Chapter 14
“My da was a rover.”
Arran remained motionless.
He feared that if he moved, she’d recall his presence and stop sharing parts of herself that he wanted—though he had no right to them.
Even during his morning ablutions, he’d resolved to sever the connection growing between him and Lucy.
“I never imagined me, a rover’s daughter, would be sitting at an earl’s dining table,” she said softly. “And I shouldn’t be.”
She wore her uncertainty in the same way she did her honest thoughts.
Arran frowned.
“Lucy,” he said, “your father worked in one of the oldest professions in Scotland. The men who drive those herds are honorable, and it explains how you came to be the woman you are.”
Lucy’s lips parted slightly, a sigh whispering out.
He tried for a smile. “Is your opinion of me truly so low? You believe I’d pass judgement on you because of your origins? My only concern was that you were a stranger to us.”
Her eyes dimmed. “No, it is not that.”
“Or—you were,” he hurried to reassure her, to try and explain everything was different now. “That is not the case anymore, Lucy.”
His reassurances had the opposite effect.
Lucy’s shoulders buckled.
Arran crossed to her and took her shoulders gently but firmly. “Look at me, Lucy. It is clear to me now—your relationship with my cousin. I was wrong to doubt you.”
His fingers curled reflexively into her satin-soft skin.
A drumming filled his head. Lucy with Campbell.
Oh God. A raw, tearing ache ripped beneath his ribs. He yanked his hands from Lucy.
“That’s not what I’m worried about, Arran.” Grief carved hard lines into her features. “It is not about wrongdoing on your part. It is about mine.”
“Lucy, your origins do not define you—”
“Will you please just let me say what I need to say, Arran?”
Arran stopped. She had listened to him bare his soul. She deserved the same.
He inclined his head. “My apologies. I’m listening.”
“My da was a rover, but my mum worked at the inn. The Spotted Elk.” Lucy absently picked at the leftover Yuletide decorations. “It is my home. The only one I’ve known.”
Arran’s mind raced.
I stayed there. Not only that… Numerous times. Had she poured him ale, served him food, and he’d merely given distracted thanks and pressed coins into her hand?
“Aye, you did.”
I’m going to be ill…
Blankly, he stared at Lucy—now, when he’d failed to do so all the times before.
His chest turned over. If it were not for a trick of fate—in who met whom first—how perfectly she would have melded into his world, and he into hers.
Some response was needed from him.
He swallowed hard. “Seems I’ve picked up on your habit and started talking to myself.”
A watery smile formed on Lucy’s lips. “Your entire family has visited on numerous occasions.”
Your paths crossed. He’d been so damned bloody close to Lucy. You just failed to see what—who—was in front of you, until it was too late.
“I don’t know how I did not notice you, Lucy,” he said, his voice breaking.
“I’m not offended. The inn was often crowded, and I was moving from table to table and baking and cooking in the back, and your family is something of a whirlwind. It’s hard to be seen amidst such noise.”
A wry grin creased his lips. “That I understand.”
They shared a smile.
Lucy shrugged. “Either way, I’d hardly expect you to recall a serving maid.”
With a flippant afterthought, she’d speared Arran inside.
“Don’t say that,” he said roughly. “Please do not say that, Lucy. The only thing I’ve cared about for so long is my work. It blinded me to all, not just…you.” He held her stare. “Do you hear me?”
Biting at her lip, Lucy nodded.
“My father loved his work in the same way. He’d tell me story after story of making the hard, cold Scottish earth his bed because the sky was so clear and the world so still. He loved to travel.” Lucy grew wistful. “I always wished to. He said I got that from him.”
“We are alike in that regard,” Arran said, regret ravaging his voice. “You and I.”
Her sad eyes lifted. “No, we aren’t. I’ve always been in the same place, with passersby and sailors going on to see other places I’ve never seen, while I remain stuck.”
A deep, crushing ache pulled at his core.
An even deeper sadness settled within her eyes…and in him.
“You don’t have to be stuck,” he said hoarsely. “Not anymore.”
I could’ve shown her those places. But would it even be safe for a woman in the life they lived? The question did not need answering.
