Page 59 of The Beast's Bride
Rhona glanced back down at her embroidery. She didn’t like it when Adaira favored her with one of her ‘searching’ gazes. It was all too easy to forget that Adaira saw far more than she let on.
“Is all well between ye and Taran?” Adaira asked after a pause.
Rhona’s needle slipped, stabbing her in the finger. She loosed a curse and lifted her injured hand to her mouth. “What kind of question is that?”
Adaira’s hazel eyes narrowed as she set Dùnglas down on the ground once more. The pup pounced on a ball of wool Adaira had given him to play with. However, this time the young woman didn’t shift her gaze to her puppy. Instead, she continued to watch Rhona. “A direct one,” she replied, her mouth curving. “And clearly a question ye don’t want to answer.”
“I don’t know why ye would ask it,” Rhona replied. She heard the sour note in her voice and suppressed a wince.
Adaira inclined her head. “Ye both looked happy after the handfasting … but of late something has changed. When I see ye together, there’s … a distance.”
Rhona swallowed the lump that had risen, unbidden, in her throat. Aye, Adaira was too perceptive by half. She hoped no one else had noticed the tension between her and Taran. That was the problem with living in a keep the size of Dunvegan. There were too many curious eyes upon her, too many flapping ears and gossiping tongues. Her relationship with Taran was under constant scrutiny.
“He’s a good man,” she murmured finally, dropping her gaze from her sister’s. “Better than I deserve.”
Adaira snorted at the comment but didn’t answer, waiting for Rhona to continue.
Staring down at where a drop of blood had beaded once more on her finger, Rhona inhaled sharply. “I’m so confused, Adaira … I don’t know what to do.” She glanced up and met her sister’s eye. “On the night of our handfasting, Taran admitted that he’d been in love with me for years. That’s why he’d defied Da and let me train with him … of course, I’d been oblivious.”
Adaira frowned but again held her tongue.
“I never saw him as a man until that night,” Rhona continued. Her chest constricted as she spoke, yet she forced herself to press on. Perhaps sharing her feelings with her sister would help. “We lay together that night … but he’s not touched me since.”
The furrow on her sister’s brow deepened. “Really? Why not?”
“He says he wants to ‘woo’ me, for us to be in love before he beds me again.” Heat flushed Rhona’s cheeks. She couldn’t believe she was actually voicing this to her younger sister. “But I’m beginning to think it’s an excuse … that he doesn’twantme.”
Silence fell in the solar, the hush broken only by the yips and grunt of the wolfhound pup as it rolled around the floor, the ball of wool clamped between its paws.
“I don’t think that’s the case,” Adaira said eventually. Her voice was soft, pensive. “I’ve seen the way he looks at ye.” She gave a sigh. “I’d love for a man to gaze at me like that.”
Rhona huffed, reaching for her embroidery once more. She wished she hadn’t said anything. Adaira was a maid and still believed that love was like the ballads Una sometimes sang in the evenings. Her head was full of silly notions. It didn’t matter if Taran bestowed melting looks upon her. These days he treated her like a sister—and it was slowly breaking Rhona’s heart.
Chapter Twenty-six
Things Unsaid
MACDONALD WARRIORS THUNDERED into the keep. Pennants of the clan’s plaid—green and blue threaded with white and red—snapped and billowed. A hot wind blew in from the south, sending dust devils spinning across the bailey.
Rhona viewed the MacDonalds’ arrival from the window of Adaira’s bower.
The sisters had been working at their looms together, when the horn announcing visitors echoed across the keep. Putting down the tapestry beater—a wooden comb that she used to push down the woven threads—Rhona had crossed to the window. A heartbeat later Adaira appeared at her side. They craned their necks, watching the sea of horses and men clad in plaid, leather, and chainmail fill the bailey. At the end of the column, a wagon rumbled in. A woman with hair the color of summer wheat, a babe in her arms, perched on the back.
“Caitrin!” Adaira squealed. “He’s brought her with him.”
Despite her low mood this morning, a smile stretched across Rhona’s face. Her sister’s arrival was welcome news indeed; so much had happened since she’d last seen Caitrin. She needed to talk to her.
The MacLeods, MacDonalds, and Budges would leave at first light the following morning. Rhona had barely seen Taran over the past day, for he’d been taken up with getting men armed, horses shod, and weapons sharpened before their departure.
The twists and turns of fate came at her so swiftly these days she could barely catch her breath. First this marriage, and now her husband was about to ride off to battle.
What if he falls?
Rhona’s chest had twisted at the thought. She was angry with him for not letting her fight, and hurt that he didn’t wish to lie with her, but the thought of losing him was like a dirk to her breast.
“He’s grown so!” Adaira bent over the babe, tickling him under the chin. Her features tensed then. “He looks so much like his Da.”
“That’s not surprising, is it?” Caitrin’s voice had a reproachful edge to it.
