Page 28 of I Loved You Then (Far From Home #12)

Together the odd trio made a lively racket, bright and insistent, and it was enough to draw people from the trestle tables.

They began to clap and stomp their feet in time to the music and soon enough, half the trestle tables were shoved aside, benches screeching on the stone floor, and a space cleared down the middle of the hall.

Laughter rose as girls and women were pulled to their feet, spinning in quick, stomping steps, skirts and plaids flaring, boots striking the rushes in rhythm.

Claire watched in greater wonder, clapping softly as she watched the dancers.

She loved to dance. Always had. But this seemed to be a patterned dance with a series of steps, known to everyone but her.

When a broad-shouldered soldier bowed awkwardly and extended his hand to her, she shook her head, laughing it off.

“No, thank you. I don’t know this dance. ...”

Another asked, and another still. She demurred each time, cheeks warm, murmuring excuses she half-hoped they could understand.

Surely it was only because she was new, a fresh face, not because she was anything special.

The women here were lovely in their own right, and she wasn’t vain enough to think the men were tripping over themselves to reach her.

But the music swelled, the dancers spun, and her foot tapped against the floor all the same.

Then Evir appeared at her elbow, grinning wide, cheeks flushed with wine and gaiety. “Up,” she laughed, tugging at Claire’s hand. And still Claire resisted, not wanting to look like a fool.

“Nae hiding in the shadows,” said the farmer’s wife across from her. “The floor’s for all.”

Claire tried to dig her heels in, laughing nervously. “I’ll look like an idiot! I don’t know the steps!”

“Then ye’ll stumble till ye ken them!” The farmer’s wife shot back, while Evir laughed and tugged harder.

Others egged her on, clapping and whistling.

With no graceful way to refuse, Claire found herself dragged into the fray, her skirts swishing around her ankles as the circle of dancers opened to make room for her and Evir.

The drum thundered, the pipes wailed, and suddenly she was swept into the motion, hands caught, arms turning, her feet scrambling to keep pace.

She stumbled again and again, laughing helplessly at herself, breathless with both nerves and exhilaration.

The rhythm was infectious, the music beating against her ribs until it felt like her own pulse.

She bumped shoulders more than once, and gave up on trying to follow the pattern precisely.

Instead, she mimicked what she could—step, clap, spin—and found herself grinning like a fool when the circle pulled her along, no one seeming to mind that her steps were half a beat behind, or when she turned in the wrong direction.

The hall roared with life: the scrape of the fiddle, the keen of the pipes, boots stomping in rhythm, hands clapping to keep time. It was beautiful chaos; Claire thought it was glorious. She hadn’t laughed like this in months, maybe not for years.

Around her, faces were flushed, eyes bright, people whirling and stamping with such abandon that for a moment she forgot herself, forgot she was lost in time, a fish out of water, her marriage crumbling while she yearned for the attention of a brooding medieval man.

Here, now, she was simply another body swept up in the joy of the moment.

By the time the tune reached its peak, she was panting from exertion, her hair tousled and wild around her shoulders, her cheeks hot and glowing. The final stomp and cheer rang out, and the dancers spilled back toward the tables, collapsing onto benches, gulping from tankards, still laughing.

Claire pressed a hand to her racing heart as she slipped back toward her bench. She was flushed, breathless, a little dizzy, and happier than she could remember feeling in a long while.

Evir refilled her cup with wine, and she drank greedily, needing to quench her thirst. Over the rim of the cup, she saw Ciaran Kerr, still at the high table, his gaze fixed on her, his stony expression unreadable.

She over swallowed and began coughing, and then laughed yet more when Evir pounded her on her back with more gusto than needed.

Though it took every ounce of resilience she had, she didn’t lift her gaze again to Ciaran, but faced Evir, trying to understand what the girl was saying through her own laughter.

More than a minute passed before curiosity got the better of her and she looked at Ciaran again, but he wasn’t watching her still, was engaged in conversation with his captain, Mungan.

The feasting had gone long, and so had the dancing.

Once Claire had stumbled through her first reel and discovered that she wasn’t so bothered by anyone laughing at her missteps—no one really seemed to care, after all; they were all invested in their own good time—she stopped resisting invitations.

