She clutched her cloak around her, feeling Brigida's familiar weight shift as she plodded over the hills.
"What do ye expect tae find when ye arrive at this village?" the Laird asked her.
Isla looked up at him, surprised. She did not imagine that he would be one to make idle conversation, but here he was looking back at her, expecting an answer. His face didn't have the savage look she'd seen him wear whenever he was dealing with her; in fact, he looked positively handsome with his expression relaxed in thought.
"I really cannae even begin to wonder," she breathed. "I... I just hope that whatever it is, I will be able to go back home after. I feel as though I should regret coming... but I dinnae think that I do."
He glanced at her again then. His expression was questioning, but he did not voice any thought that might have been whirling behind his eyes. His chestnut brown steed shook its head, bright mane flying wildly. The man reached out and patted the horse's neck softly, and Isla felt something inside her fall, just a little.
It was different to see him acting gently; it was a side of him that she hadn't seen, and she had previously wondered if he'd even had. She wondered how he acted when he was alone when there was no one around to watch him, no pressuring gazes of his clansmen to see. He seemed like he could always be a hard man, even in private, but Isla wondered if that were true. She had seen his fury and still held a fear of him that trumped anything else she could feel, but somehow she was starting to see him in a slightly different light.
She kept the thoughts to herself and focused on the moors ahead. Isla had resigned herself to a long, four days of silence, but then the Laird spoke up again.
"I hope that ye are tellin' me the truth, lass," he said. Isla was stunned to hear that his voice had no edge to it at all. In fact, it was the most sincere he had sounded since her arrival at the MacThomas keep.
She said nothing but ducked her head, her hands straying to Brigida's white mane.
In the silence that followed, Isla was left wondering what was on the Laird's mind that he looked so sunken deep in his thoughts. She could not voice the question but instead allowed her mind to wander. Most of her thoughts were taken up with questions about him, and what spurred her on more was the fact that she knew from his sidelong glances that he was thinking of her as well.
* * *
Iain had not exchanged any more words with Isla when the evening fell across the sky. The clouds were a strange mix of purple and orange, the sun setting as the evening descended quickly. The temperature had dropped considerably, and Iain reached back to free the linen blanket rolled up on the back of his steed.
He was about to wrap it around himself when he stopped. The girl next to him was shivering; her name was Isla, he reminded himself. He looked down at the blanket and sighed.
"Here, lass," he said. "Isla. Cannae be freezin' tae death before we even reach your village, I suppose."
She caught the blanket, tucking it into her arm as she smoothed out the balled-up linen. He watched her face flash in surprise, then suspicion as she regarded him.
"Thank ye, m'Laird," she said. "But what about yourself?"
"Iain," he said. "My name is Iain. I wouldnae mind if ye call me that from now on; it's a little strange for me to hear someone other than my clan call me by my title."
It was a sorry excuse, and he knew it; it was a customary sign of respect for anyone to address a Laird as such. He saw her black brows draw and her lips pull forward in a pout-like frown. She was thinking, considering his request, perhaps wondering if it were a trick.
"Iain," she said, trying his name out. "Well then, Iain, are ye not cold as well?"
He shook his head, a shrug lifting his shoulders. He had to answer, but he couldn't find the words. Her voice, when she'd said his name, had sounded so like the dream woman who haunted him. Iain was suddenly curious whether or not the dream would show up tonight as well, now that Isla was here in front of his very eyes.
"I have much more weight than the likes of ye," he said. "The wind does not blow right through my frame as it does to ye. I'm no more bothered by the night's chill than I am in my own bed. As a wee bairn, I would play out on the moors until well past time I should have headed home. My father... He would scold me over and over, yet I never listened."
He couldn't understand why he let that last line out; perhaps his guard had been dropped. Iain had been thinking of his childhood while gazing at the sunset but had not expected to voice the thought out loud.
"It sounds like ye had a pleasant childhood," she said. "I wish that my father was attentive in such a way..."
She had avoided his questioning glance as she wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. The last line was said quietly, as though she hadn't really meant for him to hear her.
"What do ye mean?" he asked; his curiosity had been piqued. "I thought you wanted to go back to yer father?"
She looked up and smiled, but a grim sort of shadow had fallen over it. He had not seen her smile once the entire time he had been in her presence and suddenly what her face would look like if it brightened up. A desire to see her truly joyful sprung up inside of him, seemingly from nowhere.
"I do," she said, the wry smile still present on her lips. "It's not that I dinnae want to go home. I miss my sisters greatly, but... Well, my father was not as kind as yours seemed to have been when we were children. He was... a very strict man."
Iain hummed, finding no reply to that. Isla looked up beside him, her eyes on the night sky.
"Like yourself, I was always the rambunctious child, the wild one," she said. "As ye can see from where I've landed meself today. My other two sisters were much more obedient than I, but... If even they acted up in even the slightest of ways, my father would never hesitate tae bring his wrath upon them as well."
Her voice had fallen away and what was left was brittle, but he could tell that she was trying to hold back an emotion that had perhaps been building up inside of her.
