Page 11 of For an Exile’s Heart (Ancient Songs #2)

“Y ou did not come to the hall for supper,” Bradana said.

Adair shrugged. “I did no’ think I would be welcome.”

“Are ye leaving?” she repeated, since she needed quite desperately to know. She glanced at the sailboat again. The two men had their heads down. For all she could tell, they slept.

“No’ yet.” He gave her a wry smile. “Do no’ get your hopes up. Mistress Bradana.”

She drew a breath. “My hopes—my hopes have naught to do wi’ it.”

A lie. Her hopes were all in a tangle. She hoped he’d stay. Quite possibly never leave these shores.

“We were but playing at draughts to pass the time. Flynn and Nolan, ’tis the third time they have been marooned here. They are sick o’ the place.”

“Ah, I see.” Did she? “Your father must be a persistent kind o’ man.”

“He can be stubborn when he feels he is in the right.”

“And ye? Can ye be stubborn?”

He shook his head. His gray-green eyes met hers, and a sharp thrill passed through her. She wanted to know this man. All of him.

“Walk wi’ me.”

He shot her an inquiring look and left off patting Wen, over whom he made a fuss.

One should not be jealous of one’s own hound.

“Ye have seen very little o’ what we have here, Master Adair, save the forest. Let us go up the shore. Is this very different from Erin?”

“Gey different, aye. We live a short distance from the coast. I have no such views as this.” He gazed out to sea. “We are in the hills surrounded by swaths o’ soft green and a river that marks the boundary o’ our lands.” He gave a grimace. “Much blood has been spilt into that river, in days gone by. Were it no’ for the valor o’ our ancestors, we would have nothing.”

“Ye love it there.” She could hear as much in his voice.

“I do. Mayhap precisely because our ancestors gave so much for it. Their love is my love. Carried in the blood.”

“It must have been hard for ye to leave.”

“I did no’ want to come, and fought my father over it. What can I hope to accomplish that my brothers could not?”

“Kendrick has fought hard here too, and spilt blood to hold this place.”

“I understand that.”

“A word of advice—insulting or questioning his honor will no’ get ye what ye want.”

He stopped walking and faced her. “What will? For I cannot leave till I succeed.”

“Is it what ye want, to go back home to Erin?”

“It was .”

Again his eyes met hers, and it felt as if he touched her, touched her the way the man had in that glimpse of vision. A kiss in both palms. Both corners of her mouth, her cheeks, her forehead. She began to tremble.

“Now,” he said softly, “I am no’ sure what I want.”

“Sit wi’ me.”

They had reached a place where large boulders backed the shingle. They sat side by side there, the waves nearly at their feet. Wen lay down within Adair’s reach.

“Erin is no’ far, is it?” Bradana asked.

“No’ far at all. But I begin to think ’tis a very great distance.”

“Tell me o’ yoursel’.”

“What d’ye wish to know?”

“Everything.”

He laughed softly with surprise but said, “Ah, there is no’ much to tell. I am a third son. I have trained most my life as a warrior, though we have few enough disputes wi’ our neighbors these days. I help in the fields when needed. None o’ us in Father’s house are above our fellow clansmen.”

“D’ye have a wife there? A lover to whom ye are promised?”

“Promised? Nay.”

“Why not?” She could scarce imagine it. A man who looked as he did, who spoke as he did, with a cadence like music. Women should be following him in droves.

“Baen must wed first. Someone o’ benefit to the clan, as he will be chief. Father has been busy arranging it.”

“I see.”

“Then there is Daerg.”

“Say no more.” The very idea of that wet specimen coming back here and battling to hold lands in Alba… Well. “Will ye no’ be allowed to choose your own wife?”

“Me? Aye. I do no’ matter much.” He gave her another wry smile. “I supposes I ha’ not yet met the right woman.”

“Choose carefully,” she told him, “since ye may. Having one’s choice made, and one’s future destined, is no’ a good thing.”

“As yours has been?”

“Aye.”

“D’ye know him well, this man who’s been chosen for ye?”

“Nay. I have met him thrice. Briefly.” Bradana thought about Earrach MacGillean. A dark, glowering sort of man, though not ill favored. In each of their encounters, he’d spoken but a few words to her.

“What is his nature?” Adair asked.

“Dour, from wha’ I can tell. He is no’—”

He is not you. But she could not say that, could she?

“I am sorry,” Adair told her softly. “’Tis a hard thing.”

It was. She did not want to go and live among strangers.

“The things we are sent to do are sometimes difficult to bear. If we could only choose—”

“What would ye choose?” she asked him.

Adair huffed out a breath. “Mere days ago, I would have said I wanted only to go home.” He looked into her eyes. “Now, as I say, I am not so certain.”

Her hand lay between them on the stone. He took it in his, did so softly and carefully, as if it were something precious. And the feeling came, it came again as it had in the forest. No vision of the other man this time—she saw Adair quite clearly. But the warmth, the sense of inestimable belonging. The desire…

This man was hers. And she was his in a way she could not hope to explain.

“Knowing what we do no’ want is easy,” she said. “Knowing what we do want is harder.”

But she knew. Her heart could not doubt. She threaded her fingers through his and held on tight. Just like this should they be, flesh to flesh and life to life.

“You will go home to Erin,” she said. “Eventually ye will, with the agreement ye seek or otherwise. Ye will forget me.”

He shook his head. “Never. Ye have a rare beauty, Bradana.”

Men rarely told her she was beautiful. Aye, they might compliment her hair, eye her breasts, speculate over the length of her legs. They said only that she was formidable . Too strong. Her stepbrothers’ friends were cretins.

“I will no’ forget ye either, Adair. But we are like two o’ these pebbles cast up on the shore. They might lie beside one another for a time. The next great wave that comes tumbles them and moves them far apart. We have many great waves coming.”

“But here, in this moment, we have peace.” He cradled her hand against him, and a kind of serenity reached out from him to embrace her. He turned his gaze back out to sea and she became lost. Lost in how beautiful he was, and the sweet strength of his spirit.

Examining her own feelings, though, she found she did not want serenity. She wanted him to take her in his arms. Kiss her. She wanted the fire and madness she instinctively knew would rise between them. She wanted the violence of loving him and gifting him her soul in a rush of passion.

Yet she sat with him because he asked it, and she breathed him in there in the peace of the dying afternoon, absorbing his feel and his presence.

Storing it up for whatever the future might bring.

Not till nightfall did they part, retracing their steps back up the shore, where they paused and faced each other.

“Will ye no’ come in and tak’ somewhat to eat?” she beseeched, loath to part with him.

He made a face. “Nay.”

“Ye must be hungry.”

“Flynn and Nolan shared with me earlier. Anyway, I still do not think I would be welcome at your stepfather’s fireside.”

“Mayhap not.”

“Sleep well, Mistress Bradana.”

He leaned toward her. For one blinding, glorious moment, she thought he meant to kiss her. But he only gave a nod and drew his fingers from hers. Abruptly, the last of the light faded from the day. She could no longer feel his heartbeat.

“And you.”

She watched him walk away from her toward his quarters, her devastation all out of proportion. Would she not see him come morning?

“Come, Wen,” she told her hound, who seemed as disappointed at parting from Adair as she.