Chapter 18 #2
For Keane’s part, he looked like a man who’d been led to the gibbet rather than to an altar.
His smiles were few and far between, and most were directed at Lael, in order to reassure her.
Betimes he envied their close-knit sibling relationship.
Even all these years later, he and Kenna scarcely knew each other, despite that she lived beneath his very roof.
In fact, she was closer to Lael than she was to him.
All day long Kenna had been brooding, and now it appeared she had eschewed the celebration entirely. He was searching the crowd to see if he could find her, when his wife came tugging at his sleeve. She looped her arm about Jaime’s, drawing him close. “Do you think they will be alright?” she asked.
He followed her gaze to the dais, noting the couple’s general discord. “I do not know. In truth, have never seen him quite so…”
Wooden. Stoic. Quietly seething.
“Unyielding?”
Over the past five years, Jaime had come to know the man well.
Thanks to Keane, Jaime had been able to join the battle at Stracathro in Forfarshire with some more peace of mind whilst he’d remained here at Keppenach along with Lael.
He knew it had cost Keane his brother’s affections, and the two rarely spoke anymore.
For that alone, he felt an obligation to see to his wellbeing.
Lael sighed loudly, her fingers tightening about his forearm.
“I would be furious, in truth, had I not spent a few moments with the girl when I took her the gown. She was reticent, and yet every other word was, ‘will Keane like this?’ ‘Will Keane like that?’ To my way of thought ’tis a lot of fretting over a man she’d only meant to impugn. ”
Jaime considered that a moment, remembering the wild look in the girl’s eyes in the solar. “’Tis my opinion she was merely trying to save herself.”
“Save herself?” Lael peered up at him, her lovely brows lifting. “From what, perchance?”
“Aye, well, that would be the question.” He stared down at his wife, knowing the answer to the question he would ask, despite his need to hear a little white lie, “Did you carry on that way before our nuptials?”
“Like Lianae?” Lael laughed and then shot him sideways glance. “Nay, husband!”
“So, then, ye dinna wish to please me, not at all?”
His wife tilted him a coy smile. “I dinna care to remind ye, husband. I would have greatly preferred to pluck out your eyes.”
Jaime’s shoulders shook a bit with laughter, realizing that she likely spoke the truth.
That night so long ago, there had been naught between them but lust, and mostly on his part.
His beautiful wife would have preferred to gut him from head to toe—and she might well have, given her skill with the blades.
Even after all these years, she far surpassed most of his men and had shown little desire to put away her sharp little toys.
Even now, despite that she was far more adept at concealing them, he knew she secreted one beneath her dress, strapped to her ankle in a soft pocket of fine silk—a gift from Jaime on their fifth year together, the day he’d left her to do battle in the north.
Alas, his eldest daughter had taken up her torch.
God help any man who dared to cross the Steorling women.
“Where are the children?” he asked.
“Here and there,” Lael replied, waving a hand dismissively, no doubt as much an accomplice to their foolery as were his errant daughters.
They had four—four clever little sirens, who would all someday lure hapless men to their doom—as surely as their lady mother had done to him. But be damned if he didn’t love his life. His gaze returned to the newly wedded couple, considering what his wife had said.
He had a good feeling about óengus’s last living daughter, and it was a good thing, because elsewise, given Keane’s demeanor, Jaime doubted he could have supported the king in his decision to force them into matrimony—which by the by, confused him a bit…