Kaden had barely made it back to his table to grab another glass of whiskey when he found himself turning to see where Emily had wandered off to.
He could see her chestnut-brown hair moving through the crowd toward the side doors that led outside. He wanted to talk to her, wanted to at least hold a conversation to make a decision about her one way or another, but he had not been able to manage it.
She had been too soft in his arms, too light on her feet, and had moved too easily with him. He had danced with other women before, out of necessity, but none who seemed to read him the way she had without even looking at him.
Dangerous.
Was she leaving to get air because he had unnerved her? Was she as afraid of him as the other women in the hall?
It hadn’t felt that way. He had let his mind run away with him. Thinking about everything that might have happened and how everything could have played out, rather than focusing on the moment he had been in.
Kaden lifted his glass to drink, and when he lowered it, he found another laird standing in front of him. He struggled to remember the man’s name. He tried to pluck it out of the names of alliances he had been forced to study for countless hours since he had returned home.
The pressure of standing in a room with so many people, too many eyes on him all at once, was starting to get to him. It felt like the walls were closing in on him, and this man was standing entirely too close.
Battlefields were far more comfortable than this.
“Good evening, Laird Muir,” the man greeted with a smug grin, a hum in his voice.
“Is it?” Kaden returned flatly without so much as glancing at him.
“Aye, I think that it is turning out to be a lovely evening. I hope ye forgive me nae coming here to thank ye for yer hospitality earlier,” the man said as he rocked onto the balls of his feet.
“Unnecessary,” Kaden responded flatly.
If only that were the end of the conversation, that would have been ideal. But he never seemed to be that lucky.
“I wished to come speak with ye after seeing ye dancing with me daughter,” the man added.
Now, Kaden deigned to look at him. He ought to have led with that little tidbit of information.
Kaden lifted an eyebrow in question rather than speaking.
“What I mean to ask is if ye wish to perhaps form an alliance with me clan? I ken that ye daenae dance with lasses often. Me daughter Emily is yet unwedded and?—”
Kaden’s gaze drifted in the direction Emily had left. He could barely see a glimpse of her hair as she rounded the balcony door.
Whatever else the man was saying to him, he couldn’t hear it. Instead, his focus zeroed on another laird, one that he knew evenless, headed in the same direction with a questionable look on his face.
Kaden didn’t like the shifty way the older man was looking around, as if trying not to be noticed as he followed the lass out of the hall. The man swayed with every other step, and the flush in his cheeks set off warning bells in Kaden’s head.
He could hear Emily’s father calling to him as he rudely left their conversation and headed in the same direction. Though unlike the drunken Laird, people moved right out of his way and didn’t let their gazes linger on his concerned expression long.
He didn’t even make it all the way to the door before the man ducked out. And only moments after that, a feminine voice cried out in distress.
Something in Kaden’s chest broke, hearing the fear in another person’s voice. He tried to block the memories of hearing his own voice calling for help in a place where his cries would never be answered as he hurried forward.
He would never allow another call for help to go unanswered while he still had breath in his lungs and could do something about it. Much less in his own home.
4
“Now, what would a lassie such as yerself be doing out here in the cold night by herself?”
The slurred speech from behind her immediately put her on edge.
It wasn’t like Emily wasn’t accustomed to handling grown men making her uncomfortable, but she wasn’t usually on her own when it happened. She was nearly unmatched when it came to verbally sparring with just about anyone. She was perfectly comfortable striking the heart of a man with her insults or her bow and arrow, but she was unarmed here, and nobody even knew that she was missing.
“Good evening, me Laird. I was just waiting for me faither to join me,” she lied easily, hoping that the threat of another powerful man might give him even just a little bit of pause.
