Page 12 of So Close To Heaven
“More likely taken by madness,” he suggested, a bit pale under the laird’s glower, “with that being her reaction to being told the year.”
Ivy, seeing the laird in profile now, six feet above her, watched as his jaw tightened and shifted angrily, as if he didn’t appreciate what he deemed Kendrick’s excuse, and as if he were holding himself back from really letting the redhead have it.
“It wasn’t his fault,” Ivy insisted, trying to sit up, realizing for the first time that she’d stopped the entire army, that she had an audience of more than one hundred men.
Alaric MacKinlay was at her side almost immediately when he realized her efforts. He crouched beside her again with a quiet intensity, his large hands steadying her as she pushed herself upright. One arm braced gently behind her back, the other caught her wrist with a careful grip, guiding her movement as if she were breakable.
His touch was unyielding but not unkind, and realizing that she still felt pretty weak-kneed, she appreciated his presence.
“Slow,” he muttered gruffly. “Yer head’ll still be spinnin’.”
It was. The world tilted slightly, her stomach giving a warning twist, but she blinked hard and nodded, grateful for the solid pressure of his hands.
“I can stand,” she said after a moment, when she was on her feet, though she wasn’t entirely sure. She closed her eyes, hoping the sweeping wave of weakness would pass.
“And I say ye’ll crumple like a wind-toppled sapling,” was his response.
She stiffened and held back a yip of surprise when Alaric MacKinlay slid an arm beneath Ivy’s shoulders, another under her knees, and lifted her as if she weighed nothing. His arms were like bands of iron, warm and strong.
“She’ll ride with me now,” he said quietly to the three teenagers, who stood close yet. Then, louder: “Kendrick, walk the rest. Ye can reflect on how a bairn near fell because ye’d nae eye for a woman wearied past her end.”
“Aye, laird,” Kendrick murmured, flushing.
Ivy stirred against him, protesting the punishment. “I told you, it wasn’t Kendrick’s fault. He had—”
“Hush.”
Wide-eyed now, unaccustomed to being hushed so fiercely, Ivy swallowed her guilt over Kendrick’s penalty. Guilt gave way to embarrassment, over the special treatment from the laird, which was heightened by the stunned looks on the faces they walked by. Mortified, she stiffened, and insisted, “I can walk.”
“Nae,” he argued, “ye canna.” Alaric made his way to his stallion, barking to no one in particular as he strode, “Fetch me a breacan. And a skin of water.”
With an ease that made her blink, he mounted with her still in his arms, shifting her gently into place before settling behindher. A thick woolen plaid blanket was delivered straight-away, with Alaric grunting his thanks. He shifted, maneuvering the blanket around Ivy.
It was awkward at first. Her legs dangled inelegantly to one side and her back touched his chest. She didn’t know where to rest her hands—on the saddle horn? On her lap? On him? She was too aware of him: all hard muscle and heat and strength. She couldn’t have been more self-conscious if she were sitting with him naked.
But then the stallion shifted, and so did he, adjusting her gently but securely, tucking her a little closer into the curve of his body. She felt his arm, strong as steel, wrap lightly around her middle to keep her steady. The movement was so natural, so instinctive, she didn’t realize until it was done that her hands had settled over his arm, her cheek grazing the soft wool of the breacan between her and his chest.
And just like that, the awkwardness melted away.
This was... nice. So much better than riding behind Kendrick, with her sore limbs jostling and her belly pressing forward with every jounce of the horse’s gait. Alaric was solid, unshakable, his body a wall of heat at her back and side, and for the first time since she’d stumbled into this madness, she felt secure. Not understood or even safe in the bigger, existential sense, but secure for now.
At a nod from Alaric, the army began to move again. Ivy watched as the long column stretched ahead into the trees, tired men and plodding horses pressing forward into the crags and shadows of the Highlands.
And then—haltingly, quietly—she asked the question again, this time with a greater fear of the answer.
“What... what year is it?”
Alaric didn’t glance down at her, didn’t probe what surely must seem an odd question. “Thirteen hundred and five,” heanswered bluntly. His voice was uninterested, unbothered, as though she’d asked the time of day.
Ivy turned her face toward the now-gray horizon, her eyes blurring with tears, her mind whirring with confusion.
Nothing made sense.
She dropped her head and wept.
Chapter Four
“Have ye pain?” he asked. “Were ye injured in the tumble after all?”
