Chapter 2 #2
“Ah, I thought we might discuss things… between men,” he said smoothly. “My nephew and his fellow guards will escort your wife to dinner. She will meet you there.”
Ashbourne looked like he might protest out of sheer stubbornness.
Kenna, seeing her opportunity, took the moment to say, “It’s not as though I could get lost, Edmund.
” She forced out an airy laugh. “After all, this house is fine enough, but not nearly at the scale of your estate in Kent. Nor even my father’s Keep. ”
“Oh, all right, then,” Ashbourne said. He sounded magnanimous, like a man indulging a beloved wife, but Kenna knew he was just pleased at her obedience.
Internally, she slumped in relief as the lord walked away with Callahan.
Presumably Declan Callahan, the Laird’s nephew, offered her a polite arm. She took it carefully, letting her gloved fingertips only just brush against his sleeve. The other guard, the one with whom she’d traded insults earlier, gave her an appalled look.
But it wasn’t his dislike for her that bothered her. It was his eyes that bothered her. Amber. Like that first, perfect golden honey that dripped straight from the beehive. She had seen him before.
“Ye must have far too much time on your hands, if ye are occupying yourself comparing old stones,” he said, sounding as though he was barely keeping himself from uttering a greater insult. God, she wished he would. It would be such a relief to speak plainly, for once.
But she didn’t have that luxury, so she just gave him the smile she wore at Society events.
“A lady must be accomplished in observation, sir,” she said lightly, her skirts swishing against the flagstones as they walked toward the noise and bustle of the Great Hall. “It is one of the few skills allowed to us.”
“Of course,” Declan said mildly, but the other guard scoffed.
“One of the few things permitted to English lassies, mayhap,” the amber-eyed guard observed.
“But Scotswomen have many skills. But then again…” He smirked, and Kenna was annoyed to find that it did nothing to diminish his good looks.
“It seems as though ye have become a proper English priss. So maybe it’s all ye are capable of. ”
The only way Kenna managed to cling to her smile was by gritting her back teeth together until her lips were forced to curve to compensate. This utter arse knew nothing about her, nothing at all. He didn’t know how she had gotten there, or what she had endured to make it this far.
So, hell. If he wanted to think her some missish airhead with no concerns but fashion and gossip, so be it.
What was he to her?
He was just some guard in a Keep that might remind her of home—but it was not her home any longer. She would never be allowed to return home again.
As they reached the Great Hall and moved to sit at the head table, she fluttered her eyelashes at him like she was the silliest chit in creation.
“One must adapt, dear sir,” she said as simperingly as she could manage. Then she let an iron edge go into her smile as she made her accent as crisply English as possible. “After all, it does no good to cling to savage habits.”
It was an easy insult.
A cheap one, honestly.
But she chose it because she expected it to land.
She was destined to be disappointed.
Instead, those amber eyes just flashed as he—slowly, deliberately—pulled out her chair and gestured for her to sit. When she did so, he put both his hands on the arms of the seat, then leaned in until only inches separated their faces.
“Christ alive, Arran,” Declan Callahan mumbled.
The guard—Arran, apparently—smiled a mean smile. It wasn’t the kind of meanness that made her afraid, though. It was the kind that made her want to fight back.
Lord, how she missed feeling as though fighting back would get her anything.
“Careful, my lady,” Arran said lowly. “Ye may not have yet seen enough savagery to speak of it so freely.”
Kenna felt her eyes go wide, but not truly in shock. She felt… invigorated. Like she was, for this one moment, the person she was meant to be.
“I beg your pardon!”
Her husband’s affronted tone drew her attention with a snap. She dropped her eyes to her lap, almost as though even looking at the guard could make this trouble worse than it already was.
“Unhand my wife immediately!” Ashbourne insisted.
As if by magic, though, the guard produced a handkerchief, holding it up in illustration.
“Her ladyship dropped this,” he said, managing to sound almost deferential. “I didnae want her to muss her frock bending to the floor.”
Kenna pulled it from his hand and tucked it in her sleeve, offering the barest nod of thanks. Ashbourne sniffed, clearly not satisfied but also unable to find a reason to protest.
