Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Not willing to leave his fate up to God alone, Elsie took a step forward, ready to run in after him, when the doorway exploded with a burst of sparks and embers. A broad silhouette appeared, staggering through the smoke, a coughing, squirming little boy clutched against his chest.
“Halvard!” she gasped.
Sten and two other men rushed forward to grab the child. Halvard sank to his knees in the dirt, coughing, soot-streaked, his sleeve burned away to reveal angry red skin along his forearm.
Elsie was on him in an instant.
“Are you mad?” she cried, hands shaking as she gently touched his scorched arm. “You could have died! You reckless, stubborn…”
He looked up at her through red, blood-shot eyes.
“He was alone,” he rasped.
“That doesn’t mean you’re allowed to be so reckless,” her voice broke. She swallowed hard. “For God’s sake, you are a laird, you should not be so reckless.”
His gaze softened, just a fraction. “I didnae die. I came back, didnae I?”
But the fear in her chest refused to settle. She had watched him disappear into flames. She thought she would never see him alive again. And it scared her more than she’d ever admit.
She busied herself tending to his burn, avoiding the emotions building inside her. She brushed the soot from his skin as she examined the blistering with a healer’s precision. Her fingers were steady even if her breathing was not.
“You scared me,” she whispered before she could stop herself.
His hand lifted, hesitant, tender, and he touched her wrist. “Elsie…”
But before he could continue Sten shouted for more water and the moment slipped away.
It was hours later when the fires were finally dead.
Night had fallen thick and heavy, the stars dim behind the lingering smoke.
Elsie’s dress was ripped and muddied. Her hair flew wild and her face was streaked with ash and sweat.
She looked nothing like the polished English lady she was born and groomed to be.
If her parents saw her now, they would disow her, she was sure of it.
And yet…
Halvard stared at her in a way that made warmth spread through her middle. It was as if he had only just noticed her and she was somehow the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked, suddenly nervous.
“Ye’ve ne’er looked bonnier,” he said quietly, voice still rasped and rough from the smoke.
Heat crept to her cheeks. “Don’t mock me. Look at me, I’m filthy.”
“Oh, I’m lookin’, mo bhean,” he drawled.
A breath caught between them and her world began to shrink until it held only the two of them.
He stepped slightly closer. She felt the warmth of him despite the chill in the air.
His hand lifted, hesitated, then softly brushed a smudge of dirt from her cheek, his fingertips lingering at her cheek long after the soot was gone.
Elsie’s heart thudded, painfully.
He leaned in.
Closer still.
Her breath stopped.
He leaned down and brushed the lightest kiss on her cheek, close to her mouth, but only just.
She inhaled sharply, dizzy with the almost of it before pulling back and searching his gaze.
Behind them there was a throat clearing. Elsie turned to see Thomas Redfern eyeing them. She did her best to smile at him gently through her thundering heart.
“It’s fer th’ envoy,” Halvard muttered quickly. “Our arrangement.”
For a second there, I thought that… Nevermind. Get a grip, Elsie!
With a hand on his chest, she felt his pulse racing just as fast as her own. But the day had been harrowing enough, and she was still reeling from watching him run into that burning cottage. She did not call him on it.
He turned away from her as if the moment meant nothing. Yet, for her it meant everything and she was willing to wager it was the same for him.
“The villagers are gathering,” Redfern said, breaking the moment’s tension. “I came to find you both. Three souls perished in today’s fire.”
“Aye,” Halvard gave the envoy a nod of sober appreciation.
And as they came upon the square, Elsie had expected to see those gathered to be engaged in soft prayer and quiet weeping. It was the mourning she was used to after losing loved ones.
Instead, she was surprised to hear voices rising in a raw and powerful chorus.
Songs of grief to be sure, but also of strength and memory.
Men, women and children alike lifted their voices, carrying the names of the dead as though offering them to the sky.
The sound was beautiful, deep, wild and aching.
It was jarring for Elsie, and overwhelming.
She stood among them, soot-streaked and exhausted, feeling something inside her shift. It was a feeling unfamiliar, it was belonging and honor.
There was a pride in those people, their land, and their leader that made her ache with warmth.
She stole a glance at Halvard. His strong jaw moving in tribute with his clansmen.
