She looked around to see the changed faces. Where uncertainty had once lived, now there was nothing but ease. Women nodded to her as if she had always sat at the high table at his right hand.
No, that wasn’t it. They nodded at her as if she had alwaysledthem, which she had. Even some of the men who frowned at most things let their shoulders drop.
Finn and Anna clapped from Davina’s bench, their cheeks bright, their eyes fixed on the floor where their mother moved with the Laird. The piper grinned as if he had been waiting five years to play this tune.
“Are ye going to tell me?”
Kristen returned her gaze to Neil, watching his green eyes shimmer in the torchlight. “Do ye really want to ken?”
He gave a charming smile, the kind that made his jaw look sharper, as if that was possible. “Well, I wouldnae be asking if I didnae want to, would I?”
A brief silence passed between them before she responded.
“They daenae need much. Just the truth. Ye gave them that. I only wrapped it in prettier words.”
He studied her face as if it were a problem he meant to solve. “Ye make it sound simple.”
“It isnae,” she relented, keeping her tone even. “But people want to believe that their home is steady. Ye tell them that it is, and they will do the rest.”
Home.
The word settled between them as his chest expanded on a breath. She tried to match it with hers, but the excitement she was feeling at that moment was just too intense to ignore. It seemed to rush through her entire body in waves, almost threatening to escape if she was unable to do something about it quickly.
“Ye speak as if ye ken them all,” he noted, breaking through her reverie.
“I try,” she responded, her voice clear. “Names help when winter comes. It matters to be seen, and that is all I have done for the past five years.Seethe people for what they are. ”
Neil made a small sound, too soft for judgment, not quite agreement. “Names helped me once.”
She lifted her eyes. “Whose?”
“Men who kept me alive,” he rasped. “Men I couldnae save.” His jaw twitched, then stilled. “And now, yers.”
Her steps faltered. He steadied her with the smallest press of his hand. She swallowed and pretended it was the floor.
Around them, the circle tightened, friends standing shoulder to shoulder, couples moving with the steady patience of habit. She felt the press of the night against her skin like the soft heat of the ever-glowing fireplace.
The knot in her chest tightened.
This was not the place to ask him what he meant. After he had stepped out of her life for almost three days, this was not the time to open fresh wounds.
She reached for lighter talk to keep them standing.
“The piper using the hard wood,” she observed, nodding toward a dancer who hopped over crossed steel and grinned. “He will blow his lips out if he keeps showing off like that.”
A huff of a laugh escaped Neil’s lips. “Aye. ’Tis a small price they have to pay for playing at the biggest cèilidh in the village.”
“Neil—”
“’Tis alright, I am only joking. Nay man deserves to have sore lips from playing the pipe for too long.”
Relief slipped in with the laugh and loosened her shoulders. She felt the brush of his hair against her temple when he bent to the pattern, and she smelled clean wool and faint steel and peat smoke.
If they had met like this before they had gotten married, would she have said yes to him strictly for love and not for convenience?
The thought stung, and she pushed it aside almost immediately. Her hand rested in his and did not tremble.
He was quiet for three beats. Then his voice reached her ear, low and certain. “I missed ye.”
