Ailsa worried that she might start to weep again.
“The problem is that I rejected him. He was kind and decent and I was childish. So, yes, he has agreed to marry me. But before, we might have had… an amiable marriage. But now?”
“Men and their pride,” Vaila said with a disgusted shake of her head.
Ailsa twisted her mouth to the side. “Well, yes, but in this case, I daresay he has cause to be wounded. I made it abouthim, made it sound likehewas the reason I didn’t wish to marry. However, it was me. I was just too young.”
“Could you nae just explain that to him?” asked Davina, ever the optimist.
“I cannot think of how it would sound like anything but an excuse,” Ailsa fretted.
“You’re all being silly,” Eilidh said with her eyes still closed, startling them all. “None of this will matter if he is your great love.”
Ailsa choked on her breath. “If he is mywhat?”
But either Eilidh had fallen back asleep or she had no more to say because she just lay there, a soft smile on her face.
“Silliness,” Ailsa scoffed under her breath. “This isn’t aboutromance. It’s about duty. For the family, for Castle Dubh-Ghael.”
“Of course,” Davina said, patting Ailsa’s arm reassuringly.
And that was that.
Or it would have been, if not for the quiet voice in the back of Ailsa’s mind that kept asking,what if? What if?
Ewan slammed his broadsword into the training post.
“Oi there,” James called, sounding amused more than truly chiding. “Do consider the bloody trouble that will be to replace it, an’ ye chop the thing right in half.”
Given that the post in question was a half-meter thick spear of oak that had stood in the training yard for as long as Ewan had been alive, he knew that James was teasing him.
Because he was not in the mood to be teased, Ewan just grunted. He heaved on his sword grip, then heaved a second time when it stuck in the aged, hard wood.
James watched this with undisguised delight.
“Do ye think ye’ll be finished with this any time soon?” he asked. “We’re going to miss breakfast if we dinnae move quickly.”
“No,” Ewan said flatly. He pointed his sword at his friend. “Get yer weapon. Let’s spar.”
“Again?” James complained. He got his sword, though, and swung it up into position.
The clashing of their blades was all the answer Ewan offered.
The logical part of his mind—which, admittedly, had not been running things for the last day, not since Ailsa Donaghey had suddenly reappeared in his life—recognized that James had good reason to complain. Ewan had been already in the training yard when James had arrived just after dawn, and he’d dragged his friend into sparring match after sparring match. He’d only relented when James had been obliged to train some of the Keep’s soldiers.
“Ye know, the thing I do to earn my food around here,” James had said pointedly when Ewan had hesitated in releasing him.
Ewan, with a great deal of ill-tempered reluctance, had turned to hack at the post for a while. When the trainees left, most of them shooting uncertain looks over their shoulders at the Laird’s heir, Ewan had drawn James back in.
None of it helped. Ewan kept hitting things, and each strike made him angrier and angrier.
And, worse, James refused to meet his temper with anything other than good-humored forbearance.
It didn’t even satisfy Ewan when, after meeting one last blow with his own defensive parry, James tossed his sword aside and all but collapsed onto the ground.
“Enough,” he panted, groaning as he dropped down onto his back. “Give it a bloody rest, would ye, man?”
With a roar of frustration, Ewan slammed his sword into the post one more time, then left it there when it stuck. He sat down beside James, his exhausted muscles at war with the thrumming fury that coursed through his veins.
