The baby stirred in her arms, smacking his lips noisily, though he didn’t wake.
It was enough to break the spell, though, the one she’d woven with her story and the lush softness of her mouth. He pulled back.
“We need to speak,” he said. “Uninterrupted. Without something calling either one of us away.”
She regarded him for a moment in that way of hers, the one that reminded him that she was more than silly laughter and pert looks, the one that said that she was the latest daughter in a long, noble line, and that she had the canny mind to show for it.
When she looked at him like this, he feared that she could see right through him, like an angel assessing his soul at St. Peter’s gates.
“Aye,” she agreed, nodding as though the weight of the choice required the motion to seal it, like a handshake on a bargain, or a kiss at the altar. “Yes. Tonight? We can meet in—” The faintest hesitation—“my bedchamber?”
“I’ll see ye there,” he said, fighting the urge to rub at the place where his heart was practically burning inside his chest.
He couldn’t afford to think about visiting Eilidhin her bedchambernot with the babe sitting right there. It would be unseemly, given how Ciaran’s body wanted to react to the idea.
He left, hearing her coo soothingly to the stirring babe as he went. Christ, but no woman had ever affected him like this, and he knew, somehow, that none other ever would.
He dared to feel something like hope as he returned to his bedchamber. He would bathe and dress properly for meeting Eilidh tonight. He would show how he respected her, show that this was no mere trifle to him, despite his earlier actions.
And then he would come clean. No matter that she was likely to cast him aside forever as soon as he did.
Strangely, he didn’t feel only terror at the idea. He also felt… lighter, as if just deciding to unburden himself from his secrets started the process of lifting the weight.
He was practically laughing at the thought when he went to sit on his bed and found that every iota of mirth in him froze over in an instant flash of ice.
Because there, on his pillow, was a necklace—one he recognized from trying to avoid watching Eilidh fiddle with it through dinner the other night. It was a small thing, a shiny wee bauble, but what had caught his attention was the ribbon, which was the exact shade of seafoam green as her eyes.
Or, rather, it had been. Because now it was soaked in blood.
The bitter tang of it filled Ciaran’s senses, and it was only the fact that he’d just left Eilidh and come straight here that kept him from a full-blown panic.
It couldn’t be her blood. There wasn’t time to harm her and plant this here, not between when he’d seen her and when he’d arrived. Itwasn’t hers.
But the thought provided little relief, especially when he saw that the pendant lay atop a note, the words clear even where the paper was spattered with streaks of gore.
Kill the Buchanan heir, it read.Or watch your land burn.
15
Eilidh might be a dreamer, but she wasn’t anidiot. She knew that if she met Ciaran alone at nightin her own chambers, it was likely that… things would occur between them. Itmightjust be more kissing, but she doubted it. Neither of them had proven particularly adept at avoiding the other’s charms.
And, aye, the dreamer in Eilidh thrilled at this idea of having Ciaran become hers in a way that was irrevocable. But that didn’t mean that she didn’t know it was possibly a bad idea. That didn’t mean that she wasn’tnervous.
Therefore, she considered it perfectly reasonable that she kept looking to Ciaran at supper, hoping for a bit of reassurance.
But she got none.
He was little more than a shadow in the corner of the Great Hall, silent and grim, staring off into the distance without so much as touching his food. Eilidh tried to catch his eye until she felt stupid doing so—and then tried a little bit more, finding that she couldn’t resist—but he never once looked her way.
Perhaps he is being circumspect, she told herself.God knows one of us should be.
Perhaps he’s nervous, too,she thought.Men are permitted to have qualms about… matters of the heart, too.
And finally, when he slipped from the hall before she could rise, before she could speak so much as a word to him, her inner voice began to ring with a faint note of hysteria.
Maybe he wants to throw everyone off the scent, she pleaded with her racing heart to believe.
She clung to this idea as she returned to her bedchamber and waited. He would come. Hewould.
