Chapter Ten #2
“Yet, you play host to them now?”
Again, he nodded, although there was nothing mirthful anywhere on him anymore.
“I doona’ think I like you much, my lord.”
“Please…” He brought his horse alongside her, imprisoning her there, and pulling on Blizzom’s rein to guarantee it, and then he finished his words. “…call me Langston.”
There was a long low note filtering through the woods, not as distinct as she’d heard it before, but at the same exact pitch. Lisle felt the flesh at the back of her neck whisper with it, while Langston didn’t look like he’d even heard it.
Lisle glanced about her, looking for the groomsmen, all of whom still stood, hands gentling and petting their mounts, yet with an air of expectancy she couldn’t see but had to intuit was there.
The long note was followed by one short one, then silence.
Lisle waited for the two that always accompanied it, but there was nothing but silence.
Then there were smiles and movement, and men mounting to file from the meadow. Lisle frowned, and Monteith watched her do it, with the same shift to expectancy that his men had possessed just a few moments before. She knew he expected her to ask…but what?
“Something annoy you, my dear?” he asked.
“Your endearments,” she replied automatically.
“That’s unfortunate. I’ve grown quite fond of using them.”
“Try using my name. Lisle. It’s a good Gaelic name. Ancient. My da used to tell me I was named for a Celt goddess. There are so many, it could be true, I suppose.”
“Did your da tell fables oft?”
“What makes you say such a thing?” Lisle stared.
“The way you suspect his word to be false. I dinna’ think it so. I thought much the same.”
“What?”
“Your name. You. Celt. Goddess.”
Lisle’s heart leapt forward, pushing liquid heat into her cheeks and making it impossible to keep his gaze. She moved it to her hands on the pommel. That was safer.
“Come. I’ve a surprise for you.”
Lisle started, wondering how he’d known the trail of her thoughts. “I doona’ think I like your surprises,” she replied to the saddle.
“You’ll like this one. I promise.”
“How would you ken what I like and what I doona’?” she asked in an aggressive tone.
“I know you’ll like this surprise because you like to eat, doona’ you?”
“I eat,” she replied.
He chuckled. Lisle looked about them. The groomsmen had melted into the forest at all sides of the meadow, although the trampled grass and wildflowers and horse droppings had left mute testimony of the volume of horses that had just been there.
“Good. I’ll have Widow MacIlvray prepare us a picnic. I fancy a bit of one today.”
“Are you na’ late for something or another?”
“Why would I be that?”
“You must have pressing business of some sort to see to.”
“I have business. It’s never pressing. Or, if it were, I’d make arrangements to change it so I could have a picnic with my wife today.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Why? Why do I have business? Why would it be pressing? Or why would I change it to be with my wife?”
“I’m na’ your wife because I want to be…
remember?” Lisle lifted her head and faced him as squarely as possible.
The clouds had been gathering while they dawdled about the woods, and now there were only shafts of sunlight tipping the meadow vivid and colorful in spots.
Unfortunately, one of them was directly beside him, putting half of him in perfect silhouette.
“And you have a very strange way of showing that…remember?” He returned the taunt, and she knew exactly what he was referring to, since he put three of his fingers against his lips and kissed at them before lifting them away.
There was nothing Lisle could do but face him as bravely as possible and try to keep her chin from quivering, while keeping him from guessing how rapidly her heart was pounding and how sweaty her palms got, or how every moment seemed prolonged to the point of eternity.
Langston’s face went stiff, too, making him look like a carved statue, and about as warm.
“I doona’ think I like the games you play, Mistress Monteith,” he said finally, although it looked like he’d rather crack his face than move it to say that much.
“Well, I know I detest what you play, Master Monteith,” she answered, in exactly the same tone.
“How do you know I play a game?”
“I think you play several. I just happen to know of one, for certain.”
“Your meaning?” he asked, lifting his brows and forcing what sunlight there was to turn the highlighted eye a dark amber color, while the other one remained a cool, dark shadow.
She looked at the beautiful side of him, highlighted so perfectly it might as well have been chiseled by a sculptor, contrasting with the dark, shadowed half, and wondered how God could so distinctly show her exactly what Monteith was. If she had a talent for paint, she knew what portrait she’d do.
