“Aye,” Adam replied.“Two o’ them.Blinne and Caitilin.”
Eve was still on edge, despite the fact he’d recalled their names correctly.She took a sip of wine to calm her senses.
“Tell me about them,” the laird urged.
Eve described them as she’d invented them, exaggerating their beauty a wee bit to keep him interested.
“And your father?”Pitcairn asked.“Is he eager to see them wed?”
“Oh, aye.”She thought quickly, placing her hand atop Adam’s.“Ye see, as the eldest daughter, the next in line for Tiarna will be my husband, Ronan.”
How curious to say that.My husband.She’d never portrayed a character with a husband.The words rolled with pleasing ease off of her tongue.
“But my father,” she continued, “would like to see my sisters wed to Scottish noblemen.”
“I see.”Pitcairn swirled his wine thoughtfully.Clearly he was weighing his odds of wedding into Irish royalty.
Meanwhile, the ladies, fascinated by Ronan, quizzed him.
“How long have ye been wed?”one of them asked.
“Two…” he said.
“Months,” she supplied, though in retrospect, she thought it might have been better to say “years.”
“So ye’re newlyweds,” another exclaimed.“How wonderful.”
“Were ye betrothed?”the first lady asked.“Or was it a love match?”
“Betrothed,” Eve replied.It was the easiest answer.
Unfortunately, at the same instant, Adam said, “’Twas love at first sight.”
Eve’s eyes widened.“That is, wewerebetrothed, but—”
“After the betrothal was signed and we met for the first time,” Adam interjected, “I knew I had to have her.”
The ladies sighed again.So did Eve.
“Where did ye meet?”someone asked.
Eve chose the most logical place.“At my father’s keep.”
But Adam waxed poetic.“When I first laid eyes on Aillenn, she was standin’ beneath a laurel tree…outside her father’s keep…watchin’ the sun rise.She turned at my approach, and I remember she looked like a saint, her dark hair haloed in golden light, and her beautiful eyes shinin’ like gems.”He clapped a hand to his chest.“When she smiled at me, I knew I’d ne’er love another.”
He looked her straight in the eyes then, and Eve felt her heart catch at the warm affection in his gaze.Everything in her brain told her he was only creating a fiction to maintain their identities.But her soul told her something else.
“And what did ye think o’him,m’lady?”another woman wanted to know.
She stared at the lady, struggling for words.Then she decided she could let inspiration answer for her.Moving her gaze to Adam, she spoke the truth.
“I thought he looked like…Adam.”
By the furrow in Adam’s brow, he feared she meant to expose his real identity.
She rushed to add, “The first man.Made by God in His image.Handsome.Heavenly.Perfect.”
There were oohs and ahhs over that.
