Chapter 9
Maybe.
Arran’s was a throwaway word, one that slipped out almost on accident but, once released, revealed so very much—as did the small, wistful smile she wagered he didn’t know he wore.
Lucy eased her gaze over his face—a sculpted face that only softened when he smiled. His smiles came as frequently as a shooting star on a cloudy night, and when they did, they brought the same kind of magic and wonderment.
For as focused as he’d been on unearthing Lucy’s secrets, Lucy now found herself wanting to know his—for entirely different reasons.
She took another drink, only to realize she’d finished the warm, soothing contents.
Arran was instantly there to refill her mug; he handled that pewter pitcher as well as any innkeeper on the King’s roads.
A wave of wistfulness overtook her.
Lucy’s eyes drifted gradually closed at an image of her and Arran McQuoid tending patrons at her family’s inn.
When she opened them, she found Arran with his right elbow propped upon the table, holding his cheek up, and his bemused gaze was on her. “A closed mouth catches no flies, Lucy,” he said, a playfulness in his velvety smooth baritone.
Her heart danced.
Being at the border between England and Scotland, one heard all manner of tongues. But an English gentleman who spoke the old Scottish proverbs? Well, Campbell hadn’t even done that.
Her limbs feeling fluid, she turned languidly, so she straddled the bench, and faced him. “Ah never did much ken that one, Arran McQuoid.” A giggle bubbled up. “Why’d a lass wannae be a’catchin’ flies?” She punched him lightly in his non-leaning shoulder. “Why’d any lad or lass wannae?”
The slow-smiling gentleman tendered one of his rare heartbeat-escalating grins. “Your brogue is out, mo chridhe.”
My heart…
Heat flared beneath her lips. Lucy tried to force out a breezy response. “M-Mulled cider has tha’ effect.”
Arran chuckled. “Aye.” He shook the contents of his mug in a small, smooth circle. “Spirits do leave a person turned inside out.”
Ye do, Arran McQuoid…
Arran stilled. His gaze turned hotter than the fires beside them.
Her stomach sank.
“Please tell me ah dinnae say that?” she whispered.
“Say what?” His dark eyebrow kicked up in a quizzical arch. “You have me truly curious about these thoughts you’re keeping all to yourself.”
Thank the guid Lord.
“Verra well,” she drawled. “Yer a peculiar man, Arran McQuoid.”
“Peculiar?” Wry amusement darkened his tone. “That is the first time a lady’s dared to tell me that.”
“A truth?”
His hard lips twitched, resisting a natural smile.
That hint of ease carved through his usual hardness, and she ached to keep him in that rare, unguarded place.
She waggled her eyebrows. “I’m nae a lady who’ll go about inflating a gentleman’s pride.”
He leaned in close enough her breath caught. “And you.” His words, warm with spiced cider, brushed her mouth. “Assume all the praise I’ve earned—”
Lucy leaned closer. “Earn a lot of it, do ye, ye arrogant mon? Och, it’s a wonder ye squeezed yer head through the door.”
He stilled a beat and then released a deep, rolling laugh, and it washed over her.
Only when his amusement abated did she wink. “But aye, since I’ve arrived, ye’ve taken up a place in my mind. Yer…different than the rest of yer kin.” The husky quality to her voice, however, let Arran see too much.
His expression instantly shuttered.
“Nay, McQuoid.” She shook a finger playfully at him. “Ye dinnae get to go all broody and secretive. I’ve shared some about myself and answered any questions ye asked me.”
She’d given him leave to probe her. She’d already told herself a lie of omission was different from a lie, but if he put queries to her…
Lucy’s fingers shook. Cider sloshed over the rim of her mug and sprinkled over her hand.
Ducking her head to avoid his piercing stare, Lucy licked the sticky residue from the web of her palm, sucking at the little birthmark she’d come into the world wearing.
When she looked up, Arran’s gaze was fixed fast to the top of her powder-dusted hand, more specifically—
Embarrassment set her cheeks aflame. “My apologies.” Lucy, reminded anew how coarse she was compared to this gentleman and his noble family, curled her toes beneath the soles of her feet sharp enough that a knot formed. “I ken ladies don’t go about licking sugar from their fingers.”
Arran answered without hesitation. “Nay.”
Unable to face him, she stared at the drops she’d splattered in her clumsiness.
“Lucy?”
It took the Lord’s effort to make herself look at him.
His eyes glinted like the spark flint managed to make from a stone. “English ladies aren’t so honest in their actions or in their words.”
Lucy’s features crumpled.
Her body reflexively recoiled.
“I did not mean that as an insult.”
Ye should have…
Arran, unrelenting, grabbed her hand in a possessive hold, commandeering it so she had no escape. “Never.”
Her belly fluttered in time to the erratic beat of her heart.
“I was caught on your mark, Lucy.”
Her mark?
Ahh.
“My hinnie-drop,” she explained, holding her hand up for his examination.
He continued to stare at Lucy in the most bizarre way.
“Ah, forget yer not all Scot but English gentleman too.” Setting her cider down, she pointed to that still sugary spot. “Honey drop,” she clarified. “Me da used to say I wear the Fair Folk’s dr—”
“Nyneve’s Mark,” Arran quietly interjected. “It is a drop of the lochs and rivers and from where the very essence of life springs.”
Lucy held still. Afraid to move, or speak, and end whatever trance kept him—and her—under its spell.
Her yearning proved too great. “Who?” she breathed.
