Chapter 3
“If I take one more spin around this dance floor, I fear that me feet might very well fall off!” Emily giggled as the song that she had been dancing to came to an end.
“The more times I twirl ye around the dance floor, the less either one of us has to focus on the number of eyes that keep leering at us like flies on hogs,” Magnus replied, plucking glasses of wine off the nearest table and extending one toward her, which she happily accepted.
She took a large sip and relished the bright fruity flavors on her tongue as she glanced around and noted that he was correct.
“I suppose that ye have a point.” She nodded. “It isnae every day that ye see a woman dancing with the man she refused to marry.”
She was sure that all those eyes were trained on them because of that very reason. She had been asked no less than a dozen times this evening alone how their engagement had been broken, and now she was dancing with the man in question.
Magnus’s smile widened as he regarded her happily. “Ye left so quickly that night, I didnae even have a chance to thank ye.”
Emily shook her head and held her wine glass up to her lips in a gesture for him to stop speaking.
“None of that now. It isnae the time or the place.” She glanced around once more.
There was no telling just how many people might be eavesdropping at this very moment, waiting to catch their every word so they might be the one to start a new rumor or circle around a little bit of gossip.
She had grown up in keeps just like this, and she knew how much people liked to run off their mouths.
After she took another sip, she pressed her glass into his chest, hoping that he would fetch her a refill at the very least. “At least we are guaranteed to have vexed me faither by dancing together. That shall make for a very fun conversation later tonight.”
Hamish had, under no circumstances, warned her that this was one of the few chances that she was going to get to choose a husband for herself before he intervened once more.
But he still failed to understand that she simply had no desire to choose a husband based on the three or four minutes that she might spend dancing with a suitor. She was fortunate that Magnus was a kind man with whom she had formed a solid friendship, but that was a fluke.
Friendship or not, it wouldn’t change the fact that they weren’t suitable for one another. A marriage would only doom them both to unhappiness. Why was it such a scandal to want to advocate for her own happiness?
Magnus turned to face her, words right on his lips, before their conversation was interrupted by the approach of a very cold-looking man.
He was taller than Magnus by a handful of inches at least, with shaggy dark brown hair that fell in natural waves around his ears and the nape of his neck.
It didn’t hide the plethora of scars peeking from his collar and up the sides of his neck, never mind those that crisscrossed his shaven face with streaks of silver.
His dark brown eyes were warm despite the unamused expression on his face.
The way he held himself hinted that he ought to have been bigger than he currently was, but even the lean muscles that covered his bones were impressive.
Emily would be lying if she said that he wasn’t one of the most handsome men that she had ever seen in her life. Something about the image that he posed took her breath away.
“May I?” he asked, but he didn’t really seem like he cared what her answer might be, for he shouldered Magnus out of the way.
Magnus’s eyebrows rose, and Emily couldn’t help but look at him to see how he might react. But, much to her shock and dismay, he moved away without further comment.
The man’s hand rose in invitation, but she had only started to lift her own out of reluctant compliance when he snatched it and spun her back to the dance floor.
People moved out of their way as he led her to almost the center of the room. She couldn’t stop looking at the faces that they passed; some looked shocked, others looked afraid. Her father, however, looked almost smug.
It immediately put her on edge.
“I kent that I had roused some people’s curiosity, but this is too much. I apologize for the stares…” Emily trailed off.
She lifted her eyes to the man, a little unnerved by the intensity of his stare.
She waited a beat for him to fill the silence with either his name or to start twirling her about the dance floor.
Though from the rigid way he held himself, she had a hard time imagining that he was able to move well enough around the floor.
The man swallowed thickly before speaking, tearing his gaze from hers to look at those around them. “Kaden. And I’m sure that it’s me they’re starin’ at. It must be the first time I’ve gotten off me chair at such an event.”
She started to ask him what he meant when he spun her out and then back, pulling her so close to his chest that she had no choice but to brace the palms of her hands against his chest to keep the distance between them.
Her face flushed as something in her stomach twisted and fluttered uncomfortably.
She wasn’t used to not being the one in charge of any given situation. What was the matter with her?
