“If ye like dancing, I would be much obliged to take a turn with ye, Lady Eilidh,” he said grandly.
As it turned out, Ciaran didnotwish to thank the man who had saved him from himself. Instead, he fantasized about running this guard through with a sword, damn the consequences.
Eilidh gave him a smile that emphasized how very inauthentically she had been smiling at Ciaran.
“I would love that, Gavin,” she told the man, who looked like he’d died and gone to heaven, the complete bastard.
The guard was too smart to miss his chance. He swept her back out onto the floor as the musicians started up a new reel,and it was only moments before Eilidh’s laughter, a finer tune than anything the fiddlers could play, echoed.
When Ciaran finally tore his eyes from Eilidh, he found Kirsty looking right at him, a feline grin on her face.
“That lass is a minx of the most dangerous kind,” she observed, nodding almost in approval.
Ciaran merely grunted. Privately, though, he didn’t disagree with his aunt a bit. And, like the damned fool he no doubt was, he didn’t have the good sense to let this make him want to stay far, far away from Eilidh Donaghey.
Eilidh, for all that she loved dancing, found that eventually her feet simply would no longer hold her. She’d accepted every offer she’d gotten that evening, even the ones she might have normally declined. She was enjoying Ciaran Gunn’s glares too much to do otherwise.
He’d told her that he wanted nothing to do with her family’s problems—and she was part of that family, so he must have wanted nothing to do with her.
But he wasn’t acting like he wanted nothing to do with her. He was watching her like he had some responsibility to her—some claim over her.
This was very annoying. So Eilidh felt it was only fair to annoy him in return.
Thus, she’d danced until it became a very real concern that she might fall flat on her bum if she took even one more step.
So, when Martin Buchanan, one of Ewan and Mairi’s distant cousins, asked her to dance, she told him she was headed to her room for the evening. When he asked her if he could escort her,however, she found that she couldn’t resist his sweet, babyish face.
“That would be verra kind of ye, Martin,” she said.
Martin, who was likely a year or so Eilidh’s junior and looked at least two years younger than that, blushed furiously.
“Thank ye, miss,” he said so quietly that Eilidh could scarcely hear him over the din in the Great Hall.
From there, it ought to have been easy enough. Martin would walk her as far as the hallway where her room was. He would bid her goodnight, and she’d do the same, and then she could collapse into her bed and he could go off, feeling grand and grown and manly for having escorted a helpless young woman through the danger-ridden halls of the Keep—or whatever stories young men told themselves about chivalry and honor.
They almost made it, too, except Martin’s feet froze at the foot of the stairs. As he did not release Eilidh’s arm when he did so, she was yanked to a halt.
Eilidh’s first thought was that he’d been suddenly taken ill.
“Are ye well, Martin?” she asked kindly.
Nobody liked to unexpectedly vomit. It was one of life’s most unpleasant events, and if he was at risk of such a thing, surely kindness was merited.
But instead of erupting with the contents of his stomach, Martin blurted out words.
“I love ye!”
Eilidh stared at him.
“I’m… sorry?” She couldn’t have heard him correctly.
But Martin, no matter what else she might say about him, was courageous enough to stand his ground.
“I mean to say… I admire ye greatly, Eilidh,” he said. “And I would like to court ye.”
Oh. Oh, dear. Oh, no.
Eilidh struggled for something to say that was even remotely tactful.
