Page 14 of For an Exile’s Heart (Ancient Songs #2)

B radana walked far up the shore past the rocks where she’d sat before with Adair, and onward. Her favored walk, this was, when she felt trapped or angry or aggravated with those around her. Now her emotions carried her like a storm, and she tried in vain to sort through them.

It seemed strange not having Wen at her side. He was her shadow and near-constant companion. But he had abandoned her for Adair.

Why?

She’d raised the hound from a pup. He preferred no one to her, ever.

She did not feel hurt by his defection so much as bewildered. All of this bewildered her.

Aye, Adair MacMurtray possessed a rare brand of charm. It lay in his courteous manner. In his smile. In the amusement that so often sparked in his eyes.

It should not affect a hound.

Best for him to go, she determined before she’d walked a hundred paces. Though she could not agree with Kerr and Toren’s methods, their instincts were true. Kendrick should load Adair, injured as he was, onto his boat. Bid his men sail away with him.

Let them all return to their ordinary lives, what had been before—before whatever he was to her had occurred.

She did not care whether Adair’s father ever got what he was owed. Did not care if Adair returned to disgrace for having failed in his mission. She needed these outlandish and incomprehensible feelings gone, and if he went, he just might take them with him.

Or he might not.

She stopped walking abruptly and looked around herself. A wild place indeed, she had reached. As wild as her emotions.

Her mother often told her to master her passions. Get hold o’ them, lass, for they will betray ye in the end.

Did Mam regret having wed with Kendrick? They argued a terrible lot, but aye, the quarrels invariably ended in passion. Bradana had learned young that when the curtain of their sleeping place was tied shut and certain sounds came from within, she had best keep away.

Mam’s relationship with Kendrick was not an easy one. Could Bradana go to her for advice? Nay, for she could not explain in any sane fashion what she felt for the man from Erin.

Besides, Mam had said, “’Tis best perhaps, Bradana, that ye go to wed a man wi’ whom ye ha’ no emotional ties as yet. Feelings may grow between ye, which will be easier than investing the whole o’ your heart.”

Bradana sat down on the trunk of a tree that had washed ashore and faced the sea. The vast, seething and restless sea that reminded her all too much of what she felt inside.

Was it really better to go and live her life with a man she did not and might never love? To keep her heart clasped tight?

What if it was too late? What if she’d already lost her heart?

Absurd. She did not know Adair MacMurtray. She did not believe in love at first sight. That was attraction. Lust. And aye, she might well feel that for Adair, but…it took a rear position to the rest of it.

Bitterness touched her. She did not need this agony. Had she not enough to dead with? The oft-times stressful situations here at home. The fact that she must soon wed and leave all she knew behind.

Everything but Wen. She would not go without Wen.

At that thought, she felt a powerful pull. She wanted to get to her feet. To hurry back as swiftly as she could.

To the hound?

Or to the man he guarded?

Why had she not realized Wen had assigned himself to guard Adair? When no one else would. Because a knife in the dark could end it all quite swiftly.

End everything, save what she felt inside.

In a rush, she went back down the shore. The sea spoke to her as she went, hissed and gurgled and chuckled around the stones.

Two pebbles. The two of them together for only a short while.

Gods, let him be safe when she reached him.

*

Adair dozed for a time, the hound’s great head in his lap. But the pain in his chest roused him again and again. Eventually he had to get up and use the pot behind the curtain in the corner. He thought of venturing out to empty it, but hoped Nolan or Flynn might turn up to inquire how he was, and take up the task.

No one came near him. Not his men nor any of Kendrick’s household. Not till the afternoon had dragged on did Nolan come to check on him, bringing a measure of what Adair suspected was his own food ration, and taking the pot away with him.

Some time later yet, Bradana slipped in. She came like the afternoon shadows that stirred beyond the door. Adair’s only notice was the sweep of the great hound’s tail on the floor just before she appeared.

The sight of her brought relief. He hadn’t been sure she would return to him.

She spoke, however, to the hound. “Ye may go now. I am here.”

Wen went out—no doubt to relieve himself and find something to eat.

“He’s been guarding me?” Not till then did Adair realize it.

“Aye.”

“Ye think they will try to finish me, then?”

“I do not know. Ye ha’ yer knife?”

“To be sure.” A man always had a knife. But it would not help much against attack by a man wielding a sword. Or if they came while he slept.

Bradana sat down beside his cot where Wen had been. “D’ye feel any better?”

“Aye.” Only a half-lie. He felt much better now that she had returned.

“Can I get somewhat for ye? Food or drink? Another bolster—”

“Mayhap by and by. Just… For now, just stay wi’ me.”

