Page 35 of Married to the Icy Highlander
Ceana didn’t want to argue with the woman when it was so abundantly clear that she was very wrong. Given that the Laird was insistent on keeping some distance between them, toying with her, it was far from a love match. He didn’t need to love her to have a child with her, neither did she need to love him. He was her husband, that was that. There just wasn’t anything else, no matter how fast her heart raced when he touched her or how flustered he made her with his annoying mouth.
This had to be another trick of some sort, or just another gimmick to get her to pay more coins so that she could ask more questions or have another reading. She knew her own mind, and she knew well enough to know that no one could go and decide her fortune for her save for herself.
She believed in hard work—that was how she made things happen, not by some intervention of fate.
But Peter looked so excited about the whole thing, and far be it for her to make her brother uncomfortable in the slightest. She couldn’t contradict the woman in front of him. But there was also a strangely knowing look in the fortune teller’s eyes, as if she could somehow sense Ceana’s concerns. It was more than a little unnerving.
“Well, thank ye for yer time,” Ceana offered, her face flushing for reasons that she couldn’t even begin to guess, and then hurried out of the tent.
16
Ceana wove through the throngs of people, her mind still fixed on the reading she just had. If the cards were to be believed, then she and Neil were some sort of fated, meant-to-be nonsense—which didn’t suit her in the slightest.
Did it?
Ceana had always taken great pride in being the one in control of her destiny. She had always worked very hard with her own two hands. She had stood on her own two feet and apart from this whole needing a husband thing, had never needed help from anybody.
That didn’t mean that she thought she was cruel or undeserving of assistance when she needed it. But she certainly didn’t want to credit all of her hard work and dedication to fate and nothing else. She would feel deprived of what she was owed if that was the case.
Alternatively, she didn’t really care for the idea that she had been struggling for so long, only for the circumstances to push them together.
The implications of that were just too much for her to wrap her head around. It was too much. Never mind what she would have to say to Jeanie if that were the case. She could have grown up with her mother, but instead, she had been deprived of a mother figure until Ceana came around? Well, it just wasn’t fair.
Some small, romantic part of her wanted to believe that she and Neil had just happened to be thrown into a situation together and they were making the best of it. She liked the thought that maybe, just maybe, he was falling for her against his better judgment. But then again, that just wasn’t their arrangement.
Ceana was so lost in thought that she barely avoided colliding with a villager carrying two very large, very full pints of ale. She pivoted out of the way, spinning with some difficulty to find her footing, and nearly ran straight into Jeanie.
“There ye are, Ceana!” Jeanie exclaimed, grabbing hold of Ceana’s skirt and immediately pulling her toward the dance floor.
“Careful now, or ye’ll throw me off balance!” Ceana protested, still feeling slightly off-kilter. “Were yer ears ringin’?”
“What does that mean?” Jeanie asked over her shoulder with a toothy grin.
Ceana skipped forward so she wouldn’t be dragged along. “I just mean that I was thinkin’ about ye and yer pretty dress!”
Jeanie’s grin widened. “I was dancin’! But maybe I wasnae dancin’ as well as ye do—ye are a very skilled dancer, after all. Ye promised to teach me, remember?”
Ceana felt her face flush at the compliment. “I do remember. I dinnae ken if I’m avery skilleddancer, but I do enjoy meself. That’s the secret!”
“Ersie says that, too! But she says that she has two left feet and a handful of thumbs!”
“Ersie doesnae have anything of the sort! Her skills are just more suited to a battlefield. I could never dance across a fight the way she does with her sword, mind ye. It’s just a different sort of dancin’ entirely. No less pretty for it either!” Ceana complimented.
If she were being honest, she had never seen anybody move around with as much grace and fluidity as she had seen Ersie do so many times ever since she met her, thanks to Emily and Freya.
“But Ersie wouldnae teach me how to dance, and ye said ye will. Can we start now? Please?”
“Well, since ye’re askin’ so nicely, I cannae deny ye, lass,” Ceana relented as they stepped behind the circle of people moving rhythmically around one another.
The small band playing in the corner was half drunk, but they were all having more fun as a result.
Jeanie blushed, keeping her hand in Ceana’s as they waited for their turn to join the circle. “Thank ye!”
“Well, I cannae say that I ken all the right steps, and I can be clumsy at times, but dancin’ is just so very freein’, ye ken?” Ceana bunched her skirt in her free hand and waited for Jeanie to do the same before she tightened her grip on her hand. “Ready? We have to move fast now. But if ye stumble, just keep goin’! The best way to learn is by doin’, ye ken.”
Jeanie’s smile could have lit up the night as she nodded readily.
Ceana waited until the beat was right and then yanked the pair of them into the circle. It was mostly just her pulling Jeanie along for a good portion of the dance, as the younger girl had to learn the steps and how to move without being jostled about by the people around her.
