Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
A fter another hour of perusing the stalls, we finally reached the area near the games. The crowd here was decidedly less friendly, perhaps because they had nothing to directly gain from kindness.
We garnered several disapproving glances, and a few voices rang out louder than the rest.
“...Hooring around even before she went to Socair.”
“Only one reason to marry that quickly.”
“...and to think this is the second laird.”
Fury flashed through my veins. It was one thing when they hurled insults at me, but this was their own princess. And my future wife .
In Socair, anyone who called the Clan Wife a whore—or implied it—would have forfeit their lives.
I must have given some outward indication of that thought because Rowan shook her head.
“I know everything in Socair is punishable by death or dismemberment, but we don’t react to a little gossip here. Besides, you should hear what they say about Davin.”
It wasn’t actually more promising that they gossiped about all of the royals they were supposed to respect, but I also wasn’t concerned with Davin’s delicate reputation.
Nor Rowan’s, especially. Only with the scorn her own people dared to cast her way when she was making her own sacrifices to keep them from a war.
She let out a sigh, but it was cut off when a voice rang out in an unfamiliar accent.
“Tiny gorgeous girl!”
My scowl deepened as I turned to face the newcomer, lessening only when I realized the tall, dark-skinned man was old enough to be her father and the affection in his eyes resembled exactly that sort of relationship. He was standing next to a man who was at least ten years his senior with ruddy skin and whose balding head barely reached my elbow.
“Cray,” the first man said. “I found our girl.”
“What are you doing here?” Rowan asked, a genuine smile spreading across her cheeks as the man embraced her.
“Ye didna think we wouldna come to assess your man-friend here for ourselves, did ye?” He scrutinized me with narrowed eyes, then sank into a theatrical bow. “We are the Purloiners of the Piney Plantation.”
“No’ again, Sai,” the shorter man—Cray—interrupted him.
And here I had thought her family was chaos.
Cray turned to me. “We’ll nae force ye to donate your gold teeth tae the cause, Laddie, so long as ye be stayin’ on our girl’s good side.”
“I’m not certain I’m on her good side to begin with,” I said it lightly enough that it could be mistaken for a joke, though there was nothing but truth to the words.
“Decidedly not,” she agreed easily.
Just then, another member of the odd group joined, a slim woman with white-blonde hair. She had one hazel eye and one that was pale blue.
A shade of blue that was distinctly Socairan, just like her hair and the olive undertones to her skin. But she sure as hell didn’t act like any Socairan woman I knew. She walked with a predatorial grace, an inherent lethality even more pronounced than Gwyn’s.
Rowan’s cousin was skilled enough to decimate just about anyone in a battle head-on, but this woman seemed more suited to quiet daggers in the dark.
“Fia!” Rowan called, throwing her arms around the woman I strongly suspected was an assassin, like she wasn’t a walking embodiment of death itself.
“Princess.” Her accent was more lyrical than the harsher tones of my people, neither Socairain nor Lochlannian.
Who was she?
The mysterious woman turned her gaze on me, openly scanning me from head to toe. “Now, now. What do we have here?”
Her tone was ostensibly casual, but there was an undercurrent I would have been an idiot to ignore. A warning and a demand for silence, all in one.
Whether she was more concerned that I would comment that she was an assassin or that she was Socairan, I couldn’t be sure, but I nodded all the same, injecting the smallest bit of my own threat into the movement. Her secrets weren’t my concern, as long as she meant no harm to me or mine.
She nodded back. Understood .
It was almost a relief to communicate with someone in the Socairan fashion after a week of Lochlannian candor.
Rowan’s parents approached, forestalling any further conversation, silent or otherwise. They, too, embraced the new group—the thieves, if Sai’s introduction was to be believed.
“Row,” Queen Charlotte addressed her while King Logan continued to pretend neither of us existed. “I think your event is one of the later ones, but Avani is about to start out the archery competition.”
So she knew what Rowan had signed us up for, as well.
“Does everyone know what we’re doing but me?” I asked, partly because I genuinely wanted to know and partly before she could glare at the king in front of the ever encroaching crowd.
Rowan smirked. “Not everyone.”
“Can you give me a hint?” I pressed.
“Hmm.” She tilted her head. “I lost the sparring tourney last year, so I picked something we’ll win.”
Most of the games appeared to be physical in nature, and I was plenty confident in my relentless training. Rowan, too, had the lean form of a warrior and was quick on her feet. Winning wasn’t in question.
“That doesn’t narrow it down,” I told her, shrugging one shoulder.
She rolled her eyes, shaking her head like she didn’t know perfectly well how true it was.
Before she could respond verbally, Sai’s voice rang out again, bringing with it a new wave of chaos. Rowan tugged on my arm, signalling for us to keep moving, and I gratefully complied.
She was plenty of chaos without a merry band of assassins and thieves in tow.
The games were interesting.
While I had been right about their generally physical nature, not all of them were based on traditional skill sets. Like, for instance, the race wherein the queen and Princess Isla tied together one of each of their legs and lurched along to place last in a race that seemed to be more for laughs than actual competition.
It was safe to say any Socairan nobility would have died before competing in that one.
The archery and sparring contests weren’t unlike the contests we held at the Summit. The difference there was the tensions between the clans, the pride we upheld with each match.