She did, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes resting on him. Her eyes were perhaps her greatest beauty, large and fringed by brown lashes. If one did not count that glorious hair. Or those lovely breasts.

No matter what she looked like, he had a powerful attraction to her, now alive in the chamber.

“There is somewhat I must say,” she told him. “I feel, in duty—indeed, in decency—bound to do so. For your own good and for the sake o’ your safety. Adair MacMurtray, go home.”

His heart fell. Even though returning to Erin was the greatest wish of his heart—almost.

Steadily he asked her, “Is that what ye wish, Bradana? To see me away?”

Her clasped fingers tightened till they turned white. “Better to ask me what I do no’ want. I do no’ want to see ye beaten so, and I do no’ want to see ye lying dead.”

He looked her in the eye. “Ye think they will go so far as to commit murder?”

“I think my stepbrothers are sometimes very wrong in the head. They might well think they can solve a problem by stabbing ye in the back and tossing ye in the sea.”

When Adair did not reply to that, she went on, “The visitations from your twa brothers caused much consternation. Those here were happy to be rid of them. Only for ye to arrive.”

“They are out o’ patience.”

“I fear so.”

“And”—his lips twisted in a wry smile—“should I then take a failure back to my father? He already thinks me good for little more than telling amusing stories and singing songs.”

“Better he should receive a failure than a corpse.”

A longer silence fell between them. Adair pulled at the rug that covered his knees. Bradana sat quietly, though her clenched fingers did not relax. Outside the open doorway, a whisper of wind stirred. Evening came on, breathing the coming dark.

Adair lay and fought his impulses. So strong were they that even though he knew better, he could not keep from speaking.

“And, Mistress Bradana, what about ye and me?”

Slowly she lifted her eyes to him. “There is no ye and me.”

“There should no’ be, perhaps. Yet there is.”

Quite clearly, he heard the breath catch in her throat. “There is no ye and me,” she repeated. “Have I no’ told ye there canna be?”

“Ye have told me, aye. Ye are set to wed a northern chief, to leave here and go to live with him. Despite that, I find that somewhat does exist between us.”

“It cannot.”

“I understand that. Yet can ye deny it does? Bradana, ’tis as if somewhat”—he struggled almost violently for the words—“somewhat existed between us even before we met.”

She could have denied it, or tried to. Could have used the word ridiculous , or called it fanciful. Naught more than imagination embellishing attraction. Instead, she said nothing.

“If I go home,” he said unsteadily, “and you wed to fulfill this alliance, we would quite likely never see one another again.”

Still she did not speak. Her whole body had now tensed.

“Is that what ye want?”

“Nay.” The word came as if torn from her. “Nor do I wish to see ye lose your life.”

“Some things, Bradana…some things are worth the risk.”

Her eyes widened, her lips parted, and a flush rose to her cheeks. “Ye would court death, for me?”

“For this thing I feel between us, aye, I would.”

“Adair.” She barely breathed his name. Much as the hound had done earlier, she shuffled closer till she reached the side of his bed. Reaching out, she captured his hands. “’Tis a powerful foolishness, that.”

“It is a powerful feeling.”

Slowly, he lifted her hands one by one and planted a kiss in each palm. Gently, he drew her to him, tenderly planted a kiss at each corner of her mouth, upon each cheek, and at the center of her forehead.

She melted. It took but an instant for her to ease down against him, to slide her hands up his chest and around his neck. Carefully, so as not to hurt him, she held him tight.

He felt no pain, likely because the other feelings came flooding so strong and bright. Not just desire, though aye, he felt a rush of that. But warmth also, and rightness. Belonging so deep that it eclipsed them all.

His lips hovered over hers. Aching to meet.

Madness, because the door of the chamber stood wide and anyone could look in. And he should not be found kissing his host’s daughter, step or otherwise. The consequences would be dire indeed. This kiss, ache for it as he might, could happen only in his imagination.

No impossibility, that, for he knew how she would taste…familiar. For they had done this before, though certainly they had not. A thousand images flickered through his mind—firelight and a tiny sleeping place, blue eyes embracing him with steady devotion. A young woman who both was and was not Bradana standing with a sword in her hands. A washing place out in the sun.

Bradana sighed into his mouth, and he took her breath, made it part of him, even though their lips did not actually meet. One person they should be, out of two. One life.

“By the gods, by the gods, by the gods,” she whispered as she pressed her forehead to his. Or mayhap it was he who said those words. Who could tell?

“Bradana, my beautiful lass.” He cradled her face and gazed into her eyes. They brimmed with tears.

“Do no’ leave me,” she begged. “Do no’ ever leave me.”

Were they her words or those of another? No matter, for they lay rooted in his heart.

“Bradana, darling, I will not.”