Page 45 of The Iron Earl

Domnall’s gaze shifted to his horse’s brown mane, then out to the landscape. “I’m telling ye that the men are already lining up to marry the lass, Lach.”

Lachlan’s head jerked back. “What?”

Domnall pinned him with assessing eyes. “Ye heard me.”

“Dom—”

“But her best chance is ye, Lach.”

“What bones are rattling about in your skull now, old man?”

“Her bones, cracked and broken if she doesna marry soon. Ye think a man like her father is going to let her just disappear?” Domnall shifted in his saddle, turning more fully to Lachlan. “No. A man like that sees the lass as his property. And I can guarantee that demon’s not the sort that lets his property be taken from him. It won’t be long ‘fore he puts together who she ran off with and he’ll be coming after her. He could already be on his way.”

Lachlan nodded, taking Domnall’s assessment seriously. He’d had the exact same thought of Evalyn’s safety too many times over the last week.

But to marry her off?

The notion of it struck him, slicing through his chest with the precision of a Spanish Toledan steel rapier.

He tamped down the clenching of his gut and cleared his throat. “Any of the men would make Evalyn a fine husband.”

“Ye truly mean that?” Domnall leaned forward, setting himself in front of Lachlan’s gaze. “Ye can stand by and watch another man bed the lass? That be the real question, Lach.”

Lachlan’s head instantly started shaking, the thought of her naked under one of his men stinging even deeper. “I…I…”

Lachlan’s stuttered words of denial stopped, his head stilling.

How would it be to watch Evalyn walk off arm in arm with another man? To stand by as another man stripped off that impossibly long row of buttons along her spine?

Domnall snorted. “Yer lack of words tells volumes, Lach.” He looked out to the hills before them. “It sounds to my ear like ye’d best decide sooner rather than later what ye mean to do with the lass.”

“Your ear is made of tin, old man.”

Domnall smirked. “Not so old she wouldn’t make me a proper wife, as well.”

“You?”

He shrugged. “I’d put my hand in line, were she partial to it. She’s a bonny lass, strong for her thin bones, and the fire she gets in her eyes when we needle her would be particularly suited to the marital bed.”

Lachlan’s teeth clamped down, his molars grinding.

Damn that Domnall would make her a fine husband. Better than any other of the lot.

Better than him.

Domnall rubbed the long whiskers, some white, some brown, along his chin. “Above all that, yer grandfather won’t take kindly to Baron Falsted’s daughter on his land.”

“Stepdaughter.”

“Ye think that’ll make a difference to the marquess?”

Lachlan’s look drifted from his friend and he shook his head. It was what he’d had planned, to leave her to the mercy of Vinehill—the very little mercy his grandfather possessed.

A plan that now needed to change.

He glanced at Domnall’s profile. His friend would make her a fine husband.

Hell.Anyone of his men would make her a better husband than he would.