Ailsa arched a brow, looking doubtful. “Och, nice try, sweetling, but ye are nae going to trick your eldest sister. I ken that look. That’s the dreamy look.” She paused, mischief flaringin her expression. “Might it be a certain injured warrior who has captured your thoughts?”
Eilidh didn’t have Davina’s bright red hair and her corresponding propensity toward blushing, but that didn’t mean that her cheeks didn’t flush red enough to make any kind of denial absurd.
Besides, before Eilidh could even summon the words of a refusal, Ailsa let out a squeal of glee so girlish that, for a moment, the years vanished. Just for a little while, there was no war and Ailsa wasn’t the Lady of a Clan. They were the same lasses in the first blush of youth, Eilidh with her giggling affection for the nephew of the cook, who always cast sidelong glances at her until his aunt shooed him away, and Ailsa sighing over…
Well, Ailsa had been sighing over Ewan Buchanan, as it happened, before their first engagement had gone awry that first time.
But even if the object of Ailsa’s affections was unchanged from that time, nearly everything else was different. It was a relief to pretend they were those carefree young girls again, even if the illusion could not last.
“Look at ye,” Ailsa crowed. “Ye are glowing like a sunset.”
“Stop it,” Eilidh said, covering her cheeks.
“Something happened between ye two.” Ailsa danced a silly little dance that made Eilidh cover her eyes as well, if only to preserve her poor sister’s dignity.
“Truly,” she said, her laughter undercutting her words. “Stop it.”
Ailsa let out another giddy little squeal and squeezed in beside her sister in the window seat, then peppered Eilidh’s head with kisses until Eilidh had no choice but to accept this onslaught of sisterly affection.
Eventually, Ailsa gave up her deluge of teasing. She rested her cheek against Eilidh’s head and wrapped her arm around her younger sister’s shoulders. It was so perfect, sitting here in the safety of Ailsa’s arms.
She missed moments like these. She hated the heavy knowledge that war would interrupt them sooner rather than later.
And, indeed, Ailsa sighed just a moment later.
“Just be careful, would ye, my sweet girl?” she murmured. “Just be careful.”
Eilidh knew there was wisdom behind her sister’s caution, and yet she felt an instinctive bristling of defensiveness.
“The Gunns are our allies,” she said, as much to reassure herself as to convince Ailsa.
“They are,” Ailsa agreed, caution belying her words. “But allies dinnae vanish when trouble arises. Allies step up for the fight. And so far…”
She didn’t need to say the next part, but maybe Eilidh needed to hear it.
“So far, I’ve nae seen such a thing from Ciaran, nor from any of the Gunns.”
Eilidh’s fingers twitched toward the shard of mirror, but even with that reminder of all the questions that remained unanswered, her faith outweighed her doubts.
“Potentially,” she said, cautiously at first, then with more certainty, “the Gunns didnae come to our aid because they need aid themselves.”
Yes, that made sense. Hadn’t Mairi said that the clan had lost their business after the uprising? Eilidh had seen how tense Clan Buchanan had gotten during those long months after Gordon had burned down the distillery, and that had only been one year’s worth of coin taken from them. How worried might they all have become if they had lost their income for decades?
“Perhaps…” Ailsa allowed.
But Eilidh’s fancy had gotten her in its grip, no matter her intentions.
“Perhaps we need to be the ones to help them,” she went on, sitting up straight enough that she dislodged Ailsa’s grip around her shoulders. “I ken that ye have your family here—your husband, your son—but I’m nae any use to the Buchanans. I could help the Gunns. I could… I could help them make connections with the other clans. Mairi said they’ve been keeping to themselves, but that willnae help them get their feet back from under them.”
“Eilidh,” Ailsa said warningly.
But Eilidh didn’t even really hear her. “So mayhap this connection between us isnae a bad thing,” she went on. She could see it all so easily now—a way forward, a way in which she and Ciaran could explore the heat that had sparked between them when they’d kissed. “I dinnae mean to make anything more of it than it is?—”
“Perish the thought,” Ailsa interjected, her tone dripping sarcasm.
Eilidh ignored this. “But marriages have been made upon less than a mutual political goal,” she said, a smile overtaking her face. “I could help him, help his people. I could have apurposeif I were Lady Gunn. I could help them rebuild, help families relight their hearths, and bring joy back to a place that has been robbed of that happiness for so long.”
“And ye as Lady Gunn, the princess of the household?” Ailsa interjected with a laugh, not an unkind one, but one that was robust enough that it startled Eilidh from her reverie.
