“My sisters and I used to play in the forest all the time, when we were little,” she remarked, her voice softening as the memory filled her mind. “Gosh, it feels so long ago now…”
She trailed off, sadness catching in her throat before she could go any further.
“I just hope they’re safe,” she added suddenly, as though the very words had caught her off-guard.
“I’m sure they are.”
“I don’t know. Not with my father,” she confessed, her head dropping slightly. “He… I fear he has more debts than he has been honest about. And that as his daughters, we’re going to have to be the ones to make gold from his hay.”
“His debts?”
She nodded, as Fern snorted slightly, nudging an errant branch out of the way.
“That’s the reason I was going to be married to that man,” she explained. “He… he was a merchant. Or tried to be, at least. But he was never any good at it. He tried to buy up great swathes of stock, and he would take out loans to do so, from Scotsmen, often, because he was sure that people would not look to them for the truth about how he was conducting his business. I doubt that he ever thought much about how he would pay them back when the time came, if at all, but…”
Her silence held a heaviness to it that even he couldn’t miss. Anger bristled through him. It was hard for him to believe that any man could look at his daughters, and see them as pieces he could use, goods he could sell to the highest bidder.
All at once, they reached the spot he had been leading them to; a small pond, that was dappled with soft light where it reached through the leaves. The air was colored with a slight green tinge, as though the earth itself was rising up to meet them. Her lips parted, her eyes lighting up, and she clasped a hand to her chest.
“Oh, this is beautiful!” she remarked, hopping off of Fern with a surprising ease, as though she’d all but forgotten she hardly knew what she was doing. She hitched her skirts up and dropped down to the water’s edge, her knees in the soft earth, gazing down into the glassy pond. A few mossy rocks peeped above the surface, and she smiled as she took them in.
“They almost look as though they’re covered in velvet, don’t you think?” she murmured, tracing her fingers above them, like she could almost feel them.
“Aye, I suppose they do.”
Arran brought the horses to a halt, glad to let her have this moment where she could forget about everything else. She had seemed so weighed-down by the enormity of all that had happened, and to see her almost girlish, free from that concern, her face lit up and reflected back at her in the water, made him certain of his choice to bring her here today.
Once he had secured the horses to a nearby tree, he moved to stand beside her. She traced her fingertips over the surface of the water, leaving slight ripples in her wake. He could remember doing much the same thing when he had been a child.
As he stood above her, he could see his face reflected in the water. It struck him, all at once, how hard and weathered he looked compared to her. Here she was, her skin as soft as the petals of a blooming flower, and then, beside her, her husband; a man who looked as though he had walked through hell and back, too harsh for her to ever truly understand.
She caught his eye in his reflection, and he swiftly drew his gaze away. He was distinctly aware of how alone they were together out here, and, though he’d never have done anything to take advantage of it, it was best that he not let his mind stray in such a direction.
“Do you come out here to hunt?”
Her question caught him off-guard. He paused for a moment, considering it, then shook his head.
“There’s naught out here to hunt. Not worth the trouble.”
“Not like the deer, then?”
“Nothing like that.”
She rose to her feet, the two of them standing just a yard or so apart. A chill rushed through the air, and she wrapped her armsaround herself, her hair raising slightly from her neck. The soft curve of her throat beneath it reminded him of a doe, the velvety skin, the…
“Where did you learn how to fight?”
He forced himself back into the moment.
“What do ye mean?”
“I saw you back there, with Gregory,” she reminded him. “You know how to handle a sword. When did you learn?”
She sounded, to his surprise, almost envious. He cast his mind back. It had been so long since he had learned, he had almost let it slip from his mind.
“My father taught me, when I was a lad.”
She sighed, pushing a hand through her hair.
