“Daughter! What manner of dress is that?”
Guiltily, Erica looked down at herself, seeing for the first time the mud-spattered dress and the new rent in her sleeve. Her wild ride through the countryside had not come without a cost. It was no wonder the giant oaf had looked down his nose at her.
Flushing now, Erica curtsied and came and sat upon her own chair, lower than that of her parents and smaller. She bit her lip, hating how such a placement made her feel as though she were still a child and not a woman about to be married.
“I truly am sorry, Mither. I was upon my horse…”
It occurred to her that neither of her parents cared much about what she was saying because a commotion at the door had distracted them.
“Are you sure he is a good choice?” she heard her mother ask almost under her breath as the stranger approached.
“I would trust Finn with me life,” her father responded, giving his wife a quelling look. “Sure, he might be a mite rough around the edges. He lives in the forest somewhere, affiliated to no clan: a loner by all appearances. Something tragic in his past, I suppose, not that he would ever say.”
Her mother gasped, eyes wide. “Tragic!”
“Aye. But he has the strength of ten men and is honorable to a fault. Lives by his own code as it were.”
“Faither, please tell me… Is he truly part wolf?” Erica asked quickly before the man could come within hearing.
At this, her father laughed, the sound exploding with a hearty good cheer. “Legendary, perhaps. I have heard stories about Finn, things which no average man could do. But nay, he’s hardly a wolf.”
Finn came to a halt before the family and knelt, a gesture of loyalty and honor that brought a smile back to the face of Erica’s mother, who valued such things. If he heard any of their discussion, he gave no sign of it, though surely it would have been impossible to ignore her father’s laughter. Erica was suddenly conscious of his eyes, a strange color, more green than blue but pale like the growth of new spring. He looked at her, not with contempt exactly, but seriously—it was as though he was assessing her somehow—before returning his gaze fully to the laird, who was still exclaiming an effusive welcome.
“Finn, I be right glad ye came! I would have ye lead the men who are to escort my daughter to the man who would wed her, a mutual friend of ours, whom I ken ye have served in the past. I daresay ye brought the letter to arrange the whole affair. What say ye? Are ye ready to see the matter through?”
Finn returned his gaze to Erica, and this time she stared frankly back. Let him look. She was an O’Donnell and could claim close clanship with the O’Donnell, after all, while he was…well, nothing at all. A man without a clan who worked for whatever laird would hire him. All the same, her heart gave a funny leap when he nodded once, and she answered her father with a single word.
“Aye.”
