Chapter 10
CHAPTER 10
G etting onto the horse was certainly not Lissa’s finest moment. To call the experience humbling would have been an understatement — it was downright embarrassing, especially for a woman with as wide a range of competencies as she had. Once she was finally perched in the saddle — after a truly absurd amount of undignified huffing, puffing, and grunting in the scramble aboard — she had to fight a strange urge to present Niall with a ten-minute lecture on all the things that she was, in fact, incredibly competent at. Defensive driving. Sharpshooting. Firearm safety, hand-to-hand combat, security tactics, a particular interest in poisons she’d pursued as a teenager — hell, even the sleight-of-hand tricks her father had taught her. Anything to prove to this very polite Scottish man that her profound inability to get on a horse with any grace was an outlier when it came to her skillset.
“It was very kind of you not to laugh,” she said, discretely covering the fact that she was still puffing a little from the effort. He was still on the ground, holding the horse’s reins, which she was grateful for — the creature had clearly sensed her lack of skill the minute it had laid eyes on her. She could feel it shifting its weight from foot to foot, and every movie scene she’d ever seen where the hero was thrown from the back of a horse was suddenly crowding into her mind’s eye.
“I saw nothing to laugh at,” Niall said primly.
She studied his face in the light of the lantern, genuinely impressed by the sincerity he’d managed to summon. “Very diplomatic.”
That won her a smile. “Well, I’d hope so, given my profession.”
“You’re a diplomat?”
Niall nodded.
That surprised her, but she had the wherewithal not to point out that he was hardly dressed like a diplomat. As had become abundantly clear in the last hour or so of her life, she didn’t know a damn thing about this part of Scotland. Maybe Scottish diplomats all wore kilts and rode horses to work. It sounded like the punchline to a joke, of course, but so did a trained security officer getting lost on half a mile of straight road, so maybe that was where they were at right now.
She tried not to think about the effortless grace with which Niall mounted the horse, settling in behind her as easily as if he’d been doing it all his life. Again, she found herself reflecting on her own lack of human contact. There was a strange intimacy to the way he put his arms around her to gather the horse’s reins, the warmth of his body pressed against her back — but at the same time, there was something comfortable about it, something almost familiar. It didn’t have to be a big deal, right? Just sitting on the back of a horse with a rather dashing Scottish diplomat’s arms around her…
He urged the horse forward with a soft click of his tongue, and Lissa found herself swaying alarmingly for a few paces before she figured out the knack of holding herself steady. It had been quite a few years since her petting zoo experience — she had opted not to mention that that particular ride had ended in disaster, with the placid little Shetland pony getting startled at a crucial point in her dismount and sending her flat on her face in the mud. Later, when other girls her own age had been getting obsessed with horses, Lissa had opted instead for a taekwondo class. Her mother, well aware by this point that she wasn’t going to be raising a regular daughter, had been happy enough — riding gear was expensive, and it was a long drive out to the riding school that the other girls went to. Now, Lissa kind of wished her mother had pushed the issue a little… though she could hardly blame her mom for not foreseeing this particular situation.
“You’re doing very well, if you’re wondering.”
“Thank you. Back home I’m famous for my impression of a sack of potatoes.”
Niall laughed at that, and she could feel the vibrations of it through her back. It was a nice laugh, she found herself thinking… it was almost worth the embarrassment of demonstrating what a poor horsewoman she was to a near stranger. Almost. Maybe that was something she could take away from this trip, she thought, her interest piqued. There were dozens of activities to keep the tourists entertained, she’d barely glanced at the list on the hotel’s websites — maybe she could take a couple of horse riding lessons while she was over here. It never hurt to pick up a new skill, right?
“And where is home, exactly?”
“Uh, good question. I was born in Colorado, but my parents were only there for a couple of months. Spent maybe half my childhood in Maine, the other half all over — my dad traveled a lot for work, and we went with him sometimes. Then I enlisted, so another few years all over the place. I’ve been in Chicago the last few years, though, so I guess that’s close enough to home.”
“Fascinating,” Niall said, his tone sincere. “Embarrassing as it is to admit, I can’t say I know where any of those places are.”
