Chapter 14
Emma wasn’t entirely sure what she’d expected, but it wasn’t this.
The Sinner was a pub, but not in the same way that the McCade hovel was a pub.
It was bright, with endless candles illuminating every inch of the space.
A fire roared in the hearth, adding a sweltering heat to the already warm rooms. There were no dead-eyed men and women in the corners in too-tight clothing from which buttons were missing, no Lachlan McCade sitting in the corner like a corpulent spider, watching every detail.
They were just people. Happy people, laughing and drinking, most of them already tipsy.
She couldn’t have said how, when, or why she had slipped her hand into Thomas’s, but here they were, palm to palm, fingers laced together.
He held her hand tight, and a lump rose to her throat.
She felt the irrational urge to cling to him, to wrap her free hand around the strong curve of his bicep and bury her head in his shoulder.
And then, they were inside, stepping over the threshold into a world of light and noise, blinding after the gloom of the carriage.
“Thomas!” somebody shrieked, and then a tiny woman with a vibrant mop of red hair was elbowing her way through the crowd towards them, beaming.
“Brace up, here comes Veronica,” Thomas muttered, a grin spreading across his face.
Then the woman—Veronica—was upon them, flinging stocky arms around Thomas’s waist and squeezing.
“We all thought ye would try and get out of it,” she said craftily, grinning up at him. It obviously being the party.
“Aye, well, here I am,” Thomas said, laughing. “Where are the girls, then? Let me wish them a happy birthday.”
Veronica glanced around the crowded pub. “Oh, I have no idea where they are. Ye can find them later.”
“I’m here for them, Veronica!”
“I said later. Now, introduce me to this vision of beauty, eh?”
Still reeling at being referred to as a vision of beauty, Emma stepped forward and offered a hand for the other woman to shake. Veronica batted it aside and pulled her close in a tight, spine-cracking hug.
“I’m so glad to find that Thomas is thinking of settling down. He’s a dear, and he’s a like a brother to me,” she said with a sigh, her voice low in Emma’s ear. “Hurt him, and they’ll not find yer body.”
Emma blanched. Veronica let go of her, flashing a sweet smile and a wink.
“Now, let’s introduce her to the others! Come on, come on, hurry up! Lots to see before we bring out the cake!”
The next hour flew by a chaotic blur of faces, names, and anecdotes. Everyone was happy, everyone was thrilled to meet Emma, and everyone seemed to love Thomas.
Emma managed to glean that there were three men who ran the pub—four people in total, including Veronica.
A tall, austere man with dark hair and deep brown eyes was named Colby, and he was Veronica’s husband.
He seemed forbidding and distinctly unfriendly until Emma saw his gaze soften when it landed on his wife.
The birthday girls, whom Emma had still not met, were his nieces, and he and Veronica were raising them together.
The third man was Dominic, Laird MacLennan, a grim-faced man behind the bar whose dark hair was starting to thread with gray, serving customers pints and glasses of ale at top speed.
He spared a quick smile for Thomas and Emma, complimenting Emma on her fine dress and asking what in the world she saw in Thomas.
There were others, of course. Friends and distant family members, all wanting to meet Emma, compliment her dress, her beauty, and her relationship with Thomas.
It was bewildering but in a good way.
“How am I to remember all their names?” Emma whispered in Thomas’s ear during a lull in conversation.
He chuckled. “Oh, ye don’t. I never do, I’m afraid.”
She smiled at that, longing to tip her head forward and bury her nose in his neck. Instead, she cleared her throat and dropped down from her tiptoes, glancing away for another relative to talk to, someone who could take her mind off the way Thomas was making her feel. She needed her wits about her.
There’d been endless questions about their relationship, of course.
Since Thomas hadn’t required more than she tells people that they were engaged—secretly, of course—most of the questions required quick thinking to answer.
To avoid complicating things, Emma stuck to the truth.
She told people that she was an apprentice healer at the Keep, that was how they had met, and their engagement was secret.
“Will ye carry on being a healer when ye are Lady MacPherson?” one woman asked, her eyes bulging out of her head.
Emma hesitated. A demure smile and a no should have sufficed. After all, any reasonable woman would abandon any ambitions or hobbies of her own once she was married to settle down to the womanly task of caring for a husband and having babies.
It wasn’t as if it was real, after all. There was no engagement, and Emma was not going to be Lady anything.
