Chapter Thirteen
By the timethey emerged from the last of their errands for the day, the sky above had started to darken. As Isla went to make her way back to the horse, Camron shook his head.
“We’d be better off taking refuge at the inn fer the night,” he told her, his arm around her waist as he steered her towards the small building sitting at the far end of the street.
It was certainly modest, with a thatched roof that looked as though it had been patched over a dozen times over the years, but smoke drifted from the chimney to indicate the warmth of a fire within. She could already smell the scent of something delicious in the air. He held the door for her, and she ducked beneath his arm to make her way inside.
Inside, the place was buzzing with activity. It had so many people, in fact, that none of them seemed to pay much attention to her, hardly glancing in her direction as she went to take a seat at the far end of the room. The place she chose was cloaked in slight darkness, so at least she knew she would not draw the attention of anyone else. The words of the blacksmith rang in her mind, about the next generation of Camron’s family, and she knew she would not be well-suited to discussing it further if she could avoid it.
The room hummed with chatter and the scent of ale, a fiddler picking out a merry tune close to the fireplace while a few people tapped their feet along with him. She clasped her hands in her lap, distinctly aware of the fact that she could not just sink into the crowd as she had once done. No, anywhere she went now, she would be the Laird’s wife, and she could not forget it, try as she might.
He returned to the table she had chosen with ale for the two of them, assuring her that he had managed to get them a room for the evening.
“Don’t they always keep one free for the Laird?” she asked as she lifted the cup to her lips.
He chuckled. “It helps,” he agreed.
She snorted slightly. “I cannae imagine it,” she remarked. “Everywhere ye go, everyone knowing who ye are…”
“Ye must have had some of that wi’ yer family,” he remarked as he leaned back in his seat, regarding her for a long moment.
She shifted where she sat; even now, after everything that had happened, there was something rather penetrating about his gaze, as though he could see further into her than she would have liked him to.
“What do ye mean?”
“A lassie as beautiful as you,” he continued, lifting his ale to his lips, not breaking her gaze for a moment. “I find it hard to believe ye didnae attract the attention of suitors…”
She cocked an eyebrow at him. More than surprised that he wanted to learn more about her past.
“Well, ye’ll have to find some way to believe it,” she retorted. “I never drew much attention before…” She gestured between the two of them.
“So, if ye werenae fighting off the hordes of men,” he remarked, a note of playfulness to his voice. “What was it like for ye? Growing up?”
“Ye mean, what made me like this?” she countered, only half-joking.
He shrugged. “Aye, that too.”
She paused for a moment, considering her answer. She could practically hear her father’s exasperated sigh in her ear as he protested another one of her adventures; running from their home to take to the hills in the middle of the night to admire the full moon from the highest point.
“I was trouble,” she admitted. “My father would tell ye the same thing. I never much knew how to… well, how to fit in with everything that was expected of me.”
“Now, that, I can believe,” he remarked, his lips skimming over the top of his cup once more. “I know ye’ve brought enough trouble in my heart already.”
She felt a flutter in her chest and did her best to douse it with another sip of ale. His gaze darkened slightly, and she wondered if he was considering all the frustration that she had put him through, all the ways that she had caused him trouble since he had taken her as a wife.
“Aye, perhaps ye should have spoken a little more with him before ye barged in and married me,” she teased him, all too aware that she was approaching dangerous territory but seeing little reason to hold back.
“And what would he have told me, hmm?” he pressed, leaning forward with obvious interest. “What ye like, what ye dinnae?”
“Aye, he might have,” she agreed, swilling her drink in her cup for a moment, playing coy. “That I cared more for the fields and the freedom than I did for sitting around in a stuffy dress and listening to men speak.”
“And yet ye never learned to ride?”
“He would never have let me,” she laughed. “He knew well that I would have taken off the first chance I had gotten if he had given me such a skill.”
“And now ye have it,” he remarked. “And yet, here ye sit.”
She pressed her lips together briefly. She didn’t know exactly what he was trying to imply; that he would have been glad to see the last of her, perhaps? Or that he was pleased that she seemed to have stayed here, where she belonged, at his side? She doubted that he would be kind enough to say out loud what he truly thought, even after what they had shared, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t probe for more.