It had never occurred to me to host a similar tournament for my own people. Though the lords were unlikely to mingle amongst the villagers, the soldiers at least would all compete together.
We stayed at the sparring log for the longest amount of time, and we weren’t the only ones. Half the festival had gathered to watch Gwyn knock down opponent after opponent. At least, I thought that was why they were gathered until her father stepped up to the beam.
Each contest so far had been accompanied by whispered odds and a telltale clinking of coins, but this one topped them all. The onlookers shouted over each other to be heard, placing last minute bets on either the Captain or his daughter. Gwyn set her mouth into a grim line, meeting her father with decidedly more wariness than she had shown the other competitors.
With good reason, as it turned out.
Gwyn moved with her usual blinding speed, but the Captain of the Guard was even faster. He met her blow for blow, almost like he was toying with the impressive warrior. She let out a growl, shooting an accusatory glance at him like she had realized the same thing.
He shrugged a single shoulder before launching into an attack that forced her to overcorrect. She pitched unceremoniously into the mud beneath the sparring log, letting out an impressive string of curses along the way.
“Every year…” Rowan muttered, shaking her head as Finn held his fists up in a victory pose.
His daughter glared up at him until her brother approached, offering her a hand and a small amount of pity.
“Come on, Twinsy,” he said, hoisting her back to her feet. “Eventually he’ll get really old and then you’ll get that victory you’ve always longed for.”
In the mud pit nearby, a team of men was sliding into place a series of beams, hoops, and ropes. Rowan studied their movements, nodding to herself. I wasn’t surprised when she turned to me expectantly.
“It’s our turn.”
I surveyed the makeshift obstacle course. It wasn’t dissimilar to a training course for our new recruits, except that we would apparently be working as a team.
In the mud.
Perhaps I had been too cavalier in my earlier acceptance of the game she had chosen for us.
In hindsight, it should have been obvious that she would be as difficult as possible. Hadn’t she been taunting me all day?
I shot her a quizzical look.
“It’s technically called the wife-carrying competition, but you don’t actually have to be married to compete. Avani and Mac…” she trailed off, a shadow passing over her eyes.
Again, I saw the single line written in elegant script. Private family memorial for Arran Colin MacKinnon.
I gently squeezed her waist, pulling her from wherever her mind had taken her.
She cleared her throat. “They competed two years ago. Before they were married, and some of the betrothed in the village do as well.”
If anything, that only increased my suspicion, since it seemed unlikely that it was as simple as getting through the course if the couples competed together.
“So, what does this game entail?” I questioned, since she apparently wasn’t planning on clarifying the details of her own accord.
“All you have to do is carry me through that obstacle course,” she said simply. “And we have to be the first across the finish line.”
After all her teasing today, this should have come as no surprise, but I had to wonder exactly how I was supposed to carry her through the course.
“You chose this because you thought we would win?” I pressed, not bothering to keep a bit of disbelief from my tone.
We would have won a great many events, but only this and the three-legged race would have put us at such close proximity. Since we were uniquely unsuited for the latter, given the foot of difference in our heights, it stood to reason that she had chosen this game.
But only if one first accounted for the proximity.
“And because I thought it would go the furthest with the people,” she insisted. “If you aren’t going to do anything about your resting aalio face, then you leave me no choice but to find other ways to make you more approachable.”
I had witnessed no fewer than ten games that would have forced approachability on me. But only one where I would have to carry my future wife.
If I was wearing my aalio face, then she was wearing her obstinate face, so I didn’t push the issue further. At least, not much further.
“If you say so,” I murmured.
She lifted her chin, but I was saved from her indignation by the arrival of Jocelyn and Oliver at the very last event where I would have expected to see them.
“Oli, you didn’t,” Jocelyn exclaimed, looking at the muddy trail with thinly veiled horror.
Her husband shrugged, his lips pulling into a wicked grin the exact twin to the one Davin donned when he was about to say something obnoxious.
“You said to sign us up for an event, and I obliged.”
A dignified huff of air escaped Jocelyn. “You knew I didn’t mean this one,” she muttered in resignation.
He only shrugged. “Can you blame me if I want an excuse to have my gorgeous wife pressed up against me?”
I cleared my throat, staring pointedly at Rowan while she pretended not to notice that her uncle had outed her real reason for signing us up for this particular event.
Not that I was complaining.
Especially not when Prince Finn explained the rules in his booming voice, including the exact position in which I was to carry Rowan. I studied her for signs that she was plotting, but she seemed to be lying to herself as thoroughly as she was lying to me.
Removing my swords, I played along with her nonchalance, sinking into a squat so she could climb onto my back the way the other wives and fiancees were doing. All day, we had been locked in a precarious battle of wills, an endless interchange of teasing while we ceded and recovered our battlegrounds.
I wrapped one hand around each of her shapely thighs, each muscle evident through the thin fabric of her dress. All the while I dispelled images of the last time I had wrapped my hand around her thigh, how similar our position had been, only with her in front of me. How she had tugged at my hair as she sank her teeth into my bottom lip.
She plastered her warmth against my body, her chin on my shoulder, her breath on my skin. For the first time all day, I wasn’t sure who was winning our game.
Or if this was one contest we were both destined to lose.