Arran’s hand came to rest over hers, enveloping her in the soft hush of his warmth. “The Lady of the Lake.” He rubbed his thumb around that small discoloration of her skin. “Do you know of her, Lucy?”
His liquifying touch, his deep rolling voice, cast a spell greater than the deities. Lucy’s lashes fluttered and grew too heavy to lift. Did she know her? Och, she barely recalled her own name.
Somehow, she managed an uneven nod-shake. “A wee bit.” Her answer emerged on a soft exhale.
“In Arthurian legend, Nimue was Merlin’s great love,” he murmured. “An enchantress; a mythical symbol of the magic and mystery of water.” Arran brushed another caress over that teardrop-shaped mark.
“The rose is fairest when ’t is budding new,
And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears;”
His husky rumbling drew her deeper and deeper under his spell.
“The rose is sweetest washed with morning dew”
To a point from which there was no coming back…
“And love is loveliest when embalmed in tears.”
To a place Lucy never wished to return from.
From the past tale crafted by a proud papa sprung anew from this heart-stoppingly handsome man’s lips, lore for a woman grown, desirable, otherworldly. Siren-like.
All things and ways Lucy had never once felt about herself—until this breathless moment here and now with Arran McQuoid.
“My hope,” he continued to speak in that low, rumbling manner, “my heaven, my trust must be, My gentle guide, in following thee…”
When she picked her head up, Lucy found Arran’s focus, searing hot and indescribable from any look to ever be directed her way.
When she’d been a lass of thirteen or fourteen years, a ship’s captain took lodging at The Spotted Elk.
He’d set down upon the table a water-filled glass sphere.
When he’d caught Lucy’s round-eyed gaze, he beckoned her over to view the curiosity.
It’d been a gift for his young brother. The sphere had been filled with a pair of red-headed children, a lad in black and a lass in plaid skirts, their arms outstretched.
Lucy watched in wonderment as he turned the novelty globe over and gave it a shake.
When he’d set it down on the oak table, wax flakes had floated and fallen about the miniature statue like snow.
Being here alone with Arran, in this moment, Lucy felt as upside down as the wee bairns in the glass globe.
His very nearness, his gaze alone, left her upside down.
Lucy always wished to be seen.
Not in the same way her loving family had and did. Nay, she’d longed to be seen by someone, not just as the lass who fetched drinks and wiped tables, but as a living, breathing woman worthy of attention.
She’d thought Mr. Smith had.
She’d been wrong.
Her heart hammering, Lucy remained as trapped as the children in that novelty globe of long ago.
Never had Campbell Smith looked at her the way Arran McQuoid now did. And this look wasn’t the guarded, cynical sort like when she’d arrived.
This? Why, it was like she were the only woman in the world, and he’d become lost in her. The heat of his focus, the intensity of his stare, the very sight of him, stole the very air from her lungs.
No one. Not a single man, not villager, gentleman, or rover on his journey through the hills of Scotland on his way to England ever looked at her the way Arran did now.
And for a lifetime of being invisible, it was heady and magical to actually be seen.
Lucy took his right hand in her left and laid them so they rested upon one another. His long, powerful digits dwarfed hers.
“Ye’ve got one of yer own,” she said softly.
Regret twisted his features, gone so fast it could have been a flicker of the flames from the fire’s glow. “With an exception being I wasn’t born with mine.”
Her heart beat faster. She waited, not pushing him on his scar. Knowing intuitively if she did, he’d stop.
Ultimately, it mattered not either way. He went silent, nurturing his drink, discouraging any probing on his scar. And then…neatly steering the focus back on Lucy. “You mentioned your father.”
“Aye, there’s never been a better mon than Seoc LeBeau. Never had any sons, and only me for a bairn, but it mattered not to him. Treated me with all the pride and love had I been Saint Margaret reborn.”
“Our fathers are alike in that regard,” he shared, cracking open a part of this beautiful family and letting her in.
“I recall each of my younger siblings’ births, and he greeted their arrival to the world with the same elation and pride I expect most fathers only bestow upon their first-born son and heir.
” Arran lifted his glass. “To good fathers who love all their bairns,” he quietly toasted.
Lucy lifted her mug. “To good das.”
They touched glasses and took a drink.
When they finished, Lucy made a show of studying her mug. “Your family is one of the great ones,” she said, speaking so carefully her clearer English tones slipped in.
A shadow passed over his eyes. “They’re good.” His voice came rough.
“And ye are very clearly a good brother and cousin.”
Arran’s entire body jerked, his corded muscles straining the fabric of his shirt, drawing her notice and heating her inside. “On what do you base that?” he asked, his gaze and voice turning as harsh as they’d been before they’d fallen into easy conversation here in the kitchens.
Alas, when a gentleman rolled up his sleeves and joined a lass in baking, a lass learned enough to know there was a soft side to the man—a soft side he was determined she not see.
“Ye mentioned leading a merry charge upon Mr. Smith’s chambers. I expect most English gentlemen don’t join in frolicsome antics with their younger siblings and cousins?”
With an ease that could’ve seen him a spot at The Spotted Elk, Arran reached for the pitcher. “Most do not,” he confirmed, taking it upon himself to refill her drink.
“Yet ye do.” She studied him carefully.
It was the only way she noted Arran’s faint, split-second pause mid-pour before he resumed. “I did.” His eyes grew hooded.
Her pulse pounded harder. “Did?”
Arran lifted a single broad shoulder. “They’re older, Lucy. English ladies and lads aren’t allowed to continue their hoydenish antics.” He set the carafe down with a decisiveness meant to end her inquiry.