It was only a kiss and not even one on that lovely mouth that beckoned him forward. A kiss on a soft hand. He met her startled gaze and placed another nearer her wrist where her heartbeat could be felt. Her soft gasp revealed that he’d both surprised and affected her with the touch of his lips there.
It was only a kiss, but it was the beginning of something much, much more, if he had his way in this.
Chapter Twelve
Any attempts to maintain a balance between her curiosity and her chosen path deteriorated in the next days. After that intimacy, Sorcha questioned every decision she’d made and her own integrity. She’d tried to walk away without shaking in reaction to the searing touch of his mouth on her wrist and thought she’d succeeded. Yet, she could not help but turn back to see if he’d been affected as well.
His dark gaze rested on her in spite of the growing distance between them and each time they met or passed one another in the next days, that same intensity filled his. Regardless of what Jamie had said about her not being prey to his hunter, her skin tingled and heat pooled in her belly when he looked at her so.
Even when it happened during innocent encounters.
* * *
Sorcha was walking with the boys back from the well when Alan rode through the village and called out to them. With the bairn on her hip and Wee Jamie running circles around her, she held her hand over her eyes to block the sun and nodded to him, keeping her distance even while taking in his appearance. But the boys both reached out for him and Wee Jamie took off running in his direction.
Something in his gaze and reaction to the child eased her immediate fear and she watched as he controlled his horse while leaning over and scooping the boy up in his arms. Wee Jamie’s happy chortling mixed with the deeper, more masculine laughter of the man and her heart beat faster at the sound.
Then Robbie began crying out and fussing in her arms until Alan walked the horse closer and held out his hand to take him. With the deft movement of past experience, soon both the bairn and the boy sat happily in Alan’s lap, babbling and chattering at him in their obvious joy.
Her own heart filled with a hunger she’d not felt before. A need so deep it took her breath again as she watched this man with these young boys. He needed bairns. He needed family. He needed... His gaze met hers and the hunger for such things intensified until she thought she would burn from it. Wee Jamie’s near escape broke the moment and Alan nodded to her.
‘I will take them to Clara and return for you,’ he said.
Sorcha feared being too close to him right then. If he touched her now, if she sat behind him and wrapped her arms around him, she might never let him go.
‘I will walk.’ It took a long, noticeable pause before she could utter the words, but she did...finally. He nodded and rode off with the wee ones in his arms and Sorcha wanted to weep.
With sadness at what could never be.
With regret over how they’d met.
With emptiness at the needs that swelled now within her for family and a future.
Lucky for her the next time she encountered Alan she witnessed a different side of him, or she swore she’d break down and cry each time she did.
* * *
The next day, Sorcha found herself in the lady’s solar with the other women, when Brodie came to seek out Arabella’s opinion over some matter or another. Alan followed Brodie into the chamber and greeted each of them. From the brief words exchanges between Alan and Eva, Arabella, Margaret and the others serving there, Sorcha saw the genuine esteem which he had for them. And, the honest regard they each had for him.
She was blinking away tears when Alan walked to Brodie and offered some comments to whatever the topic of their discussion was. It was not the words, but the way in which he spoke to Brodie and Arabella and offered not only his opinion but his help in the matter that drew her attention. Try as she might to force her attentions away from the conversation, she could not. Though she did not watch them, she listened to his reasoned tone of voice during the back and forth between the three of them.
‘Saraid?’ She blinked and glanced up to find Alan standing before her now. ‘Are you going back to the village soon? I must speak to Jamie and could take you.’
Her resolve not to be alone with him nearly melted away in that moment and she was only saved from foolishness by the lady.
‘I need Saraid’s help with a task here, Alan,’ the lady said. ‘If you would?’ Her words turned an order into a request and Sorcha nodded to her.
‘Certainly, my lady,’ she said softly.
Alan nodded at her then, an expression of candid disappointment in his eyes as he followed Brodie out of the solar. At the last moment, he turned and glanced back at her and she expected to see the heat there once more. Instead, he smiled at her and it warmed her heart. No man in her life had ever considered her in that way.
Not in the way her father watched her, nor in the way his allies and friends did. Not in the way her servants or the villagers at her home did. Alan looked at her as though she was someone worth seeing. A woman worthy of his time and attention. As the door closed behind him, Sorcha understood that it was something she would never forget no matter what happened to her.
* * *
The next few days turned dreary and wet and she did not spend much time outside or far from Clara’s cottage. The rains matched her mood this third morn since that kiss.
Standing in the doorway of the cottage, Sorcha watched as the rains did not so much fall as they instead flowed around the houses and down the paths and roads of Glenlui village. These were not the torrents of rain that had covered her escape from their camp next to the river that night. No, this was more like all around them than pouring down on them.