One partner gave way to another, and though she never mastered the turns or the clapping rhythms, it hardly mattered.

She laughed until her sides ached, flushed with heat and exhilaration, breathless by the time she collapsed back onto the bench after each set.

Breathless and thirsty.

The pitcher of wine seemed bottomless, and Evir was generous with it, refilling Claire’s cup again and again.

Sweet and rough all at once, sharper than anything she’d ever poured from a bottle back home, it tasted faintly earthy, smoky, and more like berries than grapes.

It was definitely different from what she knew, less polished, more vibrant, but refreshing all the same.

One cup vanished, then another. She wasn’t drunk exactly, but certainly tipsy, loosened in a way she couldn’t remember allowing herself in years, in a way Jason would have disapproved of vehemently.

By the time the hall began to thin, torches dimmed and servants gathering empty trenchers, Claire was swaying slightly as she rose, rather sad the feast was coming to an end.

But she’d had enough, was exhausted and probably had drank too much, and so said goodnight to Evir, who waved wildly, nearly striking Claire in the face, but didn’t put up any fuss about Claire calling it a night since she was busy being wooed, it seemed, by a young man with a long face and puppy dog brown eyes.

Claire’s foot slipped as she lifted it onto the first step. She pitched forward, catching herself hard on her hands.

A burst of laughter rang out behind her.

Not cruel laughter, not really, just drunken men and women still flushed from the feast, but her cheeks burned hot.

She was rarely clumsy, never one to trip over her own feet.

Mortification swelled, hotter than the wine as she wondered if she were drunker than she’d imagined.

“Oh, God,” she said through an embarrassed giggle, “it’s senior prom all over again.”

***

He had watched her all night, telling himself he had no interest in her save to know who she truly was and how she got about at Caeravorn.

He wasn’t sure how she communicated so well, what had her laughing so much while they’d supped, but he imagined that Ethelred’s wife aided and abetted communication, since he knew Evir knew only a smattering of English.

She’d been reluctant at first, stiff in her seat when the music began and one man after another urged her to join.

But once Evir had dragged her into the circle, she’d moved with a joyful abandon.

Awkward, aye—her steps clumsy, her claps late—but she’d laughed as loud as any other, and the men had not cared a whit, not a one of them interested in her dancing.

Ciaran found himself... captivated. Secretly and reluctantly, of course.

The Claire in the hall tonight was not the Claire he’d come to know by daylight.

Not the woman who had made trouble and then mended it, who’d taken command of strangers in the sick house and bent them to her will, who’d single-handedly turned a dank, joyless place into something near to a refuge.

This Claire was lighter, brighter, her cheeks flushed, her laughter unguarded, her only purpose seeking joy, it seemed.

She’d taken the hands of men whose Gaelic she couldn’t understand, turned in circles with grinning women, and smiled as though she’d belonged among them all her life.

He could scarce fathom how. To his mind, she remained an intruder, her sudden presence in Caeravorn still unexplained, as he was still unwilling to accept her fantastic tale of traveling through time.

And damn, but he could not look away.

It brought him a strange measure of peace, watching her.

In his mind he could almost lay another face over hers—the woman from Berwick.

Some part of him pretended it was she, alive still, smiling brilliantly, dancing as if she had not a care in the world, as if she had not bled out in his arms nine years ago.

By the end of the feast her cheeks were flushed, her hair gloriously disheveled, her gray eyes bright. Wine flushed her lips red, loosened her tongue, made her laughter a peal that drew his eye and ear across the hall. He’d scowled at his own reaction, burying it beneath a mask of stone.

Now, as the merriment waned, the revelers slowly departing, Claire rose and made for the stairs.

Ciaran was bound to do the same, find his own bed.

Like a moth to flame, he followed in her wake and saw her miss the first step and gasp, tumbling clumsily.

She went down on her hands, skirts tangling, a ripple of drunken laughter breaking behind her.

She laughed too, self-conscious and red-faced, her giggle bright and ridiculous.

“Senior prom all over again,” she muttered to herself, the words strange, meaningless—but her mirth disarmed him all the same.