He stared at my legs for a long time, then swallowed hard. “Sure. Grand. But I reckon one of us should hold tight to the bible whilst we’re both without trousers.”
I laughed. Eventually, he laughed too, and we both relaxed a little. I pulled my thermal shirt down as far as it would stretch, then tried to act normal while I reheated the soup. I sat on the bed to eat while he sat on the chair with his elbows on his knees, his feet wide, and his longshirt draped down in front of him for modesty.
We laughed a lot while we ate, without saying much aloud. All it took was a pointed look or a roll of the eyes to set us off. And even though the darkness outside was nearly complete, theinside of that bothy seemed brighter than ever before, with a candle burning in each of the three windows, and a fourth on the table with the patchwork blanket spread beneath it.
If I’d been an artist, I would have painted this, with Cian MacInnis included in the scene—only with pants.
The front tails of his shirt hung between his legs, which left his powerful thighs exposed. I’d seen the left one when he’d stormed through the door, and I was happy to see that it had gone back to its normal color, matching the one on the right.
He caught me staring again. “Lookin’ fer the bible, Matty lass?”
“I guess I’d better.”
He nodded to the bed. “Just there, by the pilla.”
Neither of us laughed.
I took our bowls to the ledge. He added wood to the stove and patted the handle. “We’ll leave this open fer a mite and watch the fire, aye?”
“Sure.”
At a loss for what to do next, I just stood there and watched him move to the bed. He propped a pillow against the headboard, then sat against it with his hairy legs outstretched. He placed the other pillow in front of him, set the bible beside his hip, and patted the blanket in front of the pillow. “Come, woman. Let us put this story behind us.”
I had nearly forgotten about storytime. I blamed it on the kiss and the way it had cleared every thought out of my head like an insulted chef throwing a fit, using his arm to swipe all the dishes off a table in one movement.
The dread wasnearlyforgotten, but not completely. It hung in the back corner, trembling, waiting to see if the whole night would be ruined.
“Hang on a minute.”
I went to the trunk and pulled out a bunch of folded, colorless fabrics, grabbed the sketch book and slipped the blue silk book of poetry from the shelf. I hid my nerves as I strolled to the side of the bed, set the books beside the bible, and spread the cloths over Cian’s long, sculpted legs.
When he snorted, I gave him a sharp look, and he bit back a smile.
“Do you want me to listen or not?”
His expression blanked. “Indeed, I do.”
“Well, I’m telling you that my ears won’t work if I’m looking at your bare legs. And this is all that’s dry.”
“I see yer point.”
When I was done, I climbed over one leg and settled in front of him. The truth was that I already knew I would need his arms around me when he tried to explain that the world didn’t function the way I thought it did. And if there was some sort of paranormal, witchy thing going on here, in real life, then I was going to need the magic of his strong arms to help me get through it with my head in one piece.
“All right, C. A. I. N. MacInnis. Tell me this story.”
As if he had read my mind, his arms came around me and pulled me back against him. Even with the pillow between us, I could feel his warmth just as well as I could feel the heat rolling out of the little stove door.
“The storm stopped,” I said. “Maybe it wants to hear this story too.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The memory of a MacInnis is stored in his veins. More than five hundred years after the MacDonalds ran them off the isles of Skye, the insult is remembered and passed on in the blood. So it was no wonder that, when Callum and Sarah MacInnis were killed trying to stop reivers, the blade they found in Callum’s gullet had a MacDonald mark on the hilt.
The couple’s only child, Cian, was taken to the Cairngorms and put into the care of his father’s mother, Hannah, an old woman who wondered at her purpose in life until this wee’un crossed her threshold and well and truly took hold of her heart.
As for Cian’s heart, she helped him heal slowly, encouraging him to share his memories of his parents, never chiding him for speaking of the dead as some do. And when a chair would rock of its own accord, and he’d wonder if it might be his mother or father come to visit, Hannah would hum and nod and allow the chair to rock until Cian and the ghostie were satisfied.
When he was nearly grown, she reckoned he should try some schooling at the University in Edinburgh, so as not to waste his talents, as taught in the bible. And it was there, in those streets, where he was caught up in the Jacobite cause.He wondered if his gran even knew about “the king across the water,” and how his god-given throne had been taken.
