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Someone needs to tend the farm. May as well enjoy it while I do.
Alexander wandered through the grounds, exchanging short pleasantries with the farmhands. He was looking for Cicilia, trying to follow up on some things from that morning that simply hadn’t made any sense. It was about an hour after the noon bells now, and nobody seemed to have any idea where she was.
He passed Nathair, who was still chatting with young Jeanie, and wondered how long this flirtation would take to turn into another love-struck disaster. The twins were nowhere in sight.
I just hope they are nae fetchin’ their demon pig again.
Alexander had been searching for over an hour when he decided he might as well give up and simply go spend time with his horses instead. He hadn’t checked on Aibreann and Ailill last night, and, if he was honest, he did not fully trust someone else’s stable boy to care for them properly.
“Aibreann! Ailill!” he called as he entered the stable. “How are ye, me sweets? Are ye findin’ this strange place as difficult as I am?”
“Ye’re findin’ it difficult, Laird? I’m right sorry to hear that,” said a voice behind him.
Alexander whirled around and looked down to see Cicilia standing there at the gate to one of the stalls. She must have been mucking out one of the stalls when he entered, and he’d entirely walked past her.
If she doesn’ae move like a haunted spirit!
“Miss Cicilia,” he said, surprised. “I dinnae expect to find ye here.”
“Same to yerself,” Cicilia told him. She wiped her hands on her shirt and walked forward into the light.
Getting a look at her made Alexander recoil. She was covered in filth from head to toe, her clothes and hair covered in mud and hay, and God only knew what else. “Are ye takin’ care o’ the horses alone? Where’s the stable boy?”
Cicilia laughed. “I am the stable boy, Laird,” she replied. “I love the horses, an’ I’m good at it. Me faither’s been havin’ me muck out the stables since I was a bairn. Why would we hire somebody else when I can do it by meself just as well?”
She took a step closer to him as she spoke, and Alexander moved back, appalled. Yes, she was a farmer’s daughter and not a noble, but the O’Donnels had money. Servants. And she was a woman!
Bizarrely, the image of Ilene popped into his head once more. He tried to picture her mucking out stables or even wearing such filthy clothes. The thought was so alien that he couldn’t even hold on to it.
“That’s ridiculous,” he said with a frown. “Ye should nae be takin’ on such a burden yerself. Ye’re what, five-an’-twenty?”
Cicilia’s smile turned into a matching frown. “What did ye say? Did nae body ever tell ye it’s rude to ask the age o’ a woman? But aye, that’s exactly me age, if it’s any business o’ yers.”
“Everythin’ in the Gallagher lands is me business,” Alexander told her, a trifle annoyed at her defiant tone. Did she not know with whom she spoke? “I’m the Laird, if ye recall.”
She huffed, the breath blowing hair from her face as she folded her arms across her chest.
He couldn’t help but notice as she did how her chest swelled under them, her generous breasts almost a cushion for her arms. It made him swallow despite himself. Perhaps it wasn’t proper to stare, but God above, her body was appealing for all of her strangeness.
“Aye, so ye’ve mentioned a thousan’ times since ye and Nathair turned up at me door,” Cicilia said, snapping him out of these thoughts. “What ye’ve nae explained is what exactly ye want from me.”
“I want to talk to yer faither. It’s nay business for a lass like yerself,” he told her sharply. “Dinnae yer Mither ever teach ye respect?”
Cicilia’s eyes flashed. “Aye, she taught me to respect where it was earned. She nor me faither have ever thought me lesser for me gender!”
Alexander sighed, really feeling his irritation building now, like an itch just under his skin. “It is nae about bein’ lesser than men!” he snapped. “Why do ye types always assume that’s what I’m tryin’ to say?”
“Oh, me type? And pray tell, what would that be?” she fired back.
He snorted angrily. “Women in grand positions who refuse to act like a lady rather than a maid or a filthy stable boy! Yer faither might have thought ye behavin’ this way just grand when ye were a bairn, but here ye are, five-an’-twenty, unwed, an’ covered in muck! If I was yer faither, I’d be ashamed!”
Alexander saw when her expression changed from mildly annoyed to blackly furious, but he couldn’t be sure entirely what he’d said that had triggered it. Despite her diminutive height, the woman suddenly struck him as a threat as dangerous as any soldier.
“Well,” she said coldly, her voice like cracking ice on a loch in the winter. “I’m right sorry that we cannae all be as proper as ye.”
“Yer faither—” he started.
It surprised him when she pushed him because her strength was, unexpectedly, more than enough to topple him to the ground. He yelled as he fell, landing in the straw and muck for the second time in two days.
