Page 9 of Claimed
“Lady Drew … it’s Broderick.”
Drew paused in combing her hair. “Aye … what is it?”
“The inn-keeper wants to know if ye’d like any supper?”
Drew’s belly growled in response. She had eaten a quick meal of bread and cheese at noon and didn’t intend to miss supper. “Of course,” she called back.
“Very well, milady … I shall bring it up now.”
Drew was about to thank him, when she hesitated. She could dine here alone, but the common room had looked so warm and inviting. Soon, all her meals would take place in a grim priory refectory.
“Wait,” she replied, casting aside her comb and rising to her feet. “Give me a few moments, and I shall join ye downstairs.”
Carr took a draft of ale, savoring the sharp, hoppy taste on his tongue.The King’s Armsin Kyleakin was known throughout the isle for its fine drink.
Sighing, Carr leaned back against the upholstered back of the booth he’d taken. The inn-keeper had cleared a booth near the hearth as well as two tables on the floor for Carr’s men. However, Carr had noted a tension in the air when he stepped into the common room. Unsurprisingly, most of the patrons in here were male—save two women, merchants’ wives most likely, who were enjoying supper with their husbands across the room.
Carr’s gaze traveled around the smoky space, noting the cool glances he and his men were receiving. Of course, they all wore sashes of MacKinnon plaid: pine green crisscrossed with red.
Kyleakin was a crossroads, a port that sat on the borders of two lands—MacKinnon and MacDonald—but a village that allied itself with neither clan. As such, it attracted those who didn’t belong anywhere.
The King’s Armswas a good establishment and served excellent ale, yet Carr knew it was wise not to let his guard down here.
He’d just finished observing a group of men playing knucklebones at a table a few yards away—noting that they seemed to be showing more attention to him and his men than to their game—when a flash of emerald-green on the stairs across the room caught his eye.
As promised, Lady Drew had joined them.
Carr wasn’t sure how he felt about her decision to take supper downstairs. It wasn’t something a ‘lady’ did. And yet, Drew was soon to leave her old life behind her, so what did it matter?
On a purely selfish level, it would mean he got to share a meal with her—something he rarely did. The only time he’d sat at the same table as her to eat was that morning he’d discovered she was ill with the plague. Dunan had been largely deserted that day, as most of its inhabitants were either dead, sick, or had fled. He’d brought up a tray of bannocks to her solar before realizing that she had a fever.
Clad in a becoming green kirtle, her peat-brown hair twisted into a soft knot upon her head, Drew glided across the sawdust-strewn floor like a queen.
Carr’s gaze tracked her as she walked—and so did every man in the place. Drew ignored them all. She’d grown up in a broch of rowdy men; she was used to being stared at and knew just how to quell a lecherous look with an icy glance.
“Good eve, Broderick,” she slid into the booth and favored him with a smile that made Carr’s pulse accelerate. “What’s for supper?”
“Roast mutton, braised onions, and bread,” he replied, pushing a full tankard of ale across to her. “Apologies … it won’t be the fare ye are used to.”
Drew huffed a laugh. “It’ll be better than what awaits me in Inishail … Coira’s filled me in on what to expect. I hear nuns exist on coarse bread, over-cooked vegetables, and gruel.”
5
A Confession to Make
CARR BRODERICK SMILED, and Drew stilled a moment. The man hardly ever let his mouth curve in mirth. He usually wore an austere expression, his gaze watchful and guarded.
But seated in the booth, his hand curled around a tankard of ale, he looked the most at ease Drew had ever seen him.
The smile erased years from his face. He was younger than her, yet she often forgot that, for severity had carved lines into his forehead and caused grooves to bracket his mouth.
And yet when he smiled, she noticed that he had handsome features and a sensual mouth.
“I’m sure the food won’t be that bad at Inishail,” he said, still smiling.
The arrival of the inn-keeper at their table with plates of food forestalled Drew’s response. The rich aroma of roast mutton and braised onions wafted across the table, and Drew’s mouth filled with saliva.
“I hope ye are right, Broderick,” she said once the inn-keeper had departed with the assurance that he was at her disposition if she needed the slightest thing. “But I’ve gotten quite spoiled over the years. I fear the abbess might find me a bit haughty.”
