Chapter 8 #2
Music began, a jaunty, loose sort of reel that suggested that the players were skilled enough to make it up as they went along. A mountain of a man with a thick beard held out a hand to a woman who was old enough to be his grandmother. She beamed and let him take her for a spin.
“We have to dance,” she said to Arran, her eyes following the mismatched couple, who were both laughing as they spun and twirled. She did plenty of dancing in London—always with partners that Ashbourne had picked—but she hadn’t done any dancing like this in ages.
“Absolutely not,” Arran said immediately. “I am your guard, I cannae—”
“That’s fine,” Kenna interrupted. “I’ll just go dance with him, then.”
She pointed to another man, one broad enough that if he wasn’t the local blacksmith, then he had missed his calling.
Her gambit worked. She hadn’t even gotten both feet out of the bench seat of their side table before Arran stood before her, hand extended, scowl on his face.
“I ken what ye were doing there,” he accused as she placed her fingers in his.
She beamed. “It still worked though, did it nae?”
“Come along, then, wee devil.”
He spun her under his arm, the movement a bit awkward but skilled, as if he knew how to dance well but rarely exercised the skill.
That was well enough, though. Tonight, she would give him all the practice he could bear.
It was well dark by the time Kenna could be convinced to return to the Keep.
Not that Arran had tried very hard, he admitted to himself as they rode along the moonlit path.
He hadn’t danced since the fire festival all those years before.
On the few instances when he’d been even tempted to try—or more accurately cajoled by Declan into trying—Arran had been stopped in his tracks by the image of Fiona’s wrecked and mangled body.
He’d feared much the same when he put his hand into Kenna’s tonight. But the images hadn’t come. Instead of visions of horror, he saw her sparkling green eyes or the way her rope of gold hair flashed in the firelight. Instead of screams, he heard music and Kenna’s laugh.
She was a bonny girl, even in those pallid English clothes that she wore most of the time. Tonight, though, wearing borrowed Callahan plaid and laughing, looking so free and full of joy…
Tonight she had been downright beautiful. The kind of beauty that made a man ache just to look at it.
It wasn’t just Kenna’s looks that led to the tense anticipation in the air, though.
It was her kind words about his family. Arran hadn’t realized how desperately he’d needed that, needed to know that someone else remembered his mother’s soft hands and warm smile.
That someone, somewhere could picture his father’s grin peeking out from behind his beard.
Hearing Kenna talk about his family felt like having them back for a few moments.
He was furious that her family had treated her so poorly.
The silence still hung between them as they returned to the stables, the night air only broken by Kenna’s quiet murmur of thanks to the stable boys or the jangle of tack as they removed saddles and bridles.
Now that they were back behind Callahan walls, Arran could have bid her goodnight.
He certainly could have done so once they were back in the main Keep.
Or once they got to the wing where her rooms were.
He didn’t. He followed her all the way to her bedchamber door.
And when she got there, she hesitated.
Kenna turned so that her back was to the door so that she was looking up at him from where he stood, too close for a respectable guard. She didn’t tell him to step back, though.
“Thank ye for today.” There was a resignation in her expression that made Arran want to fight the world. “I will remember it. I will hold onto the memory when…”
She trailed off, but she didn’t need to say more. Soon, her husband would return, and she would go back to her regular life. A life in which she was paraded about like a doll in public and abused in private.
And there was not one bloody thing that Arran could do about it.
He shouldn’t even want to do something about it, he reminded himself. And if he wanted to get protective over a helpless lass, there were women far more helpless than Makenna Ashbourne. Women less clever, less courageous, less determined.
There were women out there who needed help who were not the daughters of men who had stolen Arran’s birthright.
But God, he didn’t want any of those women. He wanted Kenna.
“If ye dinnae open the door to your room right now,” he warned her. “I am going to kiss ye.”
Kenna should have fled. Her hand was already on the handle to the door, caught behind her back. One flick of her wrist and she would be out of his reach.
Her hand did not twist, though. And the door did not open.
Instead, her lips parted as he pressed his mouth to hers.
Arran hadn’t been a saint in the past decade. He’d had the errant brief liaison with a maid or local widow. They hadn’t lasted, and there had been no great depth of feeling on either side. Still, he was far from an untried youth.
Yet this kiss made him feel as though it was his very first.
Something about Kenna meant that the first brush of their lips against one another sent a flash of electricity down to his toes. Something inside him, a need so deep that he hadn’t even known it was there, purred in satisfaction. Yes. His. This was right.
He sunk a hand into her hair at the nape of her neck, pulling her a little closer. She went without resistance, pushing up on her toes to meet his mouth hungrily, darting out a careful tongue to lick his lower lip.
He groaned quietly into her mouth, slanting her head to the side so he could kiss her more deeply.
And then he remembered.
She wasn’t his.
She was married to a powerful Englishman, and while Arran couldn’t find it in himself to fear Ashbourne, that didn’t mean that Kenna was safe from him. They could not be caught kissing in a corridor.
Kenna looked briefly surprised, then horribly understanding.
“You’re right, of course,” she said in her crispest, most English tones, even though Arran hadn’t said anything. That reversion to the mask he now knew she wore stung like the cut of a lash.
But it was safer, so his feelings on the matter were unimportant.
He swallowed hard against the lump in his throat. He could still taste her on his lips, the hint of ale, the sunshine of her smiles. Oh, Kenna. He made himself smile.
“Have a good night, then, my lady,” he said gruffly.
The glimmer of tears in her eyes was there and gone so quickly that Arran thought it might just have been a trick of the light.
“Good night,” she said. She went into her room and closed the door behind her.
The click of the lock was one of the most brutal sounds he’d ever heard.