Chapter Fifteen #2
He had pulled it right up against the frame. He sat with his head back and his mouth slightly open and one boot still on. Someone had thrown a blanket over him, plainly a servant with opinions. His hand was on the coverlet a few inches from hers.
Alexandra lay still and looked at him for a long time, and something under her ribs ached so sweetly that she did not want it to stop.
She lay there in the dark and thought about all of it, from the beginning.
The training wing at the Murray keep with her palms split open.
Her father’s guard in the cold, and a dark shape on the crown of a rise a quarter mile back.
A man standing all night in her father’s courtyard with his reins over his arm.
Six of them coming off a byre wall. A river at dawn.
A spike above a gorge. Her father’s sword coming up in a hollow in the forest, and this man behind her not moving an inch.
He had been in every single moment that had mattered.
The love came up in her then with no warning at all.
It was so large and so plain, and so obviously the thing that had been sitting there the whole while with its hands folded, waiting for her to notice it, that she nearly laughed at herself in the dark.
She had been so busy being angry at him for it that she had never once said the thing.
Alexandra put her hand over his and squeezed.
Arran came awake badly and all at once. He was half out of the chair before he worked out where he was.
“Ye’re awake,” he said. “Are ye—”
“I’m well.” She was smiling. She could hear it in her own voice. “Sit down before ye fall in the fire!”
He sat down. He did not take his hand back, though.
“How long have I been asleep?” she asked.
“The whole day. It’s near midnight.”
“And ye’ve been sat there all of it?”
“I have.”
“In that chair?”
“’Tis a grand chair,” Arran said. “’Tis got a back on it and everythin’.” He rubbed his face. “The healer says ye’d nae slept in four days and ye’d hardly eaten, and that ye’re tae stay in that bed the morrow or she’ll ken the reason why. Her words. I’d nae argue with her.”
“I’ll argue with her!”
“Aye. I ken ye will, and I ken how it’ll go, and I’ll be stood behind her when it does.”
“Traitor!”
“Aye.”
Alexandra shifted onto her side so that she could see him properly.
“Arran Kincaid,” she said. “How in the name of everythin’ holy did ye get intae me bedchamber?”
He had the grace to look somewhere else.
“Yer father let me in.”
“Me father does not let ye intae the great hall without thinkin’ about it.”
“Aye. Well.” He cleared his throat. “There may have been a discussion.”
“A discussion? Is that what we’re callin’ it?”
“It’s what I’m callin’ it.”
“Ye went down in that yard like a dropped stone,” Arran said, “and I got tae ye before ye landed, and after that I wasnae altogether myself for a while. I’ve been told some of what I said.
” He was going red. She could see it even by the light of one candle.
“Apparently I spoke tae yer father in a way that a man doesnae generally speak tae a laird in his own courtyard. And tae Hamish. And I believe I said somethin’ tae the healer that I’d like very much tae take back. ”
“And what exactly did ye say tae me father?”
“I’d rather nae tell ye.”
“Arran Kincaid.”
“Must I?”
“Ye must.”
“I told him,” Arran said, “that I’d sat outside a door for ye once already and I’d nae be doin’ it a second time, and that he could have me put off his land in the mornin’ and I’d go, but I wasnae goin’ tonight.
” He looked at the coverlet. “Then Elsie took me by the arm and told me tae stop talkin’.
And yer mother said tae bring the chair. ”
Alexandra started laughing. It hurt her ribs, but she did not stop.
“Ye threatened me father.”
“I did not threaten yer father. I was insistent at him. There’s a difference and I’ll thank ye tae mark it.”
“Is there? What’s the difference?”
“The difference is that I’m still breathin’.”
“Ye were insistent at the Laird of Clan McKenzie.”
“He’s insistent at the whole world!” Arran said. “I’ve been on the receivin’ end of it since the spring and nae one has said a word about—”
Alexandra took a fistful of his shirt and pulled.
He came, because he was leaning in already and had been for a while without either of them saying so. She got her other hand up into his hair and brought his mouth down onto hers. The whole of that terrible year went out of her like water out of a broken jug.
He made a sound against her mouth. Then his hand came up and cradled the side of her face, as carefully as if she were something that might break.
After everything, that struck her as very funny and very like him, and she was smiling into it.
Then she was not smiling, because he had stopped being careful.
He kissed her slowly at first, and then not slowly at all.
His hand slid back into her hair and closed there.
She felt the moment the carefulness went out of him and something else came in behind it, and she pulled him closer by the fistful of shirt she still had hold of.
Somewhere below them in the keep a door banged shut.
Neither of them heard it. When she had to breathe she took the breath against his mouth and went straight back.
When he finally lifted his head they were both breathing hard, and his forehead came down against hers, and he stayed there with his eyes shut.
“I’ve wanted tae do that,” Arran said, “since ye were a lass with a training sword.”
“Ye could have said.”
“I could not have said. Ye ken fine why I couldnae, ye were…” He stopped.
“Ye could have said,” Alexandra told him, “any time at all, and I’d have—”
“Ye’d have what?”
She did not answer that. She pulled him back down instead, and it was a very long time before either of them said anything else at all.