Chapter 15
Though Mya had not, to her knowledge, been up into the hills beyond the city, she could have sworn she knew them somehow. Knew the way the air of them would feel against her skin, and the view down to Inverness, curled against the shore where Beauly Firth met Moray.
The heather was all in bloom, and the earthy, sweet scent of it hung on the air, mingling with the hum of the bees in the blossoms. Mya closed her eyes and breathed in the fresh summer morning, luxuriating in the breeze that brushed her cheek and curled around her shoulders.
Just ahead, Kayden’s mount carried a picnic basket full to the brim with luncheon supplies, courtesy of Lottie and Eleanora.
Mya gave her horse a little nudge, and the mare trotted forward to walk side by side with Kayden’s gelding.
“Thank you,” Mya said, just loud enough to be heard.
Kayden turned to look at her. “For what?”
“For today. It is so lovely here.”
He smiled, the promise of something up ahead in his eyes. “You haven’t even seen the best of it yet. We will get there.”
“I am holding you to that,” Mya said.
For a time, they rode together in silence, simply enjoying the sunlight that made it down through the clouds, and the sounds of the world around them. It was a breezy day, the gusts of wind that whirled through the heather keeping the midges away.
“There is something I wish to tell you,” Kayden said finally.
Ahead of them, a crofter's hut was nestled in a hollow, smoke rising from the chimney.
Lunch, perhaps, Mya thought. The scent of wood smoke drifted down to overwhelm the heather for a moment before the wind blew it away.
Mya shivered, though it was not cold. The scent had been so shockingly familiar.
For a moment she had felt the warmth of a fire against her skin, heard the murmur of a voice in her ear. But it was gone as quickly as it came.
“Mya?” Kayden prompted.
She shook her head, willing the odd feeling away, and smiled at him. “Yes?”
“I would like to tell you something, if you wish to listen.”
“Of course.” Mya watched him watch the landscape ahead, his expression thoughtful.
“The reason I do not talk about my family,” he said finally, “is that I don’t know them.”
Mya stared at him. She almost opened her mouth to ask why in the world he had been such an arse about it when she asked, then, when he knew that she didn’t know who her family was either. She was hardly going to judge him for being in the same circumstance.
But he was opening up to her, at last, and she didn’t want to ruin it. She didn’t ask.
“When you say you don’t know them…”
He sighed. “I mean that I have never, to my knowledge, met them. When I arrived here, I was taken in by a man who had room, and generosity enough to give aid to strangers without expecting anything in return. Much like what Lottie and Eleanora have done for you. But he was an older man, and as his health declined, I became more and more involved in looking out for him. Eventually I was the person doing most of the caretaking.”
His voice caught, briefly. Mya would not have heard it if she had not been listening so intently.
“So when he… passed on, he left his lands and money to me. He had no family any longer. No heirs. Without him, I would be nowhere and nothing.”
“And now you are a lord,” Mya finished.
Kayden laughed. “Yes. Indeed. Though sometimes I think that particular bit of good fortune is more trouble than it’s worth.”
“Is McGregor his name, then?” Mya asked.
“No.” Kayden shook his head. “It’s mine. I did not wish to trade it. Even though I can’t remember my family, I would like to keep that connection to them. I am sure you understand.”
Yes, Mya understood. She too knew exactly what it was to have lost a family you couldn’t even mourn because you didn’t know who they were. What they had been like. Whether you shared anything with them beyond a name.
“Would you trade it?” Mya asked.
Kayden's eyebrows lifted. “Trade what?”
“The life that you've had, for the one you might have had with your family? The old man who took you in. Do you think you would forget ever having known him, if you could know the family you were born to, or would you rather keep what you have than go for the unknown?”
Kayden sighed, frowning down at the reins in his hands. “That is not an easy question to answer.”
“No,” Mya said. “That's why I asked it. I want to know what you would choose.”
