“Why not?”
“Some harm might befall ye.”
She gave him a long look. Tall, with those graceful, long limbs. Dressed casually in a rough tunic and plain kilt with well-worn hide boots. Hair loose streaming over his shoulders in an ashen-colored mane, with threads of gold and even copper in it.
Those eyes.
So intense was his stare, she had to look away from it. “Good thing you are here then, Master Deathan, is it not?” She resumed walking. He came at her side. “So I am not alone.”
A curious thing—she could feel his emotions. They surged inside him precisely the way the waves did, at her feet. High and wild one moment, gentler the next. How did it come to be he who had found her?
“Does yer woman ken where ye be?”
“She has gone back to change her shoes.”
He looked down at her feet.
She added, “I do not care for mine.”
“D’ye no’ think ye should wait for her?”
Oh, but she liked his voice. Deep and somehow, well, satisfying, it reached right inside her. He was not the sort of man to attract her in the ordinary way, being a Gael, but by all that was holy, he did attract her.
“I do not like waiting. Or taking time to change my shoes.”
“I see.” Was that a note of amusement she heard? “I suppose ye ha’ so many pairs ye can just replace them as ye need.”
“Pairs?”
“O’ slippers.”
“’Tis not that. Though I have ruined a good many over the years. I just keep wearing them till they come to pieces.”
“Most practical.”
She stole a look at him. “Are you laughing at me?”
“Och, to be sure, nay, I would no’ dare.”
“What do you think of me, then? Am I the savage princess determined to have her way?”
“I think a thousand things o’ ye. Far too much to say.” He drew a breath. “No’ that ye be savage. I think ye do enjoy having yer way. Which o’ us does not?”
“Where does this path lead, Master Deathan?”
“Nowhere much. Just up along the rocks and then eventually it peters out. Ye can climb on, if ye wish, to a headland. The view fro’ there is grand, but ye will no’ have a path.”
His accent was wonderful and danced in her ears.
“No fit place to escape, then?”
He slanted a look at her. “Is that wha’ ye wish? To escape?”
“Oh, yes.”
He gave that some thought while they walked side by side, their feet hitting the path in time.
The rhythm to another song, she thought. One he and she made together.
