Alex entered the Great Hall with his men. They followed the Elliots toward tables that kept them away from the Scotts or anyone else they wished to avoid. However, their path took them past the table he most wanted to avoid. He caught sight of the dark hair and olive skin he knew so well. He could glimpse Caitlyn’s profile, the smile that graced her face as she laughed at what the woman who sat beside her said. He watched as her eyes widened, and she twisted on her bench to find him. Her smile radiated warmth and excitement, and Alex’s heart stuttered before he forced the wall back around it.
Caitlyn stepped over the bench and straightened her skirts before making her way toward Alex. He fought, and barely succeeded, to keep his eyes from feasting on Caitlyn’s petite stature. His relationship with Caitlyn had been a constant for nearly his entire life, but once again the dynamic had shifted. He watched her weave through people until she came to stand before him. He watched her eyes widen for a moment and prepared for the pity or disgust that inevitably came when people caught sight of his scar for the first time. He was unprepared for her smile to brighten as she took another step closer.
“Alex.” Caitlyn’s melodic voice filled his ears. He’d listened to her sing alongside her mother and sister, Cairren, countless times over his years fostering with her clan. Even her speaking voice reminded him of a songbird’s trill. He was aware she expected as warm a greeting, but he kept his gaze fixed beyond her. She turned to glance behind her, but she appeared confused when she faced him again. Alex knew she couldn’t figure out at what he stared. He intended to stare at anything or anyone but her. Unable to ignore her, he continued to gaze past her.
“Caitlyn.”
“Caitlyn? When have I ever been aught but Caity?” Caitlyn asked, and Alex heard the surprise and hurt in her voice.
“It is a pleasure to see you,” Alex said instead of answering. He made to step around her, but Caitlyn shifted with him.
“You make it seem like seeing me is the most unpleasant chore you’ve ever had. In fact, I’m uncertain you have seen me since you refuse to look at me,” Caitlyn accused. Alex wanted to say that he’d seen everything about her that he loved. He’d seen her twinkling gray eyes with the green flecks, the sun-kissed light brown skin, the figure he’d spent years fantasizing about. But his adolescent dreams died on the battlefield six months ago.
“Then you will have to excuse me.” Alex tried once more to move away, but she grasped his left arm. He was unprepared and couldn’t keep from flinching. Caitlyn’s eyes opened to saucers, but there was still none of the pity he expected. She released his arm, clasping her hands before her instead.
“What happened?” Caitlyn whispered.
“Battle. Good eve.”
“Arse,” Caitlyn mumbled. Alex glanced down at Caitlyn and regretted it at once. He’d seen the pain in her eyes before, but this was the first time that he was the cause.
“Caity,” Alex murmured. He made to reach for her, but his left arm refused to cooperate. It was a blinding reminder of why he needed to keep his distance.
“Mayhap this isn’t the right place. Will you talk to me later?” Caitlyn asked, hoping discretion was all that he needed.
“No.”
This time Caitlyn moved aside when Alex attempted to walk past her. She swallowed before turning away. She didn’t understand what had transpired, but she was certain it was Alex’s injuries and nothing else. The Armstrongs and Kennedys were still allies, and Alex and Caitlyn hadn’t said a cross word to one another in years. She returned to her seat, her eyes on her trencher rather than following Alex.
“He was once so attractive,” Caitlyn heard Lady Sarah Anne Hay announce. “But now? That heathenous beard does naught to hide that hideous scar. He should have the good graces not to scare ladies by showing his face.”
Caitlyn turned a contemptuous glare at Sarah Anne, but before she could say anything, Lady Catherine MacFarlane spoke up. “You should take pity on the mon. With his limp arm, he’ll never be a warrior. He was once so desirable.”
“I wonder if his arm is the only thing limp,” Lady Margaret, Sarah Anne’s older sister, snickered. “I wonder what other battle scars he suffered. I might have let him toss my skirts, but what’s the point if he’s been unmanned. Besides, I don’t want that hand touching me, even if naught else has gone lame.”
“He’s not a leper,” Caitlyn seethed. “You know him to be my friend. Cease.”
“He didn’t appear to be your friend when you had to hold him in place to talk to you,” Sarah Anne mused.
“I think Lady Caitlyn has finally found a suitable mon,” Margaret chimed in again. “Between his deformed arm and face and her deformed skin color, they suit one another.”
