Her head lifted, and she looked over at Mary curiously. Mary didn’t delve too much into her sister’s marriage, and with good reason. She had always supposed that whatever went on between Arran and Amelia was none of her business. As long as her sister was happy, she had no right to go demanding how that happiness had come about. But curiosity was getting the better of her, and besides, it wasn’t as though there were many people she could talk to about such topics.
“What about him?” Amelia asked, tipping her head to the side in curiosity.
“Did you… do you trust him?”
Amelia stared at her for a second, clearly utterly confused by the question. But then, she nodded.
“Of course I do,” she replied, sounding almost offended by the suggestion. “Do you think I’d have had a child with him if I doubted that I could trust him?”
“No, it’s not that, I’m sorry,” Mary apologized, realizing how it must have sounded to ask her such a question. “I suppose… I suppose what I really want to know is whether you felt you could trust him from the moment you met him.”
Amelia fell silent for a long moment. Mary knew as well as she did that the circumstances of her meeting Arran had been anything but normal. When Mary had seen her sister led off to marry this man, who her own father’s advisor had tried to insist was too dangerous for her to so much as be left alone with, she had been terrified. But Amelia had taken it with a stoic certainty, and perhaps that was because she knew Arran would be able to provide the life he had for him. Perhaps she had always trusted him.
“I suppose I did,” she replied. “At least I trusted that he’d take care of me. I trusted that he would do everything in his power to make sure I was safe, even if I didn’t know what that might entail. It wasn’t as though I was in love with him from the moment I met him, but I… I sensed something in him, something I wanted to trust. And I’m glad I did."
She gazed down at Robert again for a moment, her face softening. Then, she peered back up at her sister.
“Why do you ask?”
Mary bit her lip. She didn’t want to worry her sister with news of what had happened that night. She supposed it was most likely that Arran had told her about it, anyway, given that they were husband and wife. However, judging by the expression on Amelia’s face, she seemed genuinely curious to know what had happened, unsure what had caused her sister to question her husband in such a way.
“I was just… I wanted to know if you thought you could trust Arran’s judgment on someone.”
Amelia nodded at once.
“Of course you can,” she replied, as though it should have been obvious. “He knows this place better than anyone. And all the people in it, for that matter. Why? Did the two of you…?”
She trailed off. Mary reached out to stroke the soft, downy hair on Robert’s head. She could hardly come out and tell her that it had been about a man, let alone the very same man that she had been dancing with all those months ago, a man who had burned himself onto her memory like a brand on cattle.
“I just wanted to be sure that you could trust the man who was going to be raising my nephew,” she replied jovially, trying to lighten the mood between them. She was not asking her sister all of this because she doubted Arran’s abilities as a husband or a father. No, she could tell from the way he treated Amelia that there was no chance he’d ever do anything to hurt her, or their new baby, for that matter.
But when it came to Mary’s attraction to this mysterious Laird Fraser, she could not decide if she was to trust her instincts or Arran’s. The dream she’d had seemed to be a warning, stirred from somewhere deep within her. When it came to this man, she might not have been entirely safe.
She should trust what her mind was telling her. Her mother had always told her to believe what her instincts warned her of, told her that many a woman had been saved by trusting what her gut had told her, and that she would have been foolish to try and ignore it. She gritted her teeth, deciding then and there to keep her distance from that man no matter what desire pulsed inside of her when he was close to her. She could tell that she would be safer keeping her distance. And, given that it had been all that time since they had last seen one another, she doubted that she would face too much in the way of trouble when it came to that.
“I should get some rest,” Amelia yawned, rising to her feet again. “Are you sure you’re alright, Mary?”
“Of course I am,” Mary replied, quickly smiling up at her sister. The very last thing she wanted was to worry Amelia when all she needed was rest. “You go to Arran, get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Amelia leaned down to drop a maternal kiss on her sister’s head, and then made for the door. Mary stayed at the edge of the bed. She knew she should have been trying to get some more sleep, but there was something in her that would not rest, no matter how much her exhausted body called out for it.
Something that burned so bright for Kiernan Fraser, she knew she’d not be able to snuff it so soon.
4
It was a bright, cold morning as the carriage rumbled over the path that led to the village of Stonehaven; the clean air filled Mary’s lungs, and she gulped it down in droves, glad that she was not still stuck up in her bed as she had been all night, tossing and turning.
It had been days since she had last seen Kiernan, and yet, her mind seemed to drift to him whenever there wasn’t anything directly in front of her to distract her. She had hoped that getting away from the Keep for a while would go some way to clearing her mind and she had joined Arran’s friend Gregory and a few of his men to run some errands in the village.
She peered out of the window, to the rolling hills beyond. They were studded with the bright yellow of gorse, a few scatterings of purple heather amongst them, embroidering the green like a delicate thread through a dress. She tried to keep her focus on the beauty of the landscape around her, but, as ever, she found her mind drifting back towards the one man she had been doing her best to forget.
Kiernan. She had spoken that name so many times inside her head, it almost felt like second nature to her now, thoughshe knew it shouldn’t have. Had he been thinking of her the same way? She had wondered that often, as she had woken from intense dreams about him night after night. Each dream had followed the same path, starting out with the slow dance when they had first met, and then, sliding into something darker, her body trapped in the confines of a small room, contained, his eyes and his teeth gleaming in the darkness, looking as though he wanted nothing more than to take a bite out of her.
She pushed the thought aside as the thuds of the hooves of the horses pulling the carriage started to slow down. They had finally arrived in the village, a bright, bustling place that seemed alight with chatter. Gregory arrived at the door and pulled it open, offering her a hand to help her step out.
“Thank you,” she murmured to him, and he bowed low playfully.
“My pleasure,” he replied, and she couldn’t help but laugh. She had grown fond of Gregory in the time she had been here. He was kind and witty, a good balance to Arran’s more serious nature. She could see how the two of them had become such fast friends, and she sometimes wondered why it was that a man of his age had not yet found a wife.
