Page 18 of For an Exile’s Heart (Ancient Songs #2)

T he rain ceased later that night. Adair heard it taper off as he lay on his cot, trying not to think or to imagine what went on beyond his narrow quarters.

He knew very well that the party from the north had arrived. He had heard the stir earlier and even gone to his door, the better to listen, catching the telltale sounds above the crash of the rain.

Bradana had dreaded this. Though she’d said little enough about it, he’d felt the terror growing in her as the days passed. As he healed. As they grew closer to one another in friendship.

Impossibly close.

He knew her now. Knew what would make her laugh and what it meant when she looked at him a certain way—she thought about kissing him, though she never did—and when the worries that filled her head threatened to overwhelm her. She was a woman who often appeared calmer than she felt.

A woman possessed of much composure. Would it hold now?

She had left Wen with him for company, so she’d said, but the hound proved just as uneasy as Adair. He paced the small space and whined, which Adair had never before heard him do. He went repeatedly to the door and stared out at the rain.

“Aye, so,” Adair said to him then. “She is out there. Neither o’ us can be with her now.”

Adair struggled to pass the time. At late afternoon he donned his cloak and went out to the midden, taking the hound with him for a break.

They stopped by the communal kitchens and picked up their supper, then returned to their lonely vigil.

Adair sat and wondered what had become of his life. Back in Erin, his days had been full, his nights enjoyable. Not much to trouble him. Baen took care of matters of state. Daerg—the gods help him—was there to take up what Baen could not. Adair went through his days without a great deal to disturb him. Aye so, as a warrior he must answer at any time to the call of the high king. He drilled most every day along with his brothers.

The rest of it was laughter and song, his deep love for the place where he dwelt.

Now there was Bradana.

She had changed everything about his life. Sharpened and focused it. Made it count for something. He would have said he lived for Erin.

Now he drew breath only for her.

She came long after nightfall. Adair had fallen asleep by the time she quietly entered his quarters. The hound’s greeting roused him, Wen’s great tail thumping a beat. She whispered, “All right, then, lad. I am well enough.”

Only she was not. Adair felt that at once. She brought a desperate energy into the small space with her, like a rush of ill wind. Even her voice failed to sound like her own.

“Adair? Are ye sleeping?”

“Nay.” He sat up.

“I am sorry to disturb ye so late.” She came and sat on the edge of his bed. “I had to come.”

He reached out and drew her into his arms.

He did not need to ask what was amiss. She’d been with the man she was to wed in two days’ time.

She clung to him, his strong and dauntless lass did. She trembled down to her bones.

What comfort could he give? They had both known this would come. So he said nothing and only held her while she burrowed in tight, and tighter.

Wen stood close by, whining. They two who loved her best did not know how to alleviate her pain.

He loved her. Loved and needed her, both beyond measure.

She did not weep. For many long moments she did not speak, just held him in a manner that argued she would never let go.

“There, now,” he murmured into her hair. Meaningless words. The scent of her engulfed him, made him dizzy with a thousand emotions.

At last she spoke. “I canna do this, Adair. I canna.”

Hope stirred inside him, victorious hope. Would she refuse the union? Could she? Impossible.

“He is a hard man, a vicious man, I do fear, and I like naught about him. He wants to take me awa’ from all I know, and ’tis a life sentence. He says I may no’ bring Wen with me because his hounds will savage him and—and I love ye.”

The words came at the end of a rushing breath of others, but stood out stark and bold.

She repeated them as if she could not prevent herself. “I love ye, Adair.”

“I love ye also, full well,” he whispered into her hair. “I swear by all that is holy, I do.”

“Och, Adair! How am I to leave ye to go off wi’ him? How am I to leave ye at all?”

A hard question, and a hard fate. A fortnight ago, Adair had not known she existed, nor she he. So swiftly had she become someone without whom he could not live.

“Bradana, is there any way Kendrick will change his mind? Allow ye to beg off from the marriage?

“He cannot. ’Twill break the alliance. Mican is no’ a man he would want as an enemy.”

“What if…” He shifted her against his shoulder, “What if I were to go to Kendrick? Offer him something else of value? A better bargain?”

“Such as what?”

“I will tell him if he breaks off the marriage agreement, I will return to Erin and convince Father he has no further claim here in Alba.”

“Would your father agree to that? Surrender his claim to his holdings here?”

“I do not know.” Adair would worry about that when he reached it. “I would persuade him.” He tightened his arms around her. “Ye would come awa’ wi’ me, to Erin.”

“Leave Alba?” she asked even as she had once before.

