Page 36 of Married to the Icy Highlander
But Jeanie was a quick study, so much so that Ceana wasn’t sure why her marks weren’t higher. She couldn’t think of any reason other than perhaps Jeanie was just too bored by having to sit and learn versus being able to do things with her hands.
Ceana made a mental note to bring that up to Neil. Perhaps it would help her better comply with his request if she could appeal to Jeanie in another way.
Two songs later and both lasses were panting heavily. Ceana felt as if her legs were on fire. She hadn’t realized she was so out of practice.
“This is so much fun!” Jeanie exclaimed, but even her energy was starting to wane.
All the more reason to make sure that she had more dancing lessons moving forward. Anything that could help exhaust the girl could only ever be a good thing, was it not?
“Faither!” Jeanie suddenly exclaimed, looking up at the person behind Ceana.
Ceana was sorely tempted to turn around and look at him, but she didn’t trust herself to look him in the eye, knowing what the cards had said about the two of them a moment ago.
“Did ye see us dancin’?! Did ye?”
Neil extended a cup of juice toward Jeanie, and she happily accepted it, guzzling down its contents rather quickly. She was over the moon and could hardly stand still as she started to ramble on and on about the dance and how the other people around them were moving and how she learned what she needed to do. Neil extended a second goblet, this time full of wine,in Ceana’s direction. She accepted it with a demure smile, not wanting to detract from Jeanie’s story either.
He moved to stand next to her, slipping an arm around her shoulders, and the revelry around them started to fade away. Ceana was acutely aware of the weight of his arm on her shoulders. She couldn’t help but focus on the fact that she was half enveloped by his scent as he pulled her closer to his side. Otherwise, he seemed to ignore her and focus on his daughter instead. She couldn’t blame him for it, but she also couldn’t stop stealing glances at him either.
She sipped her wine as Jeanie finally finished her story, catching her breath and then drinking her little cup of juice so quickly that a good portion of it spilled down the front of her dress. Not that she seemed to notice in the slightest.
“Och! I love this song, dinnae ye, Faither?” Jeanie exclaimed, spinning around and dropping her cup on the ground, immediately forgetting that it was there.
Ceana smiled at the girl and bent to pick it up, instantly mourning the loss of Neil’s warmth around her. She hadn’t even realized how chilly the evening had become until the warmth of his body was gone. When she straightened, he took the cup from her hand and gave it to a passing villager. She might have questioned it, but Jeanie was grabbing both of their hands and pulling them to the clearing.
It was a slower dance, one that was meant to give the couples an excuse to stand slightly closer to one another. But since theywere a group of three, it did make things slightly more awkward, as Jeanie didn’t seem as if she intended to let either of them go for anything in the world. She placed herself directly between them, one foot on Ceana’s and the other on Neil’s. She fisted her smaller hands in their clothes as they awkwardly closed their circle and started to sway together.
Whatever concerns Ceana had about behaving so silly in public faded away the moment Jeanie started to cackle. Neil put a hand on Jeanie’s upper back to steady her and slid his other hand around Ceana’s waist to keep them all together… and they moved like that. Sometimes they fumbled, sometimes they slipped, but Ceana found that she couldn’t stop smiling either.
The eyes of the villagers were upon them. She could feel their heavy gazes, watching and assessing. She knew that there were still many rumors floating around because of not only how quickly they got married but also because of the circumstances. They implied all manner of things, according to her mother, especially because she had bounced from one man to another so quickly.
They implied that she must have done something untoward in order to ‘upgrade’ her husband. She told herself that she didn’t care. She lived at the castle now anyway, so their petty remarks couldn’t harm her. But she did worry about what they might say or do to her mother or Peter.
So, she kept her head up high and did her very best to present herself as a proper Lady of Clan MacTristan. She leaned a little bit closer to her husband as they moved around the clearing. Shesmiled up at him as brightly as she possibly could. Even then, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from giggling as they stumbled through one dance and then another.
There was something so special about the way Neil kept looking at her. His gaze dropped to the neckline of her dress every time his grip on her waist tightened. It felt like a promise of things yet to come.
Ceana could lie and tell herself that it was all for show, that she just wanted to ensure that Jeanie had the best time at her first festival… but she knew better.
Though, she didn’t have to pretend very much—she couldn’t even remember the last time she had been this happy.
17
“M’Laird!” a burly man called to Neil at the very worst possible moment.
Chasing after Jeanie was exhausting. It was a full-time job in and of itself. Neil knew that he shouldn’t have given her maids the night off. He knew that he should have ordered at least one of them to accompany him and keep the lass company.
After their dance, his daughter kept bouncing from stall to stall, and his wife was nowhere to be seen! They both had taken off when the song ended, though he could have stayed like that for the rest of the night. He hadn’t yet decided if that was good or bad.
As it was, he was leaning around the ale-reddened face of the man in front of him to see what trouble his daughter had gotten herself into. More troublesome than a hornet’s nest and just as dangerous, she was.
“Congratulations on yer marriage! I heard ye caught a bonny lassie! Where is she? I wish to shake her hand!” the man continued.
Donald was his name. Neil was too distracted to answer properly. So he nodded at him and then turned away, not as interested in the conversation as he was in finding Ceana.
“I’m sure that she’s around here somewhere, but if ye?—”
When Neil turned back, Donald was fidgeting, clearly wanting to say something.