Caitlyn had heard many prejudiced comments about her skin tone since she arrived. The ones she’d heard about Cairren were far worse, but no one had ever called her older sister “deformed,” at least not to her face. But as much as the snide comment about her olive hue bothered her, she was livid at Margaret calling Alex deformed. Without thinking, she stood and tossed her brimming chaliceful of wine at Margaret and let the empty vessel roll across the table and into Margaret’s lap.
“If I had a sword, I would run you through,” Caitlyn declared, uncaring that everyone at the surrounding tables and halfway across the Great Hall watched and heard her. “Speak like that again, and it will be your blood, not my wine, that stains your gowns.”
Caitlyn left the table a second time, but this time she stormed past stunned faces. She spared Alex a glance as she approached, but her only acknowledgment was a narrowing of her eyes. The guards at the doors barely opened them and moved aside in time. Caitlyn was too angry to think straight. She was uncertain where she wanted to go. She only recognized she needed to escape before she jabbed her eating knife into Margaret’s eye.
Anger at the women and hurt from Alex’s coldness coursed through her until she wanted to both scream and cry. She stopped at an arrow slit and gazed out over the gardens. The stars and moonlight were bright, and she could glimpse the rose bushes she walked past while she accompanied the queen on her daily constitutional. She sighed as she leaned against the cool bricks, her cheeks feeling on fire in comparison. The heightened emotion seemed to leach from her body, leaving her feeling tired and lonely. It wasn’t the first time she’d felt that way, but she’d never imagined she could with Alex at court. She’d always been so happy to see him, just as he was to see her. But his rejection pained her in a way it hadn’t since he and Cairren became adolescents and thought they were in love. They’d gone for long walks together and refused to allow Caitlyn to join them.
Alex and Cairren eventually realized they weren’t in love so much as loved one another as siblings. They’d thought to marry because it seemed natural, since they were the same age and had known each other for so long. Fortunately for Cairren, they’d realized they didn’t suit as well as they thought, and now she and Padraig Munro had a blissful marriage. Alex visited Dunure often, even after Cairren left home and became a lady-in-waiting. Alex and Caitlyn had always been close, but she’d been certain something had been developing between them over the last few years that left neither of them thinking they were like siblings. She supposed she’d erred to believe such a thing.
With a sigh that seemed to come from her very soul, Caitlyn turned away from the arrow slit and walked toward the passageway that led to the stairwell to her floor. She paused when she thought she noticed a shadow move. She reached for the dirk she kept at her waist, and her left hand slid along her skirts to assure herself that her other, hidden dirk was in her pocket. She swept her gaze along the shadows before she angled her back to the wall and glanced the opposite way. Nothing seemed to approach from behind where she had stood, and she saw nothing else move in front of her. Nonetheless, she kept her dirk at the ready as she gathered her skirts and hurried down the passageway. She took the stairs two at a time before she bolted to her door, which she locked and barred.
Caitlyn had one too many men make assumptions about her over the years she’d been at court to shrug off any sense of danger. She knew that she hardly overreacted, since men had followed her to her chamber before. She fought to catch her breath as she wondered who she’d seen because she was certain someone was there lurking. Her heritage made many gossip about her, wondering if she were already secretly bedding men or whose offer she would accept first to become a mistress. If the only unique thing about her was her French mother, she wouldn’t be a target. But her mother’s father had been a Saracen, once stranded in the south of France. He’d married her widowed grandmother and together they had one daughter. Lady Collette Kennedy and her daughter Cairren shared a rich olive-brown skin color that Caitlyn had often envied until she understood the cruelty that came along with it at court. She was far lighter than the other two women, her Scottish father’s influence stronger in her than in Cairren. The sisters shared Innes’s unusual gray eyes, making their paternity indisputable. But her Saracen lineage made many wonder if she behaved like a woman in a harem.
For all the insinuations and propositions, Caitlyn recognized that having lighter skin than Cairren protected her. But it didn’t keep men from pursuing her the few times she moved around the castle alone. She chided herself for letting her temper get the better of her. Not because of the way she treated Margaret, but because it made her foolish enough to disregard her safety.
Alex watched Caitlyn lean against the brick wall and wondered what she was thinking. He’d been unable to hear what caused Caitlyn to throw wine on her fellow lady-in-waiting, but he’d recognized Caitlyn’s expression. He feared she might gut the other woman at the table. She’d been a boisterous child who settled into being merely effervescent as a woman. But she had a temper that rivaled her French mother’s. Few underestimated Lady Collette more than once. She nearly gelded one of his men a few years ago when Collette learned what the man said to Cairren just before the younger woman left court.
