Chapter Five #2
Taking Miss Drummond’s hand, he turned one last time to Hugh. “Find Joan and tell her she is nae’ longer needed at the castle.”
Hugh nodded and risked a quick glance to Miss Drummond, who glared at Constantine just before he tugged her away from his steward. He didn’t need someone putting him in an unsavory light.
“Damn it, what do I care aboot the light?”
“’Tis quite clear,” Miss Drummond remarked. Making him bite his tongue. He wasn’t used to anyone besides his closest cousins being with him all the time. He didn’t realize that he had spoken out loud.
“How could ye let Joan go when all she did was fancy yer cousin?”
He stopped and turned to her, letting her go when he realized that he was still pulling her along.
“I need the obedience of everyone who lives in this castle,” he found himself explaining.
“If I ever need her to help keep someone safe—” her, for instance—“and Joan is more concerned fer Lachlan, it could cause terrible trouble.”
She met his gaze with the same intensity he offered to her. “Are ye letting her go because of me?”
He picked up his steps. His only reply was a low growl.
“Chief!” The cool authority in her voice stopped him. He pivoted slowly to face her, surprised that she had used such a tone with him. “Why do ye give them a reason to speak about ye as if ye were a tyrant.”
“Mayhap that is what I am,” he answered.
She shook her head. “I have known some tyrants, and ye are not one.”
What was he supposed to say to that? Sometimes he was indeed a tyrant. Sometimes he was exactly what Hugh made him out to be: the kind of man who could kill another man’s son.
“Ye dinna know me, Miss Drummond,” he told her and then continued on to one of the chambers in the tapestry-lined, northerly wing of the castle.
“Nor do ye know me, Chief,” she countered, hurrying to catch up. “And yet ye stayed outside my door at the inn fer two days to protect me.”
“I didna stay ootside yer door,” he argued, not wanting things to sound more complicated than they were.
“Ye risked yer life to find me when that MacKintosh absconded with me.”
He looked around at the hall then drew in a deep breath before he gave her a brooding look. “I didna risk my life. I should feel insulted that ye think so.”
“Ye agreed to stay here at the castle,” she went on, ignoring his offended pout, “so that I would stay here where ’tis safe.”
Constantine couldn’t help but notice the little spark of excitement in her eyes. Did she enjoy challenging him? He had the ridiculous urge to laugh at her fanciful notions.
“Aye,” he told her, his voice sounding too deep and too warm for his liking. “I want ye to be safe. Ye’re a wee thing with a bold tongue and a bonnie”—he scowled and let his dark gaze rove over her—“face,” he choked out.
She stared up at him and blew a curl off her forehead. “Does my bold tongue anger ye?”
Odd lass, Constantine thought she would question him about him blurting out that she was bonnie. “Why would it anger me? Does it do me any harm?”
“Only to yer pride,” she answered.
“I may be prideful, lass,” he told her, leaning in with a slight smile not many witnessed, “but I am more confident.”
“That must be why I was so certain ye would come fer me.”
Her breath smelled sweet, like the berries she’d picked and ate on the way here.
“Ye are a chief, who doesna demand attention but gets it all the same. I saw the quiet, not-quite-dispassionate man at the inn.”
“Not quite dispassionate?” he urged.
“Aye, ye didna try to comfort me with false concern while I wept into my delicious stew. But ye kept watch over me like a guardian angel so that no one else dared take a seat at my table. Not quite dispassionate.”
Constantine blew out a little laugh and stepped back.
He remembered her weeping. He would rather forget.
Her weeping was what had convinced him that she needed protecting.
Something had made her run, and judging by her worn-down shoes, she had run a great distance.
He now knew the reason for her traveling alone.
Her betrothed. If he came to Tor, Constantine would not let him touch or take her.
He spread his gaze over her clothes and sighed through his teeth. “I will see that clothes are made fer ye.”
“Made?” Her eyes opened wider. “Nae, dinna go through such trouble fer me.”
He shook his head slightly, then turned for the row of doors. “Follow me.”
He showed her to the chamber three doors down from his room and left her sighing dreamily before the postered bed, its thick wooden headboard carved into an alcove between two windows.