“Aye so, will ye no’ be leaving the settlement here anyway, if ye go awa’ with Earrach?” Yet she would still be in Alba, this land she so loved. He tipped her face up to his and whispered to her, “I will speak wi’ Kendrick in the morning.”

In answer, she kissed him.

No ordinary kiss, this. No mere press of lips against lips. For days, despite longing on both sides, it had been withheld. Now she reached for him blindly and clung with her whole being as they fused mouth to mouth.

It altered Adair’s world. Foolish it might seem to say so, yet he felt it happen, some unsatisfied longing in him leaping to the same longing in her, so that every other consideration fell away. His priorities were altered in the wink of an eye.

Soft lips trembled violently beneath his own. She parted them immediately for him, the better to allow the need to come rushing. Once again he felt he had done this before, even though he had not. All this time he’d been afraid to kiss her, because instinctively he’d understood what it would bring. If touching her had moved him, what must this do?

For she gave herself to him in this kiss, willingly and gracefully, she did. She wrapped herself around him, threw open the door to everything she was.

He flung himself through that doorway. His , she was, as surely as he belonged to her. He could kiss her forever, and so satisfy the longing.

“Adair.”

Did she speak his name aloud? That must mean she’d ended the kiss, for he had not. He could not.

She pushed him over so he tumbled back onto his bed with her atop him. She raised her head and looked into his eyes, and they gazed so for many long moments, staring down eternity.

“Let me try that once again,” he said.

This kiss went on so long, Adair risked losing track of time. Of reality. He lost control of both body and mind and came up hard for her. Aye, he’d known it would be thus. Better not touched, and yet who could resist this rush of heat and pleasure?

“Och, Adair. Adair, Adair…” She babbled it into his neck when that second kiss ended, sounding like a madwoman. “Listen to me.”

“I am, darling. I am.”

“It must be ye.”

“What?”

“It canna be him. Do ye understand?”

“Nay.”

“It maun be ye. I give mysel’ to ye, hear? I give myself whole. Body, heart, spirit.”

Aye, so she felt the same flash of possessive wonder as he.

He caught her face between his hands, there where she lay atop him.

“Aye,” he said. “I am yours and ye are mine.”

“And I will lie wi’ ye first before I lie wi’ him.”

Comprehension struck him a staggering blow. True enough, he lay here in a state of arousal as complete as any he’d ever known. And true, she belonged to him in that way as much as any other. But…

“Bradana, lass, I want ye. I want ye more than I can say. Yet there will be consequences to such an act, consequences for ye.” He did not care so much if Kendrick or Earrach retaliated against him. Without Bradana, his life mattered naught anyway. But such punishment, such disfavor, might land upon her instead.

“Earrach may have expectations. If ye be—”

“I am untried.” She tossed her head with disdain. “I would let no man touch me that way. Adair, ’twas as if I knew. As if I waited for ye.”

“Aye so, yet—”

“And now it can be no one but ye. Understand?”

He did. It would be a sacred thing between them. Not something to be wrested, forced, or torn.

He sat up with her in his arms, barely noticing the complaint of his healing ribs. “Let me talk wi’ Kendrick first. I will go to him at first light and do my best to convince him. If I can, and ye come awa’ wi’ me, we can be together at peace in Erin. Forever.”

Her eyes, wide and fastened unwavering to his, revealed her emotions all too well. Fear, dread, reluctance and disappointment, desire, and stubborn resistance. Love.

She said, “I want ye now.”

“I want ye now also, Bradana. Here. Tonight.”

“This moment.”

“This moment, aye.”

“I never knew what desire was until I met ye. Now it haunts my days, my nights, my every breath. Promise me we will be together.”

An impossible promise to give. Yet he could feel what raged inside her, the other half of what raged inside him. So he spoke the words.

“We will.” So they must.

“Speak to Kendrick in the morning, aye, do. Use all your powers o’ persuasion. Until then…”

“Until then ye must go to your chamber, as I must stay here in mine. Anything else, if discovered, will anger Kendrick, and then how will I persuade him?”

“He will be angered by any road.”

“He will.”

“Adair, I am afraid. So afraid.”

“Trust me.” He lifted her hands in turn, planted a kiss in each palm. Kissed each corner of her mouth, each cheek, and ended with a kiss on her brow.

A sigh escaped her, a sound of acceptance.

“I do trust ye with all I am. But I want ye more, and need ye most o’ all.”

When he spoke with Kendrick, he had no choice but to succeed.

His whole world, and hers, depended upon it.