Page 86 of Highland Spy

Connor sat across from her with a stick in his hands, whittling with feigned concentration. She didn’t have to look up to know his concerned gaze fell on her periodically. She could sense it the way a patient felt an overprotective nurse hovering over them in their sleep.

Ariana watched the flames in the hearth as they licked and danced over one another in a greedy tangle upward before wicking away into a curl of smoke.

Connor was looking at her.

“I’m fine, Connor,” she said softly.

“It concerns me when ye stare like that.” He hesitated and did not speak again until she pulled her gaze from the fire toward him. “Ye stared like that earlier, as if ye couldna hear me or see me. Do ye remember?”

Ariana tried to think and frowned. There was much she didn’t remember. She could recall everything until she fell when they were on the outskirts of town, then nothing until she saw Connor’s panic-stricken face in their small room at Urquhart Castle.

Her face went hot with the memory. What a fool she must have looked, to have cried so. It made her plunge deeper into misery to know she had obviously exhibited more weakness she could now not even remember.

“I can’t recall,” she said honestly.

She didn’t necessarily know if she wanted to.

“Ye were there before me, but ye werena. I dinna know if ye could hear me.” A sheepish smile showed on his lips and it transformed his face from that of a hard man of authority to something far more boyish and charming. “I spoke to ye while ye were like that in case ye could hear.”

The look on his face was pleasant on a night where little was. “What did you talk to me about?” she asked, simultaneously curious at what might make a man like him sheepish, and regretful at not having been in her right mind to properly hear.

Connor shrugged. “Ach, no’ anything of interest, really.” He slid the blade of his small knife down the stick until a sliver of pale wood coiled up and fell away to join several others strewn upon the ground below. “Silly stories about trouble Cora and I got into together as bairns, memories of my ma—no’ anything special.”

She was all the more poignantly regretful now to have missed his speech now that she knew its subject.

Through the course of their trip, and in spite of the silence for the latter two days of their journey, she had learned much. All the pieces of him she knew were falling into place and creating a picture she was desperate to see the whole of.

She put her weight on one hand and leaned closer, hoping her eagerness would not be too apparent. “Would you tell me more now?” she asked.

His brow furrowed and then went smooth with the warmth of his laugh. “What would ye possibly want to know?” He swept the blade down the stick and another curl of wood joined the others.

She sat back on her heels and thought the matter over. Surely at this point she had as many questions as the night sky had stars.

“You said this was your castle,” Ariana said. “How is it your castle and why does it now belong to King James?”

The smile on Connor’s face faded. At first she thought she’d ruined this one opportunity, but then he spoke: “It is mine because it has been in the family for generations. It belongs to King James because the man who took it from my father died and the king confiscated all his belongings.”

“How did they take it from your father?” She thought of the castle’s front, the height of the walls, how thick they were, how solid everything seemed.

Connor set his whittling down and regarded her with a long, wary stare. “There was a great betrayal from those we trusted. It’s a gruesome story, one I dinna think is appropriate, given—”

“Please.” It was begging, she knew. She knew too she ought to be above that. And on any other night, she would be—but not tonight. “Please tell me. I want to know.”

He tilted his head to the side.

“I’d like the distraction,” Ariana added quickly.

His lips pursed and he studied her a moment longer. “Verra well.”

Something warmed through Ariana at his resigned agreement to share. He was trusting her with something far deeper, far more significant than ever before.

Chapter 21

Connor did not often let his thoughts trail back to the fateful day of his father’s death. The memories were far too taxing.

Far too painful.

Ariana waited patiently in front of him, the focus of her wide eyes fixed steadily upon him.