And Buckie had heard, as a glance at the door proved. Already, the old dog’s other eye had popped open and his tail was thumping against the floor.
Ronan ignored him.
Lady Gelis flashed the beast a smile.
“Do not encourage him.” Ronan frowned. It wouldn’t do for Buckie to become attached to her. Or look forward to excursions he could no longer enjoy. “His hips are bad, so his days of adventure are over. His legs don’t always support him and he falls. Buckie ne’er leaves the keep.”
“Indeed?” She gave him a look that could’ve been interpreted as implying that Buckie’s plight was his fault and had nothing to do with the beast’s wobbly back legs.
Fighting the ridiculous urge to defend himself, Ronan wondered how everything had slid out of his control. He’d come abovestairs to see what had happened, possibly to defend Lady Gelis against whoe’er or whate’er had ravaged the bedchamber. Instead, he’d found her tending the hearth fire and the room already put to rights.
Worse, she asked questions he didn’t care to answer and shot him looks that made him feel like a gangling, beardless laddie who’d just been caught with his hand down a kitchen lassie’s bodice.
As if she knew it, she smiled at him.
Not a warm, adoring kind of smile as she’d given Buckie, but asmugone.
“Talking about your dog and that-which-you-don’ t-wish-mentioned-in-his-presence doesn’t change that I know you were preparing for one.” Her words explained the smugness.
Walking briskly to the bed, she picked up one of his folded tunics and placed it with a touch too much care in his opened travel bag.
“Eilean Creag is a busy place,” she mused, reaching for another tunic. “There are comings and goings through all seasons. Some men wish my father’s advice or to trade with him, while others plead aid or offer an alliance. The stream of visitors never ends.”
She dropped the second tunic into the leather bag. “Do not think I am some light-minded creature unable to recognize a man’s I-daren’ t-say-the-word kind of gear. Or” — she looked at him meaningfully — “when someone is in haste and must rush away before a task is completed.”
Ronan’s brows snapped together. “A MacRuari ne’er leaves any task unfinished. Nor do we run from aught.”
He stepped closer to the bed — to her — a flash of pride whipping through him.
Glen Dare and his family might be blighted and cursed, but he loved both fiercely.
Nor was it for naught that each newly born MacRuari babe was fed a spoonful of clan earth as his first nourishment. As Torcaill had sung earlier, during the feasting, the tradition sealed the child’s lifelong bond to his home glen.
Such as it was.
It remained theirs.
And there wasn’t a MacRuari living, dead, or yet to be born who’d deny its pull. From the clan’s dimmest beginnings, their ties to Glen Dare were unbreakable; their love of the dark woods, bog and moor, and the steep, mist-hung hills, deep and abiding.
Sacred.
As was their honor, something that seemed to weigh more heavily on him the longer he dallied in his new bride’s fetching, rose-scented presence.
He shut his eyes, drew a tight breath.
Then, knowing he shouldn’t, but unable not to, he seized her by the shoulders. “Hear me, lass, and I will tell you of Glen Dare’s MacRuaris.”
“Ooh, aye?” Her voice was a purr, soft and honeyed. “Mayhap there are things I could tell you!”
Ronan blanked his emotions, more than sure that she could tell him things.
Certain, as well, that he did not wish to hear them.
He let his gaze bore into hers, willing her to understand. “Anything a MacRuari does is done with deliberation and purpose, and always for the good of the clan.” He tightened his grip on her, hoping to strengthen the truth of his words. “You err if you believe otherwise.”
“Say you?” Her eyes sparked. “We both know there isn’t a Highland chieftain in all these hills who wouldn’t claim the same. I am more keen to hear why it is MacRuari custom for their men to shun their brides.”
“Nae, that is no’ the way of —” Ronan broke off, guilt sweeping him.
