Page 16 of Twelfth Knight’s Bride

He couldn’t finish, and silence, once more, stretched between them.

“What did he do?” she whispered, and this time, a gentle hand came to settle upon his.

Ah, he’d thought Aileana’s willingness to help set up camp might be the beginnings of a truce, but this was their actual truce. She was in the position Marjorie had been in, and he’d just given her a piece of his soul by telling her about it. This was the common ground upon which they could build a temporary peace.

“He sent her home upon a blind ass. She never healed from the humiliation. Never spoke again, for the month it took her to waste away and pass on.”

“James, I’m sorry,” Aileana breathed.

He cleared his throat again and took the fingers she’d laid upon his in hand, looking down to examine them. They were icy. And yet the gesture was warm. “Brighde and Marjorie are, in sooth, my half sisters. I was bastard born upon my faither’s favored leman. But my faither saw fit to recognize me and raise me with his daughters, though at times, I wished he hadn’t, for my stepmither never accepted me.”

He stopped. He needn’t spiral down the high road of emotional scars inflicted by a woman who’d sabotaged him and needled him at every turn, all because of who he was through no fault of his own.

“My sister, Lady Brighde, lives with me still. I’ll nay bless a marriage for her until I ken the man who seeks her hand is honorable.”

Aileana looked into the fire beside him, pulling her knees up and wrapping an arm around them. “And yet I’ve been married off, on almost a whim, to someone my family only kens as an enemy.”

James said nothing. It was true. He knew he would never lay a hand on Aileana to hurt her, but Seamus couldn’t have been certain of that.

A fingertip caressed the back of his hand. “I’m sorry that the Lady Marjorie suffered…and that ye suffered, too.”

James lifted his eyes to hers as she gazed back to him, and he cleared his throat, setting his brow. “’Tis the way of things. Brighde will be pleased to meet ye, and mayhap, find a sister in someone new. At least for a fortnight. Losing Marjorie was hard upon her, too, for they were close.”

Aileana took a deep breath, still holding his other hand—a small acquiescence on her part. Pleasure at the gentle act warmed him, and his thumb took to caressing her skin, too.

“Mayhap ye best wait for the shock of a Grant wife to dull first before ye decide if she’ll be pleased,” she said, the corner of her mouth lifting in jest.

James chuckled, grateful for a reason to smile. “Aye, to be sure I’ll confound my people, for I’ve never kept a wom—”

Again, his eyes snagged hers at such a personal confession. A laird who had never kept a leman was an oddity. But his father and stepmother had taught him all too well the consequences of sowing bastards. He’d not do it to a bairn of his own.

He cleared his throat. “But Brighde will welcome ye with open arms. She’s kind like that. Always cheerful in spite of the rough lot dealt her. And considering what happened to Marjorie when she was married off to a nàmhaid, I suspect Brighde will be more understanding of yer position.”

Aileana smiled. “Peigi is like that. Normally, she’s always smiling, even when there’s so much bearing down on us.”

The fire crackled in the ensuing silence as their hands remained touching. The point of contact made his skin buzz, and he was reluctant to let go of this fragile connection.

“But now the real question is,” he continued, “are ye willing to freeze the night away because of yer pride? Or are ye willing to lie with me so we both might keep warm?”

She contemplated him, severing their hands’ embrace. A shiver racked her frame, and she looked longingly at the fur he’d piled up their legs, resigning to a decision and flashing a wan smile.

“I’ll lie with ye, nàmhaid. Ye are, after all, my husband.”

Chapter Four

This is the wise thing to do.

More sweat beaded Aileana’s brow—a bad omen, for with a still-damp tunic cold against her skin in this freezing night, she ran the risk of fever. Yet try as she might to convince herself that sleeping together for added warmth was best, she still couldn’t settle her nerves.

Slowly, she settled down on her side, turning to face the fire as her cheeks raged red with nerves, embarrassment, and perhaps more than a little excitement to be so held by this man. In the span of only a moment, James had become a human to whom she could relate—as he’d shared the wound that losing his sister had left on his soul—even if she still felt anger at him.

She swallowed hard. What sort of pain had he and his surviving sister endured, watching Lady Marjorie’s demise and death? She wouldn’t be able to bear it if something like that happened to Peigi. And yet that explanation was all she’d needed to feel safe in his presence. A man who had watched such a horror unravel with his own sister wouldn’t perpetrate the same thing upon another, would he? And he had been right as he’d negotiated with her brother that evening: their clans had clashed back and forth many a time. Her brother, and her father before him, weren’t innocent, and neither was James or his father.

At some point, this violence needed to stop. What if she and James could be the start of that change? Nay. He’d forced her to marry. Even in the face of his sister’s memory, he’d still held her brother by the proverbial bollocks to gain a woman—

His hand gently swept her hair over her shoulder, the coolness of the night air mingling with the heat on her exposed nape, inducing a shiver. Gooseflesh tingled her skin as his roughened fingers dragged across her flesh. His arm then slid beneath her neck to cradle it upon his bicep as he stretched his long limbs and contorted himself to fit against her. The blanket, then the fur, slid up them both to cocoon them together.

Her heart kicked up a notch at the gesture—imagine, gentleness coming from this upstart warlord. And knowing he thought her plain only made her heart pinch. Which is daft. I shouldnae want him to like me.