He did. “Have you heard tell of me doing anything akin to that again? With any lass?”
“They fall for you easy eno’. No need to take what’s given willingly.” Her brogue was getting stronger as her irritation grew.
“I’ve been turned down plenty, Mairi. I lost more than my control that day. I lost my best friend, and I want to know what it’ll take to bring her back.”
She jolted at his words, turning to face him with confusion on her face. The night was clear enough for him to see her. There might not be many stars, but the moon was bright enough.
“I was never your best friend, Connall Aberbeag. You’ve got men aplenty around you. And Liam—”
“Liam had his nose in a book most times. And you know that there’s a distance between a laird’s son and the rest of the clan. You were the one who could run as fast as I. You were one I told when my mother grew sick. And you were the one who held my hand when we laid her in the ground.”
“That was a different time,” she said, her voice gentle.
“Aye. It was a time I could still turn to you. I could speak my mind and have you understand. And when neither of us spoke, there was still a peace between us.”
He saw her mouth open as if to speak, and he longed to hear what she would say. But in the end, her lips closed again. She looked over his shoulder, back toward the house, and he reached out to stop her from running. He didn’t touch her, but she flinched as if he had. And that devastated him more than a scream.
“What have I done to make you fear me so?”
“You tease and you push, Connall Aberbeag, and you never stop.”
“I spent a year letting you be back then. And when I heard nothing, I tried again the next spring. There’ve been months when you’ve not heard a peep from me and times when I bring you apples to have you throw them back in my face.”
“You came to claim me like a sack of meal bartered for apples.”
“I did not. I’ve brought you chocolate from Edinburgh and silk for a dress. I’ve spent more on you than I did my own mother.”
“You hadn’t any coin when your mother lived.”
“And I’ve got better things to spend my money on than a woman who won’t forgive.”
She threw up her hands. “I forgive you! I forgave you within an hour of me crushing yer balls with my knee. An’ so I’ve told you every time you think to bring this up again.”
“Then why can’t you look at me? Why do we pick at one another and make wagers on who will marry first?”
“Isn’t that a friendship? I don’t make wagers on my wedding with anyone else!”
He had no answer for her, no words to ask his question so she could answer plain. There was a distance between them beginning from that day. He longed to cross it, but he didn’t know how.
“I’m about to pick a Sassenach to wed,” he said. “And you as well. That will change both our lives, but I want to keep something of our old still. Something between us that could be good for both of us.”
“You frighten me,” she whispered.
Her words were so quiet that he nearly didn’t catch them. But he had been studying her face and so read the words off her lips.
“I’d never hurt you.”
She shook her head. “You don’t even know what you do,” she said. “When you’re close to me, when I look at you…” She pressed her lips together.
“What?” She was so God-damned frustrating! Why wouldn’t she finish her thoughts?
She lifted her chin such that her nose was tipped with silver. It was her fighting stance, but her words made no sense to him.
“I lose my thoughts!”
She glared at him as if that made sense.
“What thoughts?”
