Page 19 of Stealing a Kilted Heart

“What else is there?” he asked, eager to hear more. At first, Fia seemed startled by his question, not expecting it, but then she turned her gaze back to the sky with a smile and traced another pattern.

“I call them the star-crossed lovers,” she said, and Knox could see why she would come up with that name. The constellations she traced could resemble two people if he looked close enough. “Dae ye see how it seems they are driftin’ apart, but can never truly be away from each other?”

Knox hummed, nodding slowly. He was not the kind of man to come up with such stories, to see such beautiful things in the sky, even if he enjoyed looking at them. Knox was practical, a soldier before he was anything else. Even when he inherited the title of the laird, he had always known that deep down, he would be a solider more than anything.

He liked Fia’s whimsy, the fact that she could find these stories within her and make up a world that belonged to her and her only. He couldn’t deny that it felt special to have her share it with him, but he also wondered if she had ever shared it with anyone else.

Bane, surely, kens.

“Dae ye have a star-crossed lover, then?” he asked, unable to stop himself.

For several moments, Fia didn’t speak. She only stared up at the stars, but her expression had shifted slightly, betraying a sense of grief that was palpable in the air between them.

“I thought I did,” she said, her voice trembling just slightly when she broke the silence. “I thought… well, it daesnae matter now what I thought. There was someone I thought I would wed but he was only usin’ me tae kill his time.”

Save for that initial sense of grief, there was nothing else to betray Fia’s emotions. It was as though she had suddenly turned herself into a still statue, closed off to him.

She was very different from the woman who had been sitting next to him only moments prior. It must have hurt her greatly, he thought, if the mere mention of that was enough to make her raise walls around her so quickly, and so he didn’t ask any further questions on the matter.

How could anyone refuse such a lass?

Not only was Fia a beautiful woman, with her large, doe eyes and her full lips, the soft curve of her jawline and the cascade of honey blonde hair, but she was also kind and warm and quite clearly intelligent, if she was capable of coming up with such beautiful stories. She was also a bit… goofy. And Knox adored it, for it made him feel light. Most of all, she wasn’t playing a role, trying to obscure her true self to be more palatable to him like so many other women, and it was this honesty Knox appreciated.

He enjoyed her company more than he had enjoyed the company of any noble born woman who had come to the castle with the intention of a marriage. This was what he sought in his wife—this ease, this openness, this beauty that came from within. Had Fia been the daughter of a laird instead of a peasant girl, he would have already proposed.

The thought startled him. For so long, he had tried to avoid marrying one of the women his council had suggested to him, but he could easily imagine a life with Fia by his side. He could make her happy, he thought, and she could do the same for him. And yet, circumstances would never allow such a thing between them.

Taking a deep breath, Fia raised her hand once more, plastering a smile to her lips that did not quite reach her eyes. “An’ that is the great horse,” she said as she traced another cluster of stars. “It moves the moon from east tae west.”

“Imagine ridin’ a horse o’ stars,” Knox said as he followed the path of her index finger. “Wouldnae that be somethin’ . . .”

“Ach, I wouldnae dae that,” Fia said with a soft laugh, shaking her head. “I never learnt how tae ride a horse.”

Knox’s head whipped to the side, shocked as he was to hear that. He didn’t think he had ever met someone who couldn’t ride a horse, but then he began to wonder if everyone in the castle knew. Could it be that the servants didn’t? Could it be that something which seemed so simple and integral to life to him be completely foreign to some of the people in his own castle?

He had never given it any thought. It was only now, talking to Fia, that he was suddenly confronted with the possibility and the fact that even though they all lived within the castle walls, his experience of reality was vastly different from that of those around him.

“We were very poor, all me life,” she added, lowering her gaze as if ashamed of it. “Me parents were poor an’ the Grahams were blacksmiths, but they had too many mouths tae feed, an’ when everythin’ happened… well… I never thought I would need tae leave the village or that I even could one day, so I never learnt.”

It was the kind of life Knox could hardly imagine. They were from different worlds, that much was true, but now that Fia was there, in Castle Stuart, he could make sure she would live a better life. Anyone who held such kindness in their heart deserved it, and since Knox had the means to provide it, he would.

The first thing he would do, he decided, was take Fia horse riding.