she whispered, clutching her notebook to her chest. “I appear to be developing… feelings.”
He leaned in. His kiss approached with the velocity of a formula proven irresistible: mass × desire × utter Highland inevitability.
Wanton squeaked.
A tiny, mortifying, wholly unscientific squeak.
She shot to her feet so fast the settee protested. Her skirts twisted, her boots skidded, and the Hammer of Ancestry caught her toe with a thunk of ancestral betrayal.
Tavish rose too, brows lifted. “Ye’ll face caber-throwin’ giants and armed thieves without a blink,” he murmured, stepping toward her, “but ye’re scared o’ yer own heart?”
She swallowed. “Statistically speaking,” she said with manic dignity, “the human heart is six times more likely to fail under emotional stress than under blunt-force trauma.”
His mouth twitched. “That so?”
“Yes,” she said, backing toward the corridor with the solemnity of a woman citing her own impending doom. “I read it in—well, I wrote it in my notebook just now, but the data is compelling.”
Her heel snagged her hem. She wobbled, windmilled, and righted herself with heroic futility.
“And on that note,” she declared, lifting her chin, “I must retreat before cardiac catastrophe ensues.”
Then she spun, tripped over nothing and everything, and fled down the corridor in a flurry of plaid, petticoats, and rising panic.
Field Observation 27.0 (added hastily as she ran): Emotional variables severely compromise locomotion.