Page 22 of Steel & Surrender

A flicker of something crossed his face—almost a smile—although it disappeared as quickly as it appeared. “Aye. There’s a good stretch of water not far from here.” He paused. “I used to swim. Before.”

The word hung between them before he added, “Now I’m trying again.”

They walked a few more paces in silence. Brìghde glanced at him then away again, uncertain whether she ought to pry further.

“Why?” she asked at last.

He shot her a look. It wasn’t sharp, as she’d come to expect from him, but measuring. “Before he died …” He hesitated, jaw tightening. “My brother made a list.”

Brìghde’s grip tightened on the garron’s lead. “Of what?”

“Things he meant to do.” His mouth twisted. “Things he never got the chance to finish.”

“And ye mean to do them for him?”

He shrugged, but it lacked conviction. “Someone should.”

She studied him a moment longer. Unlike their last meeting earlier in the summer, there was no hostility in his face. Only weariness. “What sort of things?”

His gaze flicked away, toward the hills. “Climb Ben More. Swim the Sound.” A pause. “Foolish challenges, I suppose.”

“No,” she replied firmly. “Not foolish at all.”

He glanced back at her, surprised.

“They’re hard things,” she went on. “And worth doing.”

Something shifted in his expression then—his gaze was guarded but not closed.

She hesitated after that, chewing briefly on the inside of her cheek. “I climbed Ben More a few years ago … with my father.”

He stilled. “Did ye?”

She nodded. “Ye’ll need a good while to train … but if ye’re set on it … I could help ye … and show ye the way when ye’re ready.”

The words seemed to catch him off guard. “I don’t need—” he began, then stopped.

The refusal came instinctively. He was almost defensive.

She looked away, heat flushing over her. Hades. She’d just gone and offended the man again. “Ye’re right, ye don’t. Forget I said anything.”

Satan’s turds.

Greig’s heart kicked hard.

What was wrong with him today?

He hadn’t meant to tell the Forge Maiden any of it. Not about his decision to build up his fitness and strength—and certainly not about the list his brother had left behind.

He hadn’t told anyone, not even Davy or his parents, about it.

There was something about Brìghde Boyd that loosened his tongue, and that alarmed him.

Her spirited response to Ian’s unwanted advances earlier had impressed him. He liked that she had fire in her belly.

Even so, she was right—if he hadn’t been there, things might have gone ill for her. She’d bruised Ian’s pride, and he wasn’t the sort of man to forget it.

She’d caught Greig at a weak moment too.