Still, he watched Arran with suspicion and dislike as they ate their meal, and every time he put his hand on Kenna’s arm, it was not the gesture of comfort he pretended it to be. Every time, his fingers bit in hard enough that she knew she would be freckled with bruises later.
She tried to earn any sliver of goodwill by paying careful attention to what Ashbourne was saying, even though she was furious with herself for playing into his game, even in such a minor way.
“It really only benefits you, Callahan,” he argued as they dined on a thick stew that was deliciously spiced and full of chunks of tender meat and vegetables.
“I understand your position, Ashbourne,” the Laird returned calmly.
Kenna watched her husband’s jaw tighten in dislike. Even though he had addressed the Laird so casually, he clearly thought it a great show of disrespect that Callahan would behave the same way.
“But the Alliance was organised to benefit Scottish interests. Ye have helped us in your role as ambassador, aye, but that doesnae mean we wish to be overrun by the English.”
Ashbourne looked as though he genuinely could not imagine why not.
“But we have resources that you could scarcely dream of!” he protested.
He didn’t even wait for Callahan’s response because a man like Ashbourne could never really care for the opinion of a Scot.
Hadn’t he made it clear dozens of times that he considered Kenna and her entire country to be heathenish savages, good for nothing except being controlled by a clever English command?
“In any case,” Ashbourne blustered, “I can’t see that you really have a choice. You need a true tie to the throne now that the Lennox Clan has been extinguished. Most regrettably, of course.”
He added this last bit as a clear afterthought.
Makenna couldn’t hide how she stiffened at the words.
The Lennoxes had been her family’s closest neighbors.
She’d grown up among them, had spent nearly as many afternoons at their Keep as at her own.
One of the Laird’s cousins had had a daughter close to Kenna’s age, so the two girls had been given many opportunities to play together.
She was dead now, of course. They were all dead.
All those people who had never been anything but kind to Kenna when she was a girl. All dead.
And Ashbourne—her husband, not that he deserved the title—couldn’t even properly pretend to be sorry that almost an entire clan had been erased in a single night.
So, it was no surprise that she couldn’t hide her reaction.
But what was surprising was the way that the amber-eyed guard reacted just as clearly, his head snapping up so he could glare at Ashbourne.
Fire blazed in his eyes for a long moment, and then he forced himself, apparently with great effort, to return his attention to his meal.
Had he known someone who had died that night? She shook her head; that was a foolish question. Everyone in this part of Scotland knew someone who had died, even if none of the clans had suffered quite as badly as the Lennox family had.
Or maybe he just hated Ashbourne. She couldn’t precisely blame him.
“We will discuss it,” Callahan said smoothly after pinning Ashbourne with a long, assessing look. “Perhaps we will find a way that works for ye as well as for us.”
Ashbourne settled in his seat, as satisfied as if Callahan had already agreed to every one of his demands.
The part of Kenna that loathed Ashbourne and hated to see him get any kind of satisfaction seethed at that. And yet a greater part of her could not help but sigh in relief. When Ashbourne was in a good mood, he tended to ignore her.
Indeed, that night he let her retire to her own bedchamber without comment, leaving her blissfully alone with her thoughts.
She let herself get lost in her musings as Anna unpinned and brushed out her hair.
Kenna must have looked uncommonly distracted, for her maid paused and asked, “Are you all right, my lady?”
Kenna blinked, then caught the maid’s gaze in the looking glass. Anna was clearly concerned. Something that was all too common, given the household where she worked. She alone saw Kenna’s bruises.
“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” Kenna said distractedly. “It’s only…”
She hesitated, but she trusted Anna with her dearest secrets. She could trust her with this.
“If you notice anything about that guard, Arran, the one with the honey-gold eyes… If you hear anything, would ye tell me?”
She blinked at the slip into her native way of speaking, but Anna wouldn’t mind.
“Of course, my lady. Did you recognize him from somewhere? I can’t say his face is terribly unusual… He’s handsome enough, truly, with that almost dark hair and steely way about him.”
“It’s the eyes,” Kenna said. “Honey-gold.” Her voice quieted as she mused on it, more to herself than to her friend and servant. “Utterly unforgettable.”