But somehow, that just didn’t sit right.
“Aye, I am,” she said firmly. “I love being a healer. I like caring for people. It’s a skill that may be lost over the years, especially in women. I want to keep healing whomever I can for as long as I can.”
The woman didn’t seem pleased with this response. “But when ye have children of yer own, surely…” she trailed off meaningfully.
“Then I’ll teach them how to heal, too.”
Thomas hooked an arm through Emma’s, pulling her away. “Ye are doing very well, my dear betrothed,” he murmured in her ear, chuckling. “Why not sit down and rest? Have a drink before ye offend anyone else.”
“Why should that woman be offended just because—”
“Some people enjoy it. Getting offended, I mean. Go on, have a drink. I just need to talk to Colby and Dominic about something. Ye sit here, lassie.”
He steered her to a seat in a relatively quiet corner of the bar and signaled for a cup of ale to be brought. He patted her shoulder and disappeared back into the crowd.
Emma let out a sigh of relief. It was good not to be constantly smiling, constantly straining one’s ears to hear over the din. In the corner, some musicians were unpacking their instruments. There would be dancing soon, and then things would get noisier still.
“Is this seat taken?” a cool female voice asked just as Emma was taking her first long draught of the ale.
“Hmm? What? Oh, nay, not at all,” Emma spluttered, wiping away a foam mustache from her upper lip.
The woman—tall, graceful, beautiful—smiled benignly down at her and sat, gesturing for a cup of ale for herself. She tossed her hair back over her shoulder and stared pensively into the distance.
That gave Emma the perfect opportunity to stare at her.
She was breathtakingly beautiful, even on close inspection.
Her skin was perfect, rich and creamy, with tapering white hands without a trace of calluses and certainly no green-stained fingertips.
She had a figure most women would die for, and a tantalizing flash of her bosom was revealed through the thin linen shirt she wore.
A necklace with a blue pendant hung between her collarbones, neatly directing a person’s eyes to the swell of her cleavage.
Her hair was long, glossy, black, and curling, and she had the sort of large blue eyes poets might call flashing.
On cue, she glanced down and caught Emma staring, probably open-mouthed.
I must look like a wee stocky goblin next to her.
Hysterical laughter welling up inside Emma.
The woman smiled. “I’m Astrid. And ye are Emma Gallagher.”
“Aye, that’s right, I am. I’m sorry, have we met?”
Astrid laughed.
Emma had read passages of stories where women’s laughter was described as ‘tinkling silver bells’ or something equally ridiculous, and she’d never been able to imagine what on earth that was meant to sound like.
She could picture it now. It would sound like Astrid’s laughter.
“Nay, we have not met. But everyone here knows of ye.” Astrid tilted her head to one side, her icy blue eyes assessing. “Ye are Laird MacPherson’s fiancée.”
There was something about the way she said fiancée that hinted she did not like the word.
Or maybe, much more likely, she did not like Emma.
“Aye, I am,” Emma replied, shifting uncomfortably on her stool.
She was sweating in the heat of the room, perspiration beading on her face and neck.
Astrid, of course, was not sweating. Not so much as a single drop of moisture appeared on her immaculate skin.
“It’s nae common knowledge, of course, so I’d thank ye to keep it to yourself. ”
Astrid smiled. She didn’t show any teeth, and the smile did not reach her eyes.
Emma’s gut was boiling urgently, and she already knew that she had an enemy here, not an ally.
“Well, perhaps ye ought to have thought of that before ye told everyone here, eh? It’ll be all over the countryside by tomorrow.”
Yes, it would, Emma realized, and that was what Thomas wanted. She wondered uneasily what it would mean for her. She’d never imagined their faux relationship progressing beyond the bounds of the pub. But of course, it would. She ought to have considered that before.
“Oh, well,” she said lightly, turning her attention back to her ale. She hoped that Astrid would get the hint and move off, but of course, she did no such thing.
“I’m glad I had a chance to talk to ye. I think we have something to discuss,” Astrid said, finally receiving her own mug of ale and taking a delicate sip.
Emma swallowed hard. “What exactly is yer relationship to Thomas, if ye don’t mind me asking? Are ye family?”
She knew fine well that the woman was not family. She didn’t need to ask anyone to know that.
Astrid smiled demurely, glancing pointedly away. “We are… friends. Good friends. We have been friends for a while.”