There was no woman.
Not like her.
Campbell, on the other hand? Campbell could show Lucy places and sunsets she couldn’t even begin to imagine.
As part owners in their families’ shipping line, Arran and Campbell often sailed upon one another’s ships.
Never again.
“My da told me the only thing that mattered in his life was the freedom of being out there. Roaming the hills. Scaling mountains. Sleeping beside rivers and lochs. He never wanted to be tied to land.” Lucy picked up a twisted branch of heather, holding it close.
“Is that how it is with you and the sea?”
Arran nodded. “Aye. It—” Was. Before you. He paused. “Is.”
“Same as my da, but…” She continued fiddling with the slender branches. While she worked, the sweet scent of apple blossom that clung to her skin filled his senses. Tempting as that fruit the first man had sinned for. “One day, he stepped inside my mum’s inn. And he said he knew in an instant…”
“That inn was the only place he wished to be,” Arran said softly.
Lucy nodded. “Aye.”
Arran was a cynical sort, but not when it came to matters of the heart. He’d seen love in his family. He’d just never found that gift for himself.
But he might have. If he’d simply looked up and noticed Lucy.
“Da was heading to begin a long, profitable journey. But instead of continuing on, he stayed two nights at the inn. The second night, mum poured him an ale. And Da slid a ring of twisted heather branches across the counter in return.”
Lucy tried bending the thin wood into a circle, snapping twigs. Eventually she gave up, crestfallen.
“My da told me that story every night—of how he met my mother and how someday,” Lucy whispered, “someone would walk through those same doors for me.”
And someone had.
Campbell.
Arran rubbed a palm over his chest.
“Mr. Smith,” she murmured.
Her confession thrust like a knife.
Lucy kept on twisting the rusted, jagged blade. “I never met anyone like him. He was polite and kind. He asked about my day.”
Arran thought he might break. “That is all it took for you to fall in love with Campbell?” A simple kindness shown?
Lucy nodded. “That was all.”
“That was all?” A shaking started deep inside him. “That was all?”
“I—” Lucy lifted her palms. “Isn’t that enough?”
The hint of her perplexity was the straw that broke him.
Arran erupted. “Hell no, it is not enough, Lucy. Christ!” The truth came tearing from him.
“You deserved so much more than simple kindness. You deserve to have the bloody world laid at your feet and the damned stars and moon sprinkled in for extra measure. And a crown to honor you for the queen you are and…”
Lucy stared wide-eyed.
“And… And…” An insupportable bitterness left an acrid taste on his tongue. “I’m certain Campbell will do all that for you.”
Lucy touched a hand to her heart. “I don’t need all that, Arran.”
And the fact that she didn’t was one of a million things that set her apart from any woman before her.
Arran bored his gaze into Lucy’s. “There’s a difference between needing something, Lucy, and deserving it.”
Their eyes locked, that dangerous connection where the world melted away but for the two of them.
Arran resisted the pull, but his head moved of its own volition, lower, closer to Lucy—until their brows touched.
They pressed their foreheads against one another, straining towards one another.
Ah, Christ, help me.
Lucy reached between them and pressed her palm against his cheek.
“I thought I knew what I wanted, Arran.” Her words caught.
“I was so determined my sweetheart would walk through the door. Every time it opened, I wondered if he was the one who’d come for me?
Was it the man who would be willing to sacrifice all just to have me in his world? ”
Lucy stretched up a hand and extended it toward Arran.
“What I couldn’t imagine…” Her eyes glittered with unshed tears.
“What I couldn’t b-believe…is that my life could play out differently.
” A half-laugh, half-sob bubbled past her lips.
“How could it? How could I know anything different when I was as tethered to The Spotted Elk as my mum and her mum before her?”
His heart pumped oddly.
What was she saying…?
Lucy opened her mouth—
A cry went up, joyful revelry robbing him of whatever she’d intended to say.
The stable doors burst open.
Andromena came exploding through the doors.
“It is a Yuletide miracle!” she cried. “Come quick—Campbell is awake.” Her excited eyes landed on Lucy. “And he is asking for you, Miss LeBeau.”