“Ye are a chief, who doesna demand attention but gets it all the same. I saw the quiet, not-quite-dispassionate man at the inn.”
“Not quite dispassionate?” he urged.
“Aye, ye didna try to comfort me with false concern while I wept into my delicious stew. But ye kept watch over me like a guardian angel so that no one else dared take a seat at my table. Not quite dispassionate.”
Constantine blew out a little laugh and stepped back. He remembered her weeping. He would rather forget. Her weeping was what had convinced him that she needed protecting. Something had madeher run, and judging by her worn-down shoes, she had run a great distance. He now knew the reason for her traveling alone. Her betrothed. If he came to Tor, Constantine would not let him touch or take her.
He spread his gaze over her clothes and sighed through his teeth. “I will see that clothes are made fer ye.”
“Made?” Her eyes opened wider. “Nae, dinna go through such trouble fer me.”
He shook his head slightly, then turned for the row of doors. “Follow me.”
He showed her to the chamber three doors down from his room and left her sighing dreamily before the postered bed, its thick wooden headboard carved into an alcove between two windows.
He returned to the top of the stairs and shouted for Bethia, Tor’s head chambermaid. She was an older woman who had come to Tor with Alison. She took her duties more seriously.
“Aye, Lochiel?” Bethia asked, leaving one of the other rooms, a bundle of keys jiggling at her waist. He should have asked her to see to Miss Drummond instead of Joan. “Would ye like me to bring ye a basin of water?”
He shook his head. A basin was not enough to get days of dust off him. He would bathe in the loch beyond the castle later. “Miss Drummond needs clothes and new shoes fer her feet. See what she likes and tell the seamstresses and the tanner to fashion whatever ’tis.”
Bethia stared at him as if he’d just sprouted another head. Then, she nodded with a quick bow. “Aye, m’lord.”
Constantine watched her hurry off and then went to his chambers to rest before supper. He shook his head at himself while unfastening his plaid as thoughts and visions of Miss Ismay Drummond danced about in his head. He refused to let himself think about her another instant, but when he chased her from his thoughts, Alison replaced her. He almost could not remember her face anymore.But he knew he had loved it once, just as he loved the sound of her soft, agreeable voice.
Miss Drummond was not agreeable. She was stubborn and contentious.
Not exactly true, he corrected himself when he thought about it for longer than a moment. She was braw, standing up to him when he would avoid or deny. Calling him prideful and then an instant later, admitting that his confidence gave her faith that he would come for her. He—
No. Cease. What was he doing? He shook his head again and rubbed his hands down his face as he fell into bed. Could he not keep the troublesome lass out of his thoughts? But every time he did, other, even less welcome thoughts returned. It surprised him that Miss Drummond could keep Alison out of his head—even for a little while. No one could before her for five years now. And what about the accusing eyes of Alison’s parents, the MacMillans? He hadn’t thought of them in two days.
A slight smile crept over his lips. How had Miss Drummond managed to protect him from the glares and hateful stares of his wife’s beloved parents?
And was it their absence that tempted him to smile more than he had since the tragedy?
He soon fell asleep with Miss Drummond’s hesitant smile taking the place of one more easily given…one whose memory was fading. He reached out, trying to hold on to it. To her.Alison.She began to run away. He took off after her. They’d had so many plans that would never come to pass now.
He caught her in his dream and turned her in his arms, missing her face. He touched his fingertips over her soft, freckled skin. Freckled? Alison didn’t have freckles. She didn’t have storm-colored eyes and decadently plump, coral lips.
“Why are ye here, lass?” he asked her barely audible to his ownears. He meant here, in his dream, where Alison would otherwise be.
“I was trying to run away,” she told him, clutching his forearms as if running was the last thing she wanted to do.
But she had infiltrated his thoughts. He could not let her invade his dreams, as well. “Ye cannae stay here,” he said, releasing her.
She gave him a meaningful look before she disappeared and was replaced by the faceless image of his wife.
He woke up hours later, when the light outside his window faded to black. He stretched in his bed and almost smiled at how good it felt. He sat up. How long had he slept? What about Miss Drummond? He told her to leave. Was it a dream? Had she left? She was prone to running, after all. He bolted out of the bed and to save time, threw on his night robe instead of tucking and tying his plaid.
He didn’t run or admit to himself why he was walking with swift determination to her door. When he reached it, he knocked. After a moment of silence, he rapped on the wood again.
She would not leave the castle in the black of night, would she? He’d dreamed of telling her she could not stay. It was a dream. Of course she didn’t leave. Still, he found himself racing down the stairs, making candles flicker on the wall as he passed them. It wasn’t long before he ran into one of his cousins.
“Fionn, have ye seen Miss Drummond?”
“Aye, Chief, she is in the Great Hall. I just came from there.”
Constantine hurried off, leaving Fionn to watch after him with a stunned expression on his face.
