She looked at him in surprise. “Do you fear for me?”
He smiled. “Of course not. I just want you to have ample time to enjoy all the flowers I’ve picked for you.” He held them out. “There are, if you’ll notice, quite a few.”
Giles clapped his hand to his head and groaned.
Mairead glared at him, accepted Oliver’s offering, then looked at him. “Devil’s-bit is what the witch up the way would have called these, but I think that’s a terrible name.”
He winced. “I didn’t know.”
“They’re purple.”
“I did know that.” He smiled. “Your favorite color.”
She blushed. She also had help moving out of his way so he could slap Giles on the back of the head. He turned to her, inclined his head politely, then gestured toward the hall.
“If milady will permit us to escort her inside?”
She nodded regally, tucked her blossoms inside her shawl where only she could enjoy them, then happily walked behind two men who made a handy barrier against madness. She kept Fiona close on her right and didn’t argue with Ambrose when he took up a position on her left.
She’d hardly made it inside the hall before she found herself pressed back against the wall with men and children surrounding her. The shrieking was almost intolerable, but if there was one thing her brother’s wife could manage on any day of the year, it was a decent bit of shouting.
“Let go of my children,” she shouted, giving Oliver a shove. “You’ll not take them from me.”
He regained his balance and inclined his head slightly. “I wouldn’t think to, Lady Deirdre.”
“Thenyou,” Deirdre spat, whirling on Mairead. “You are forever wanting to take my bairns from me.”
“Ach, Deirdre,” Giles said, pointing behind her. “Your other wee ones are fleeing—”
Mairead found herself pulled behind Oliver with Giles making a bit more of a very handy barrier. She put her hand on Oliver’s back to keep her balance, and realized that however much he presented an aura of carelessness, his body told a different tale. He was not at peace.
“Don’t tell me she’s a Cameron,” he murmured to Giles.
“Fergusson,” Mairead offered.
“At least she wasn’t a McKinnon,” Giles said, glancing over his shoulder. “It could have been worse.”
Mairead conceded the point with a nod, then had help finding her way into the kitchens. The tenor of the chamber there was no better than the courtyard outside, but she at least had allies manning the stew pots and tending the fire. She watched Oliver and Cook exchange a handful of words, then found herself sitting in the corner with a pair of fiercer kitchen lads with very sharp knives seeing to chopping up bowls of vegetables in front of her. She looked at Oliver, had a grave smile from him before he left with Giles, then looked at her new keepers.
“Need help?” she offered.
“Nay, lady,” one of them said. “You sit. We’ll guard.”
She found the entire idea of being watched over to be strange enough to leave her simply staring, bemused, at the flowers she held securely in one corner of her shawl.
She continued to be guarded in some form or fashion by either kitchen lads or a pair of men she’d spent the day with who seemed to take a fair amount of pleasure in mocking the other over ideas on the proper way to go about a successful wooing.
In time, Giles left the kitchens to seek out his own precarious spot in the great hall. She made herself comfortable in her usual place on the floor by the hearth, holding children that weren’t hers, and wondering what her future held.
Only this time, she wasn’t alone.
Oliver had already seen her uncle settled after a reasonable bit of conversation about inconsequential things, then drawn his sword, laid it on the floor, then sat down next to it. A pair of Tasgall’s bairns immediately deserted her to swarm him like bees. He didn’t seem to mind sharp little elbows and questing toes as the wee ones made themselves comfortable. She however was beginning to suspect that she preferred it when she had Oliver all to herself.
Poor, heart-smitten fool that she was.
“Mairead.”
She looked at him and had a faint smile as her reward.