“I think it's a bit of a moot question anyway, isn't it? It's hardly as though one of the fair folk is going to show up and ask us whether we would make the trade or no.”
“Well, no. But it's still an interesting question. One most people don't have to ask themselves.” She shrugged, and nudged her horse forward. “I still haven't been able to answer it, myself.”
“Haven't you?” Kayden, his horse keeping pace with her own still, looked over at her. “I thought perhaps you'd come up with one and were waiting to see if I gave the same answer.”
Mya laughed. “No. I'm not sure that it's a question anyone actually can answer. On the one hand, you have your family. The people who are meant to mean everything to you. But they mean nothing, because as far as you are aware, you have never met them. You know nothing of them, whether they were good or bad, clever or stupid, kind or not. On the other, you have the people you know, who have taken you in. And though they might still be veritable strangers, you know that they are good, and clever, and kind. That they care for you.”
She looked up at the clouds moving across the sky, here and there leaving patches of blue visible for a moment or two before hiding them again. Ahead of them, something rustled through the heather and away, avoiding the horses' feet.
“Is it better to take the known quantity, with which you are happy, or the unknown, with which you might be happier, but you also might lose what happiness you had?”
Was it better, she wondered, to have a family? Or to have Ella and Lottie and Kayden? And in that moment she knew. If she had ever had to choose, if it ever came to that, she would choose the man beside her. Every time.
“I don't believe I'm quite ready for such questions,” Kayden said finally. “You have bested me with that one.”
“It was not meant to be a contest, you know,” Mya said, letting a little laughter slide into her voice.
“All the same, I am not clever enough for such things,” Kayden answered, turning a smile on her. “You will have to refrain from them, I think, or I may damage myself trying to work it out.”
That was something she rather doubted, but Mya just laughed and let him be. She had no more such questions anyway.
How old had he been, Mya wondered, when he had been taken in by the man who gave him his title?
Young, surely, if he had forgotten his family entirely.
Or had he skipped some intermediate step?
A family who had been meant to take care of him but had used him as free labor?
The workhouse? For a moment, she played with the idea that perhaps that was not his story at all.
That maybe his was similar to her own and that he had not been young when he lost his family, only lost the memory of them as well.
But that was something of a stretch, wasn't it? Two people in the same circle who had woken one day with no memory of where they had come from and only little idea of who they were. For such a thing to happen would be entirely too much coincidence. Mya shook the idea away.
“Kayden?”
“Yes?”
“When were—?”
She didn't have the chance to finish the question before he was kicking his horse into a canter. Mya sighed and followed. He might have given her some warning, at least.
Over the crest of the ridge, they came upon a group of little hills, all running down into a dip in the landscape where water had pooled, blue and clean and circled with reeds. Down by the edge of the pond, stones stuck up out of the water, green with moss.
“This is the place that I mentioned,” Kayden said, sliding off his horse and grinning at her as he turned a slow circle with arms stretched out wide to indicate the area. “Isn't it lovely?”
“It is.”
Mya thought of asking the question again, and of getting a genuine answer, but Kayden was already pulling the picnic supplies from their place and spreading out a blanket on the heather in view of the pond.
He looked so pleased that Mya could not bring herself to drag up the uncomfortable subject of his family yet again.
There would be time later to discuss it.
For the moment, she would simply enjoy his company.
They took the bridles from the horses to let them graze, and set out the picnic.
There were cold meats and fish, cheese and fruit and bread.
She also happened to know that Lottie had sent leftover chocolate tart.
But Kayden did not. That was a surprise.
He passed her a plate, and she scooped bits of her favorite dishes onto it, then sat back to eat.
There was something about eating out in the open that made one's appetite greater, Mya thought as she took a bite of smoked fish from Sunday's dinner. Perhaps it was all the fresh air. Or the riding. But the food tasted better than it ever had.
“My compliments to the cooks,” Kayden said, pausing for the first time between bites.
“I must admit, I have missed the spreads that Lottie used to put out for parties. This makes up for it, somewhat.” He smiled.