“Oh. Just — all over the States, basically. Chicago’s in Illinois, in the Midwest.” Was she being an arrogant American again? She’d met an Australian soldier in a bar once who’d given her and her fellow American soldiers a thorough, if humorous, dressing down for the way they spoke about where they were from — either assuming far too much knowledge on the part of their listener, or far too little. She still remembered the mocking lilt of his accent as he informed them that for decades, their culture had been jammed so far down everyone’s throats that they didn’t need to worry about explaining where states or cities were — everyone in the English-speaking world was pretty much across it, whether they wanted to be or not.
“The States,” Niall repeated thoughtfully. It was the same way he’d repeated her name — the same way he’d repeated the word ‘jetlag’ — as though they surprised him, somehow. She was tempted to turn around to see if he was still wearing that intense, curious expression that he’d pinned her with so much, but she resisted. Probably best for him to keep his eyes on the road, as it were. The horse was moving at a smooth, easy walking pace, but it was covering a surprising amount of ground. Definitely different from her brief circuit on the back of a Shetland pony as a child, that was for sure.
“Where are you from, then? Around here, you said — but you haven’t been back since you were a child?”
“That’s right. My brother and I moved away from the Keep when we were children. We’ve spent the last few years in Glasgow and thereabouts, working on keeping this fragile peace going with the English.”
Fragile peace… that sounded familiar. She was surprised to hear that there was still enough tension between England and Scotland to require the work of full-time diplomats to maintain it — hadn’t both countries been part of the United Kingdom for quite some time? Reluctant to reveal how little she actually knew about the political situation here — she’d already given him more evidence than she was happy with of her status as an uninformed American — she stuck to a safer line of questioning. “So you and your brother are in the same line of work, then?”
“Aye, we are. Started at the same time, too, for all that people assume I’ve just coasted along on his coattails.”
“Older brother?”
“However did you guess?” There was a warm buzz of laughter in Niall’s voice that went quite some way to smoothing the bitterness of his words. “To his credit, he’s always defended me against those accusations himself — though it’s hard to feel like an equal when he’s the only one of the pair of us who’ve received a knighthood for his troubles.”
“So your brother’s a knight?”
“According to the English, yes. He hates it,” Niall said, a decidedly smug note creeping into his voice. “Which is precisely why I bring it up at every opportunity.”
“Oh, you’re the younger brother, alright.” Lissa chuckled.
“You sound like an expert. Do you have brothers?”
Lissa took a breath as her years in the Army flashed before her eyes. “In a way,” she said simply. “None by blood, though. Only child. Family’s where you make it, though, I think.”
“I’d agree with that,” Niall said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. “Are you married?”
She was glad she was facing away from him — the question brought a faint flush to her cheeks, which was embarrassing on its own. “Nope,” she said, trying to keep her tone neutral. “Yet to meet a man who can handle me as well as my job — which is a sad indictment on men as a whole, to be honest. Present company excepted,” she added, glad to hear that he was chuckling instead of taking offense. “Though I suppose I should ask your wife before I come to that conclusion?” She’d scoped his hands out already and failed to spot a wedding ring, of course — but she’d learned it was always wise to give a man an opportunity to mention a girlfriend or a fiancée. Niall, to her surprise, lapsed into an odd silence. She scanned the road ahead of them for a moment, wondering if he’d seen something that had distracted him — but there was nothing but trees, and the slowly thinning fog. Finally, he responded, his voice slow.
“That might be difficult.”
“I’m sorry.” She bit her lip, wondering if she’d overstepped somehow. It hadn’t seemed like an unreasonable question, especially given that he’d just asked her if she was married — but from the way he’d spoken, she knew better than to follow up with any more questions. Instead, she let the silence stretch out between them, comfortable if solemn. The rhythmic thudding of the horse’s hooves against the dense soil, the gentle whispering of the wind through the trees… it was every bit as beautiful out here as it had been when she’d traveled down the winding roads in Davey’s car.
But there was a feeling, deep in her belly, that something had changed about the wilderness around her. Something deeper and more profound than just the time of day or the surface of the road that was carrying her to her destination. Something that had something to do with the quiet warmth of the man with his arms around her, carrying her toward some unknown destination on the back of his horse.
Well, there was only one way she was going to get any answers — and that was to wait.