“I do hope that yer self-imposed isolation isnae due to poor dancing skills, sir, for I daenae wish to be trampled,” she teased.
She watched his reaction carefully to see how she might be able to push him. But, to her dismay, she got nothing out of him.
It was hard not to keep stealing glances at his face. Despite his imposing figure, he was impossibly handsome. Almost to the point that it seemed as if he shouldn’t exist. Like he was impossible.
“I guess ye shall have to see for yerself,” he answered flatly.
She would have accused him of having less personality than a mop, but he spun her so swiftly that her heart stuttered in her chest. He moved as if he were weightless, with a skill that came from an upbringing of tutors that she had endured herself.
There was nothing clumsy about his footwork, and he moved with great confidence through the song and into the next.
If he was having any fun from dancing with her, she couldn’t tell. It was irritating to feel almost like she was being used to make a point that she didn’t even know she was involved in. It felt like being a pawn in a game that she didn’t know she was part of, to begin with.
He didn’t let go, he didn’t enjoy himself, and he didn’t say anything else.
Before she could form something witty to say, the song ended, and Kaden walked away. Just like that.
What had just happened?
What was he doing with himself?
Kaden had barely made it back to his table to grab another glass of whiskey when he found himself turning to see where Emily had wandered off to.
He could see her chestnut-brown hair moving through the crowd toward the side doors that led outside. He wanted to talk to her, wanted to at least hold a conversation to make a decision about her one way or another, but he had not been able to manage it.
She had been too soft in his arms, too light on her feet, and had moved too easily with him. He had danced with other women before, out of necessity, but none who seemed to read him the way she had without even looking at him.
Dangerous.
Was she leaving to get air because he had unnerved her? Was she as afraid of him as the other women in the hall?
It hadn’t felt that way. He had let his mind run away with him. Thinking about everything that might have happened and how everything could have played out, rather than focusing on the moment he had been in.
Kaden lifted his glass to drink, and when he lowered it, he found another laird standing in front of him. He struggled to remember the man’s name. He tried to pluck it out of the names of alliances he had been forced to study for countless hours since he had returned home.
The pressure of standing in a room with so many people, too many eyes on him all at once, was starting to get to him. It felt like the walls were closing in on him, and this man was standing entirely too close.
Battlefields were far more comfortable than this.
“Good evening, Laird Muir,” the man greeted with a smug grin, a hum in his voice.
“Is it?” Kaden returned flatly without so much as glancing at him.
“Aye, I think that it is turning out to be a lovely evening. I hope ye forgive me nae coming here to thank ye for yer hospitality earlier,” the man said as he rocked onto the balls of his feet.
“Unnecessary,” Kaden responded flatly.
If only that were the end of the conversation, that would have been ideal. But he never seemed to be that lucky.
“I wished to come speak with ye after seeing ye dancing with me daughter,” the man added.
Now, Kaden deigned to look at him. He ought to have led with that little tidbit of information.
Kaden lifted an eyebrow in question rather than speaking.
“What I mean to ask is if ye wish to perhaps form an alliance with me clan? I ken that ye daenae dance with lasses often. Me daughter Emily is yet unwedded and—”
Kaden’s gaze drifted in the direction Emily had left. He could barely see a glimpse of her hair as she rounded the balcony door.
Whatever else the man was saying to him, he couldn’t hear it. Instead, his focus zeroed on another laird, one that he knew even less, headed in the same direction with a questionable look on his face.
Kaden didn’t like the shifty way the older man was looking around, as if trying not to be noticed as he followed the lass out of the hall. The man swayed with every other step, and the flush in his cheeks set off warning bells in Kaden’s head.
He could hear Emily’s father calling to him as he rudely left their conversation and headed in the same direction. Though unlike the drunken Laird, people moved right out of his way and didn’t let their gazes linger on his concerned expression long.
He didn’t even make it all the way to the door before the man ducked out. And only moments after that, a feminine voice cried out in distress.
Something in Kaden’s chest broke, hearing the fear in another person’s voice. He tried to block the memories of hearing his own voice calling for help in a place where his cries would never be answered as he hurried forward.
He would never allow another call for help to go unanswered while he still had breath in his lungs and could do something about it. Much less in his own home.