“And also makes me regret even more that I did not actually finish dinner with you the other night.”
For an instant, Mya felt anger. He was going to make light of that after all the trouble it had caused? All the hurt? But he was not making light of the incident, she realized in the next breath. He was making a joke at his own expense.
“You missed dessert,” Mya said. “Which is a great pity. I assure you that it would have been an experience to remember.”
“And now you rub it in my face.” Kayden laughed. “How very uncharitable of you, Miss Boyle.”
“Not a bit.” Mya smiled sweetly at him. “If I was going to rub it in your face, I would tell you exactly what ingredients went into it, and how perfectly the flavors of the fruit mixed with the sweet cream and the bitterness of the chocolate.”
“Now you are just being cruel.”
“Yes,” Mya agreed. “Now I am being cruel.”
Kayden set his plate very carefully down, and in the next instant had curled his palm around the back of her neck and dragged her forward into a kiss.
Mya very nearly dropped the plate she was still holding, and had to fumble to set it aside so that she could lean forward and return the kiss as hungrily as he had given it.
“Was that a punishment?” Mya laughed when he released her. “Or an incentive to do it again?”
“Neither.” Kayden picked up his plate again, smoothing his hair back into place with a quick slide of his palm. He looked as though he had never moved from the spot where he sat. “It was you, with that little smirk on your face. I could not resist.”
“I will have to wear it more often, then.”
They both fell silent, after that, finishing up their meals and packing up the picnic. Mya then got up and dug into her own saddlebags to pull out the wrapped tart, carrying it back to the blanket. Kayden was lying on his back, staring up at the clouds.
“I thought,” Mya said, “that you might like some dessert.”
He sat up so quickly he nearly ran his face into the tart she was holding out, and Mya had to snatch it back before it was ruined.
“I wasn’t informed that you have a sweet addiction.” She laughed.
“Not sweets. Only that chocolate tart Lottie’s cook makes.”
“This chocolate tart?” Mya teased, holding it out to him once more.
Kayden made a hungry sort of sound that went straight down Mya’s spine to her core, and suddenly she was less interested in food and more interested in getting him to make that noise again. He reached out, and she slapped his hand back.
“Wait. Good heavens. Do you desert your manners entirely in the presence of chocolate?”
“Woman,” Kayden growled. “If you do not share some of that, I swear I will not be responsible for what happens next.”
Mya was laughing too hard to keep the tart out of his reach any longer, and Kayden pulled it from her hands and set it down on the blanket, rummaging in the basket for a knife to slice it with.
He cut it so quickly she was a little afraid he was going to lose a finger in the process, but he managed to avoid any carnage and served up two slices, diving immediately into his with a moan that was positively sexual.
It was a wonder, Mya thought, that he’d lasted long enough to not just dig into it with his hands.
“It is a lucky thing I didn’t feed that to you in public,” she said, shaking her head. “You would have traumatized someone.”
Kayden didn’t answer. He was too busy eating.
Laughing once more, Mya gave up and started on her own dessert at a rather more reasonable pace.
Kayden too had slowed, at least, and was no longer imitating some form of desperate beast. Now he was savoring each bite, eyes rolling frequently upward, with the accompaniment of the occasional groan of pleasure, and if he did not stop making those sounds Mya was going to combust.
Taking a leaf out of Kayden’s book, she moaned over her own bite of tart.
Kayden’s hand stilled on his fork. Mya, pretending she did not see the pause, continued on, this time making a sound that she knew he would remember quite well from a few nights before.
When he looked up at her, she was licking the last trace of chocolate from her fork with the tip of her tongue.
Their eyes met. Mya smiled slowly.
“You,” Kayden growled as he set his half-finished dessert unceremoniously aside, “are unbelievable.”
“Hardly,” Mya said, taking another bite of tart. “I am simply—”
He didn’t give her time to finish her answer before his mouth claimed hers. Mya was more than happy to play along.