Page 8 of For a Wild Woman’s Heart (Ancient Songs #3)

T he faces, all the staring faces. A sea of them turned toward Darlei, all holding avid expressions of curiosity, wonder, or condemnation. Their numbers increased as more and more people filed into the hall, and with each entry her spirit rebelled a little more strongly.

She could not bear it.

No woman could be expected to weather such a storm. The voices. The avid gazes marking her every move. The expectations.

She wanted to rise from her place at the table and flee. Not that it had served her well last time she’d made the attempt. And not that her father was likely to allow it. Already he had squeezed her hand in warning.

Everything she did here—each word and every exposed movement—reflected upon him. She could not shame him. She could not.

Yet nay, neither could she bear this. Rebellion took hold in her heart. There must be a way out of it. There must.

Oh, and her husband—the man destined to be her husband—he sat beside her now. Unspeaking, unmoving, stiff as if carved from stone.

No matter; one look at him had been enough to set her teeth on edge.

Not ill favored, nay, not if one liked men of his ilk. Which she did not. The men who in the common way attracted her were dark. Or red—not unusual among her people.

Rohr MacMurtray was fair. He had what she would consider a typically Gaelic face—broad in the forehead with eyes set wide beneath curving brows, like the carvings on their marker stones—and an unhappy line to his mouth. Well, she could not fault him for being unhappy. So was she.

He had hair the color of ripe grain, too dark to be called blond and too light to be brown. And freckles.

Like a little boy.

She could scarce imagine a man to attract her less. The very idea that she could be required to lie down with him—

Nay, do not think about that. She could come up with a means for escape before that happened.

And yet this did not look an easy place from which to escape. She raised her eyes to the stone walls—stout—and the rafters far overhead, topped with thatch. The place, a keep, they called it, had been built to shut enemies out.

It might also keep her in.

The doors—there were two of them out of the place, and she sat near neither.

The closest, to one side, was traversed by a horde of women all bearing food and must lead to what passed here for a kitchen.

The other wide door through which they’d entered lay at the far end of the hall. Score upon score of people between.

All staring.

It made her feel…well, desperate. It sent an impulse up her spine. To be alert for the fight, to stab, to kill if need be. To break free.

Yet she sat with her hands folded hoping it did not show.

Why could she not have been born a man? Then she would not be in this predicament. She could flounce around at liberty like the men of her party, and no one would question it. Except…

She stole another look at the man seated beside her. A man, yes, yet every bit as miserable as she. Where was his liberty?

Herve MacMurtray rose to his feet and the noise level in the chamber dropped. The Murtray, he was called here, so Father said, as if he were the only member of his clan of any significance. He had schooled her in such details, had Father, who did not want her to appear ignorant.

The Murtray was about to make a speech. She set herself to listen.

Though she was able to understand and speak the Gaelic language—Father had made certain of that also—it seemed arduous to listen. The Murtray spoke interminably about honor and the king—MacAlpin, he meant—and their duties to crown and country. Darlei knew all this. She rebelled at most of it.

Her endurance began to erode.

The faces before her blurred into an indeterminate sea. She avoided the stares, gazing into the middle distance, shut them away and imagined herself back home, riding through the meadows with the sun shining down on her head and the wind at her back.

All the avid faces narrowed to one, which quite unaccountably caught her attention.

He sat directly in front of her at the end of a board running in the other direction down the room. He should be listening to the Murtray, who was presumably his chief. He watched her, instead.

To be sure, everyone looked at her. He watched . There was a difference.

Through narrowed eyes, she frowned back at him.

A young man he was, no doubt one of the Murtray’s warriors, for he had the look of a fighting man. He sat in his seat with his legs spread out—relaxed and yet not relaxed. Difficult to judge the Gaels by their clothing, but his appeared fine. Was he someone of importance?

Curious now, she inspected him further. Brown hair, light brown—the color a blond child’s hair tended to turn as he grew. A face that was neither what she’d consider handsome or ill favored, with a strong nose that lent it character. His eyes…

Too much distance divided the two of them for her to see their color, but they were nice eyes, set beneath level brows. And his mouth—wide, mobile. She had a sudden image of him using those lips to drop a kiss into the palm of her hand.

Now, why should she imagine such a thing? She had no desire for it. And he meant naught to her. He was no sort of man to catch her eye. And above all else, he was a Gael.

The Murtray finished his speech at last and sat down. Father rose and began to speak in turn. Darlei jerked her gaze away from the young man. She truly should listen.

Her gaze fluttered to Urfet, who had stationed himself beside the main door. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest and his head high, proud.

Now, Urfet was the sort of man to attract her.

Graceful, strong, and competent, marked by tattoos and with that indefinable something that characterized Caledonian men.

She had long followed him with her eyes, though she would die rather than let him know it, and in truth she certainly wanted naught to do with him or any other man.

She wanted her independence.

And Urfet had more women after him than any man should fairly wish. Only—why could it not be one such as he, if she had to wed, rather than the poor specimen who sat beside her?

Father spoke on of old battles and the new king. Darlei’s gaze crept back to the young man sitting nearly at her feet.

A good place for him, she tried to tell herself. And now that she thought on it, surely she’d seen him outside, on her way in. But who was he?

No one special. The hall thronged with men, very similar men, one like the other.

Father finished his interminable speech and sat down. The women began circulating with the food.

“Did ye ha’ a good journey?” the man beside her asked. Rohr. That was his name. She had best remember it.

It took her a moment to interpret what he said, her ear not accustomed to the tongue. She thought about the journey. Her attempted escape. Nay, it had not been a good journey.

She wondered what would happen if she told him, I am already sick for home.

“Yes,” she said instead. And then, repeating it in his tongue, “Aye.”

“Murtray is one o’ the grandest holdings on the western coast,” he said boastfully. “I suppose that is why the king chose us for,” he concluded without conviction, “this honor.”

Darlei considered all she might say, the polite things and the not so polite. She chose among them. “I gather you are as unhappy with this proposed union as I.”

He stared at her, wide blue eyes gone wider, and a look of astonishment on his face. He had not expected honesty from her, nay.

She leaned toward him confidingly. “Mayhap if we work together, we can find a way to escape this unjust demand the king has made.”