Lithe, that body would be. Fine to the touch.
Shocked by her own thoughts, she called the hound to her, struggling to look away. “Wen, come.”
The hound, usually so obedient, disregarded her. He liked the new arrival, as shown by his great plume of a tail sweeping back and forth.
“Good morn, Bradana,” Toren called. “This is our new guest. Yet another one from Erin.”
Aye. She knew that. She should speak, say something courteous in the face of Toren’s sarcasm.
She could not say anything at all.
“This is our stepsister, Bradana. Bradana, this is—” Toren turned to the man in mock confusion. “What did ye say was your name, again?”
“Adair MacMurtray.” He stepped forward, his gaze fixed upon Bradana as if he sought to memorize her.
By all the gods, he was pleasing to look upon. And the force of him—the essence—struck her in a wave that froze her where she stood.
“The last of Gawen’s three sons,” Kerr drawled, “who he sends to try to steal our lands. As if the first two were no’ bad enough.”
Still Bradana—usually so unhesitant with her tongue—could find nothing to say. That tongue seemed to be stuck to the roof of her mouth.
He had green eyes. Grayish green, at least, pale in that clever, tanned face.
“Mistress Bradana,” he said as if he memorized her name as well as her face.
She wanted to touch him, wanted to reach out and clasp one of his hands as, surely, a polite woman might do in greeting. Only she was not all that polite, as a rule.
Having been greeted by Kerr and Toren, he must think them all savages. And why should she care what he thought?
Fortunately, Wen deserted him then and returned to her side. Instead of reaching out to the stranger, she buried her fingers in the hound’s fur.
Adair smiled. “That is a fine hound. My brother has one at home called Lir. I tell him ’tis not a very original name.”
“Better than Cu.” Was that her voice? It served her at last, shaken loose perhaps by the force of that smile. Men were not supposed to be beautiful, were they? He had a beautiful smile. “Welcome to Dalriada.”
“Thank ye.”
The smile again. It did not flash so much as light him from within.
“Come to breakfast,” Toren said. “Ye will see soon enough, we may be a rough sort o’ family, but we do stand together when need be.”
Against one such as you, he did not state, but implied.
Adair shrugged in an affable manner. She’d seen both his brothers in turn, one after the other. He appeared nothing like either of them.
And naught like any man she’d ever known.
But then why, she wondered as she and Wen followed him into the dun, did he feel so very familiar?
Chapter Six
He ate asif he were half starved, did Adair MacMurtray, and listened to their breakfast conversation as if they were all mad. And Bradana supposed they were. At the very least, they had their moments of madness.
He had beautiful manners, despite how eager he was for their food. And she liked his voice, somehow softer than these others in her ears, as if it carried a hint of Erin’s mist.
She liked everything about him, which terrified her a little. All too often, she tended to focus on the flaws inherent in the men she met. Not that she met many, other than Earrach and his crew from their holding farther north.
The man she was set to wed, even though she did not want to.