He returned to the top of the stairs and shouted for Bethia, Tor’s head chambermaid. She was an older woman who had come to Tor with Alison. She took her duties more seriously.
“Aye, Lochiel?” Bethia asked, leaving one of the other rooms, a bundle of keys jiggling at her waist. He should have asked her to see to Miss Drummond instead of Joan. “Would ye like me to bring ye a basin of water?”
He shook his head. A basin was not enough to get days of dust off him. He would bathe in the loch beyond the castle later. “Miss Drummond needs clothes and new shoes fer her feet. See what she likes and tell the seamstresses and the tanner to fashion whatever ’tis.”
Bethia stared at him as if he’d just sprouted another head. Then, she nodded with a quick bow. “Aye, m’lord.”
Constantine watched her hurry off and then went to his chambers to rest before supper.
He shook his head at himself while unfastening his plaid as thoughts and visions of Miss Ismay Drummond danced about in his head.
He refused to let himself think about her another instant, but when he chased her from his thoughts, Alison replaced her.
He almost could not remember her face anymore.
But he knew he had loved it once, just as he loved the sound of her soft, agreeable voice.
Miss Drummond was not agreeable. She was stubborn and contentious.
Not exactly true, he corrected himself when he thought about it for longer than a moment. She was braw, standing up to him when he would avoid or deny. Calling him prideful and then an instant later, admitting that his confidence gave her faith that he would come for her. He—
No. Cease. What was he doing? He shook his head again and rubbed his hands down his face as he fell into bed.
Could he not keep the troublesome lass out of his thoughts?
But every time he did, other, even less welcome thoughts returned.
It surprised him that Miss Drummond could keep Alison out of his head—even for a little while.
No one could before her for five years now.
And what about the accusing eyes of Alison’s parents, the MacMillans? He hadn’t thought of them in two days.
A slight smile crept over his lips. How had Miss Drummond managed to protect him from the glares and hateful stares of his wife’s beloved parents?
And was it their absence that tempted him to smile more than he had since the tragedy?
He soon fell asleep with Miss Drummond’s hesitant smile taking the place of one more easily given…one whose memory was fading. He reached out, trying to hold on to it. To her. Alison. She began to run away. He took off after her. They’d had so many plans that would never come to pass now.
He caught her in his dream and turned her in his arms, missing her face. He touched his fingertips over her soft, freckled skin. Freckled? Alison didn’t have freckles. She didn’t have storm-colored eyes and decadently plump, coral lips.
“Why are ye here, lass?” he asked her barely audible to his own ears. He meant here, in his dream, where Alison would otherwise be.
“I was trying to run away,” she told him, clutching his forearms as if running was the last thing she wanted to do.
But she had infiltrated his thoughts. He could not let her invade his dreams, as well. “Ye cannae stay here,” he said, releasing her.
She gave him a meaningful look before she disappeared and was replaced by the faceless image of his wife.
He woke up hours later, when the light outside his window faded to black.
He stretched in his bed and almost smiled at how good it felt.
He sat up. How long had he slept? What about Miss Drummond?
He told her to leave. Was it a dream? Had she left?
She was prone to running, after all. He bolted out of the bed and to save time, threw on his night robe instead of tucking and tying his plaid.
He didn’t run or admit to himself why he was walking with swift determination to her door. When he reached it, he knocked. After a moment of silence, he rapped on the wood again.
She would not leave the castle in the black of night, would she?
He’d dreamed of telling her she could not stay.
It was a dream. Of course she didn’t leave.
Still, he found himself racing down the stairs, making candles flicker on the wall as he passed them.
It wasn’t long before he ran into one of his cousins.
“Fionn, have ye seen Miss Drummond?”
“Aye, Chief, she is in the Great Hall. I just came from there.”
Constantine hurried off, leaving Fionn to watch after him with a stunned expression on his face.
Swinging open the doors of the Great Hall, Constantine found her almost immediately with her short curls shimmering in all the colors of autumn in the morning.
He felt such great relief that it made him feel lightheaded.
What in blazes was the matter with him? Who was this lass who no longer wept into her stew but now laughed into her hands?
She laughed. With the handsome devil.