Page 30 of For an Exile’s Heart (Ancient Songs #2)

T hey left the ponies outside so they could graze. So far, the two animals had fared better than the rest of them, grass being thick and lush at this time of year. They hauled everything else inside, where Adair insisted there was room to have a fire.

“We have no fuel,” Bradana protested, standing with her hair, her clothing, and her very spirit drooping.

“I will go out and gather some. Love, if ye do not get warm, I fear ye will fall ill.”

She turned and tried to look at him, difficult in the gloom. In truth, she did not need to see him. He was as wet as she, clothing sticking to him and hair plastered down. Beneath that clothing, his vitality threatened to wane. The great tear at his shoulder had healed over but left an ugly, ragged scar he would carry all his life. He must be as hungry as she.

“Is it safe to have a fire?” she asked. Given they could get one lit.

“Aye—in this weather, no one will see.”

He had followed her all the way from home, mostly on faith. Together they had followed Alba’s signs. Time now for her to follow him. Believe in him. If she could believe in anything in this world, it must be Adair MacMurtray.

He left the tower and Wen went with him. While they were gone, Bradana laid out their pitiful collection of belongings. The blanket, sodden. The few items of clothing she’d been able to snatch before they fled. The wet bandaging.

Her harp.

She stood that on a pair of stones arranged together and let her fingers caress the damp wood, hoping it would not be ruined. The instrument had been fashioned from ash, and the soundboard from birch. The strings gave a soft whisper as she drew her fingers across them.

She had no idea what had made her bring it when they fled, save it was among her most beloved possessions. It made an awkward burden and could do them little good.

Would she trade it for a warm, hearty meal?

Nay.

Adair came back in with his arms full of sticks, none of them large and all of them wet.

“I do not know if we will get this lit. If we do, I can fetch more. There is a copse of rowan nearby.”

“Rowan?” The tales said it was a sacred wood and not meant to burn. Yet Alba would provide what she would provide. “Where is Wen?”

“I think he has gone hunting.” Adair did not add that he hoped the hound brought them something. He did not need to.

Together they laid a fire upon the cleared stone area of the floor and struggled to make a spark take hold. It would not, in the damp tinder, and once more despair touched Bradana’s heart.

What were they doing out here? What did she hope to achieve?

Adair persisted with the flint and at last some thin twigs caught. He blew on the fire, giving it his life, and fed it sticks of rowan one by one.

She watched him kneeling there as the flames grew. Her beautiful man who kept the faith even when her belief flagged.

She sat on the floor, telling herself she must be as strong and faultless as he. When he went back out for more wood, she did not demur. And when he returned with Wen at his heels, a hare hanging from the hound’s jaws, she took it and went out to clean and skin the offering.

Maybe, just maybe, Alba had turned a kindly eye upon them again.

She was sure of it later that night when they had food—if not near enough—in their bellies. When the misty, damp air of the tower sweetened from the fire. When the blanket dried enough that they might wrap themselves in it and she lay in Adair’s arms.

Could she ask more than this? Despite the fear, the hunger, and the uncertainty. Was there more to be had in the world than his arms around her and the sound of his heartbeat in her ear?

“Bradana, let me make love to ye.”

They had not been doing that much of late. Och, there’d been kisses and fumbling caresses along the way. But at first, she’d been worried for his wound, and after that, distressed.

Now they’d removed most of their clothing to dry. They lay skin to skin and she had not the power to deny him.

He started with kisses, sweet, plaintive ones planted in her palms. At the corners of her mouth, her cheeks, and at the center of her forehead. Then deep ones that claimed her, that drove the fear from her heart. The terror flew away as they kissed, giving and taking one from the other. He fondled her breasts and a new, insistent tension built low in her belly.

She had been born for this. Even though the physical attraction made up but a small part of what lay between her and Adair, the connection of spirit to spirit, that need came leaping up now even as the fire had, and every bit as sustaining.

“Take me, Adair. Please.”

They moved quick and hard, desperate for one another, a fundamental and primitive urge. That, she knew, would not end things this night. Too deep was the need, too beguiling the comfort.

She took her turn and kissed him all over, from the mouth downward. Lost herself over again in the scent and taste of him. This strong and beautiful thing that had been born between them knew no bounds and held back nothing. Whatever he asked of her this night, she would give and would take without modesty or hesitation.

After, they lay in perfect peace, fingers linked in the dark. Up between the stones of the tower where the roof had fallen away, Bradana could see stars, a hundred thousand of them seeding the sky. They were just two small humans and a hound. But if she had a choice, nay, she would ask for no more.

She should say something, mark the significance of this moment when they possessed one another so completely. Tell him what he meant to her.

Were there words?

“Adair?”

“Aye, love?”

“Just…Adair.” Her world lay in his name, in him. Terrifying, it was, to give all her welfare to another being. But she could not have recalled her love from him now at any cost.

He lifted their joined hands to his lips and kissed the back of hers. She could feel him smile. “Daft lass.”

“I was but thinking, what if your father had never sent his clever third son out from Erin? What if I’d never met ye? What would my life have been then?”

“A whole lot easier, mayhap. Less perilous. Ye would no’ be lying in a half-ruined tower in the midst of the wild.”

“And I would have lived but half a life.” She rolled atop him, gazed into his face by starlight. “And I would never have known—never guessed—what I was missing. Ye are the beginning and the ending o’ me, Adair.”

“And ye, o’ me. Whatever comes.”

“Whatever comes,” she repeated softly.

His arms tightened around her. “Bradana, what d’ye wish to do, come morning?”

What she wanted was to stay here forever with him. Subsistence living. But it could not be.

“What do ye want to do?”

“I ha’ been thinking. The furor back at the settlement must have died down by now. If we return to Kendrick, I will accept the blame for what I ha’ done. Then return to Erin, if I can.”

“Ye want to return to Erin?”

“I will take ye with me, alanna . Away from this mad place. Back to the soft, open hills that I know so well.”

“The land ye love.”

“Not half so much,” he told her forcefully, “as I love ye. Bradana, I will not go without ye. But aye, my heart does yearn to go.”

And must she, then, lose the land she loved in turn? Become an exile for the sake of love. It seemed one of them must make that sacrifice. And had she not just said she would do anything, give anything, to be with him?

“If that is what ye wish, Adair, ’tis what we will do.”

“Aye?”

“Aye. The trick of it…”

The trick of it would be finding a route home, and a safe one at that.

Yet, she thought later when he had fallen asleep, when the sweet sound of his breathing filled her ears, she might have spent all of her life on one side of the silver water that separated Alba from Erin, and he on the other. Their spirits never knowing they needed to span that distance.

She did not think anything could be worse than that. She prayed she was not wrong.