The work and pain of the day clearly etched on his face.
He was a stubborn, reckless, infuriating Scot.
He was the type of man who walked into fire to save a scared, screaming child, he was the type of man who led his people in both good times and bad.
He was the type of man who saved women, even when they were English and difficult.
He was the type of man she could no longer pretend not to care about. And more dangerously, he was the type of man she could fall in love with.
The chamber door shut behind him with a soft thud, smothering all the other noises of the keep. The clansmen had helped all those displaced by the fires return to the keep with them.
Halvard’s body felt as if it had been forged in the flames of the cottage he had pulled that child out of. Every muscle throbbed. His burned arm throbbed with a dull, angry ache. His throat still stung from the smoke.
But all he could think of was Elsie.
She moved about the chamber in silence, her dress torn, her usually perfect hair wild. Her cheeks still faintly streaked with a little of the soot she hadn’t managed to wipe away. She looked nothing like the fine English lady she had been raised to be.
She looked better. Real. His.
As she hid behind the privacy screen to don her nightdress, he didn’t even pretend to not keep one eye in her direction. Then, as she slipped beneath the blankets on the bed. His bed. Halvard turned toward the damn chair. The same chair he had exiled himself to ever since he had brought her there.
“Halvard,” she said softly.
He froze.
“You should sleep in the bed. Properly, I mean,” she paused. “There’s room fer both of us.”
His heart gave a small, hard, traitorous thud.
“Elsie,” he replied, voice low. “I dinnae think…”
“You’re exhausted,” she insisted, sitting up. “And it is your bed. I feel rather cruel taking it for myself while you sleep half folded in that blasted chair. Especially after the day we’ve had.”
Despite everything, his burns, the smoke in his lungs, the ashes still clinging to him, he let out a low laugh.
She tucked that one loose strand of hair behind her ear. He could see she was a wound ball of nerves.
“Please,” she added quietly.
They called him The Savage, yet that one simple word spoken from her lips undid him.
He gave a stiff nod, not trusting his voice, and moved toward the bed, lowering himself slowly onto the far side. He laid on his back, staring at the ceiling above, inches from her, but feeling every ounce of tension between them.
Silence settled. It was soft and warm and edged in something Halvard dared not put a name to.
“Halvard?” Elsie whispered.
“Aye?” His heart thudding so loudly in his chest, he was sure the lass could hear it.
“You were extraordinary today.”
He swallowed a lump in his throat as something tightened in his chest. “I only did what needed tae be done.”
“No,” she said. “You did far more than that.”
“Ye surprised me as well,” he said letting out a slow breath.
“How so?”
“Ye were everywhere ye were needed,” he replied turning his head toward hers in the darkness.
“Helpin’ wi’ those who were wounded. Comfortin’ th’ bairns.
Workin’ beside folk who ordinarily wouldnae trust an English woman.
Ye didnae falter once.” He let the compliment linger before adding. “Ye’re an incredible woman, Elsie.”
She inhaled sharply, as though unused to hearing such a thing. He felt a flare of anger toward anyone in her life who would not have cherished her as she deserved.
He hesitated, then asked the question that had been gnawing at him since hehad watched her with his clan at the village square.
“Ye kent how tae speak tae those who lost today. How tae see tae them without making them feel weak. Dae ye ken grief, lass?”
“Where I’m from,” she said softly, “we don’t show such raw emotion. Not publicly, nor even privately.”
He frowned in the dark. “That’s nay natural.”
“I cried alone when my father died,” she whispered. “I didn’t allow anyone to see… it didn’t feel… appropriate.” She took in a deep breath. “My mother died giving birth to me. My sister, Selene, is the closest I’ve ever had to a mother.”
He shifted closer to her, on instinct, no thought. He was unable to stay so distant while her voice trembled.
“Dae ye miss her?” he asked gently.
“Terribly,” Elsie breathed. “And knowing she’s worried for me, I can feel it, its horrid, like a weight I can’t put down.”
A hollow ache flickered in her voice, and something inside his chest broke clean in two. Without hesitation he reached for her hand under the blankets. She startled but did not pull away. Her fingers curled into his, fitting as if they had always belonged there.
“Ye ken ye’re safe here,” he said.
“Halvard…”