“I dinna’ leave my chamber this morn,” Lisle offered and watched a twinge go across his shoulders, although if she hadn’t been watching as closely as she was, it would have gone unseen.
“I see.” His answer was short and simple. He added to it by tilting his head, putting shadow across all but half of his cheek and his chin, leaving the only light to glint on the perfection of his lower lip.
“And I dinna’ do it on purpose.”
He blinked. She could see it by the flash of light on the eyelash ends of the highlighted portion of his face.
“I was…beneath the bed.”
That knowledge made his eyebrows rise. She wished he’d cease doing that. It put a small crease across his forehead, and put too much emphasis on his eyes. She swallowed.
“You hide beneath the bed oft’, do you?” he asked.
“I was na’ hiding.” Lisle hadn’t much of a gift for lying, and her voice was probably giving her away.
“Nae?”
“I lost a seed pearl from the bodice…of my wedding gown. I was searching for it. I was beneath the bed for that reason.”
“I see.” He said it again, with almost the same tone and inflection.
Then he turned his head the opposite way, putting light across most of his face, while the dark side only managed to hold onto his nose shadow, a bit of the bulge of his upper lip, and the cleft in his chin.
Lisle hadn’t been exaggerating to Angela MacHugh when she’d spoken of his handsomeness.
He was the most comely man Lisle had ever seen or imagined.
“You heard?” he asked solemnly.
She nodded. “I heard.”
“Very good, then. Come. Picnics doona’ fare well with rain, and it looks like that is what we’ll be dining with, in short order.”
“Why do you lock me in?” she asked, stopping his movement to turn away.
“Security,” he replied.
“I would na’ steal anything.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. She’d only seen this expression once, the time he’d told her not to pity him when she’d held his cheek after kissing him. It was making all the blood rush to the top of her head and pound there since it had nowhere else to go.
“Doona’ ever say such a thing again. Ever. I meant for your security.”
Langston turned his back on her, pulling on the rein as he started forward. Lisle pushed her knees into her stallion, and was surprised when it worked. Blizzom stirred himself into a trot, catching up to Torment and matching his stride.
“Mine?” she asked when he ignored her.
He slid a sidelong glance at her, and a muscle bulged out one side of his jaw. She didn’t think he was going to answer her for a spell. “I pay my help well, but that’s nae guarantee of security.”
“From what?”
“Hatred.”
“Hatred?” she asked.
“I’m hated among my own countrymen. ’Tis of little consequence to me. I’m very familiar with the emotion already. I was detested by own father. From birth. I’ve lived with it my entire life. I know all about it. When such a thing exists, you practice measures. Security is one of them.”
“Nae one hates me,” Lisle replied.
“You wed me.”
“Those men back there…and those at the stables this morn. They dinna’ hate you.”
“Monteith clan. They know the truth.”
“What is the truth?”
“Something with consequences too vast to trust this thing between us. ’Tis too fragile, at present.”
“What thing between us?”
“You ask without reason. You feel it, too.”
“Uh…” Lisle said the one word, and let it falter. For some reason, he knew exactly what she was saying.
“It’s not something either of us expected, nor what we wanted.
’Tis there, though. Very strong. Like a clan drum beating.
Over and over; incessant. Sometimes it gets louder and faster and stronger.
Sometimes it’s muted and dull. Still there.
Even when I close my eyes and sleep. Still there. Beating. Deny it.”
Lisle gulped.
“Try,” he prompted.
She shook her head. The matching description was a definite surprise. She just couldn’t decide if it was pleasant or not.
“You ken why you doona’?”
She shook her head again. That seemed like enough.
“Because you lie so poorly.”
“I doona’!” she exclaimed.
He sighed hugely again. “Tell me where you truly were this morn, and we’ll see. Come. I canna’ go without sustenance. My business requires such.”
Lisle’s frown was going to be permanently embedded in her own forehead at the rate she was thinking. She dropped her eyes and wondered what motion would make Blizzom go back to the end of his leading rein.