“Where are the bairns?”
“Hopefully not tearing the hall to shreds with the little ones,” Elizabeth said cheerfully.
“Young Ian will keep them in check, as he should.”
Elizabeth stood up and kissed him briefly. “He has you as his example, my laird, of course.”
Mairead watched Jamie harrumph a bit in pleasure and suspected he did it merely for his wife’s benefit. He smiled at her briefly before he clapped a hand on Oliver’s shoulder, exchanged a look with him she didn’t try to decipher, and walked off with his lady around the side of the keep to no doubt use the front door. Mairead rose and smiled a little at the low bow Oliver made her.
“My lady,” he said, straightening.
“My—”
“Please,” he said with feeling, then he smiled. “You know there’s nothing left at the tail-end of my father’s stylings for me that requires genuflecting.”
“Shall I settle for something sentimental, then?” she asked, trying to match his light tone.
He stroked his chin in a manner that reminded her so much of Jamie, she almost laughed. He considered, then looked at her.
“Beloved?” he suggested.
“Aren’t you cheeky,” she said with a smile.
He simply waited, smiling faintly.
“Very well,beloved,” she said pleasantly, “let us away and see if there might be something in your book we could accomplish together this afternoon and win you your freedom.”
He nodded, though she could see that he was thinking thoughts that would have been termed subversive if looked at in the right light. Then again, she knew what to look for and had years of experience with how Oliver Phillips took on things that either vexed him or intrigued him.
There was a part of her that couldn’t help but wonder how it would be to forget all the things she knew about him and meet him again. She suspected that even with her brief relationship with him in the past as a beginning, she would have continued to fall in love with him just as easily.
“You’re thinking.”
She pulled herself back to the present moment. “A bad habit that you share.”
“So I do,” he agreed. He rested his sheathed sword against his shoulder and nodded up the meadow. “Moraig’s, then?”
She nodded and forced herself to walk with him as if she’d actually been able to feel the earth beneath her feet and the wind in her hair and hear the measured breathing of the man next to her. If she’d dared, she might have even imagined his handaround hers, keeping her close to him as if she’d been something precious that required protecting.
He was quiet, though, and she suspected that his silence spoke of deep thoughts indeed, thoughts that wouldn’t be limited to what he might find lurking in the refrigerator behind the green things Patrick’s lad Bobby had brought him that morning.
So she clasped her hands behind her back, put her face forward, and decided she would do best to simply wait him out.
She began to wonder, as she sat an hour later in Moraig MacLeod’s house—a placeshehad sat with Moraig MacLeod on several occasions to chat about the lovely things to be found in gardens and meadows—if the idea that she might be able to have an existence where she was a ghost and the man she loved was a beautiful, stubborn, magnificent man might just not be possible.
She looked up as the man himself came out of the luxurious garderobe. After all her years of hobnobbing with mortals, she was accustomed to their manner of garbing themselves. She had to admit, however, that whilst she might not have had a mortal frame any longer, her poor spirit’s heart beat just a bit faster at the sight of Oliver Phillips in jeans and a black t-shirt.
He was fussing with his fancy silver watch, which gave her time to get her rampaging emotions under control.
Or, perhaps not.
He looked at her and lifted an eyebrow. “Are you, my lady Mairead, lusting after me?”
“If I had the strength, I would throw something heavy at you,” she said, trying to manufacture a scowl for his benefit.
‘Twas impossible. The man was charming and quiet and stubborn and had a very lovely pair of pale blue eyes. She watched him make her a small bow, then excuse himself to make something to eat. She supposed she should have gotten up to at least keep him company whilst he was at his labors, but shecouldn’t bring herself to move. It was enough to pretend that, had she been a mortal woman, perhaps he would have been her man and they might have been doing nothing more noteworthy than enjoying a holiday together in Moraig’s croft.
She couldn’t bring herself to entertain the knowledge that there would come a point in his life when he would want a corporeal woman to warm his bed and give him bairns.
