Chapter 2

2

Kiernan noticed her the moment she stepped into the room. Her eyes seemed to be fixed on the floor, and her body was ridden with tension, almost as though she were waiting for something to happen. She dipped her head low, letting her long, blonde hair fall into her face, the simple brown dress she was wearing falling to her feet, as though it weren’t made for her. But those blue eyes, as deep as the ocean, they couldn’t have belonged to anyone else as she looked up at him.

As though she were waiting for him.

When she looked over at him, he grinned, and lifted his drink to her in greeting. She looked away at once, as though she could scarcely stand to look at him for too long.

Beside him, a small group of girls were chatting among themselves, and he noticed one shooting a look in his direction. After a few more words to her friends, she finally forced herself forward, gazing up at him, hopefully.

“May I… may I dance with you, my Laird?”

“Aye, of course you may,” he replied, flashing her a smile. If the blonde girl was going to keep her distance, then he would not pass up the chance to dance with someone else. Perhaps when she saw him dancing with another girl, she’d find the nerve to make her own move.

Kiernan took his new partner out on the floor, and, as they joined in a strip-the-willow line, he noticed the blonde girl had done the same. She was standing opposite a young man, who was staring at her with naked hope in his eyes. Kiernan pushed down a flush of jealousy as they came together to spin in the center, before they moved off down the line. The sight of his hand on her waist, even for the barest moment, raised his hackles.

But she had noticed him, too, and he made sure he gave her something to notice. He drew his dance partner closer than he needed to, allowing his hand to skim the small of her back, her hair to brush over his face as she moved, though, each time she did, he caught a snatch of sight of the blonde girl watching him, a slight furrow in her brow. Each time he caught her looking, she would tear her gaze away at once, as though she didn’t want to be caught paying him so much attention.

He grinned. It was working.

As she danced, it struck him that she seemed to be dancing for him; not for her partner, but to draw his attention back to her, even as he parsed out his steps with his new partner. Even when her gaze was not on him, she seemed to be drawn by him, her body shifting to make sure he could see her, her hair flying where he could catch sight of it out of the corner of his eye.

When the dance was done, she retreated to a table for something to eat. Her partner, the boy, tried to speak to her, but she seemed scarcely able to keep the conversation going. Kiernan turned his back on her to find a drink, and, as he moved, he was sure he could feel her gaze burning into the back of his head, doing everything she could to make him turn back to look at her. And he would, but first, he had to make her crave his closeness so eagerly that she’d do anything to taste it again.

But if she thought for a moment that he was going to pass up the chance to get close to her, after so long, she was wrong.

He moved through the crowd with ease. It parted before him, people giving him plenty of space to make his way across the room. He supposed, for once, his reputation had served him well; nobody here wanted to be the one to stand in his way when he had somewhere to go.

Finally, he reached her side. She couldn’t so much as look up at him, and he paused for a long moment.

“Do you remember me?” he asked her, finally. She glanced up at him, and then straight down to the ground again, clutching her drink even tighter to her chest.

“Yes, I do,” she admitted finally. “We met… I mean, I think we met at the celebration for the wedding, a while ago.”

The way she spoke, it was almost as though she were trying to dodge the truth. The moment she had laid eyes on him, it was obvious that she knew who he was. She might have tried to pretend that she did not, but there was no shadow of a doubt in his mind that he had burned himself onto her memory, just as she had done for him.

He hadn’t gotten her name, the first night they had met. He’d hardly thought to ask. Something as prosaic as a name seemed unimportant, when her small, soft body was pressed against his. The scent of her hair, violets and a sweet musk, had filled his senses, and it left no room for anything else. He had heard the tone to her voice, the lilt of her English accent, and had known instantly that she wasn’t from around these parts—which only made her more intriguing to him. Someone who had known a life so different to the one he had known, he could only imagine everything she had experienced—and everything she had yet to experience, everything he could show her.

“I dinnae think I got yer name last time we spoke.”

“Mary.”

Mary. It seemed to suit her, something soft and innocent. A smile curled up his lips.

“And are you going to tell me what you’re called?” she demanded, her voice suddenly taking on an edge of defiance. Oh, he liked that. He liked the tone to her voice, the sureness in it. There was clearly more depth to this girl than he had given her credit for, and he only found her more intriguing with every passing second.

But before he could reply, a man appeared at her side. From the look on his face, Kiernan could tell that he was family. Only men who were related would have looked so concerned about his presence close to a woman they knew.

“Laird Fraser,” Arran greeted him calmly. “A pleasure to see you here. Perhaps ye’d like to meet with some of our other guests…”

“I’m fine where I am, my Laird” Kiernan replied. Arran bristled slightly. Clearly, it was not the answer he had been looking for. Mary, for her part, glanced up between the two of them with confusion, clearly not sure what to make of all of this.

“Kiernan,” Arran replied, his voice dropping slightly. Kiernan, of course, had heard tell of Arran’s reputation, but he was sure it would have softened since he had gotten married, especially since he now had a child in the world.

“Leave my sister-in-law alone, if you know what’s good for ye.”

His voice left no room for argument, his tone sharp and insistent. Mary’s lips parted, as though she wanted to protest, but Arran didn’t even look at her.

“Perhaps we should ask the lady what she thinks, Arran, ” Kiernan shot back. He was challenging Arran. No wonder he was so protective of this girl, if she was the sister to his own bride.

“Arran, I’m quite capable of?—”

“Laird Fraser,” Arran cut her off. He wasn’t going to take no for an answer, that much, he was making clear. A smile spread further up Kiernan’s lips, his usual response to finding himself in the midst of a confrontation. It was an instinct that had gotten him in trouble plenty of times over the years, but one that, even after all this time, he struggled to shake.

But, he supposed, this was truly the celebration of the birth of Arran’s son. He should not choose today, of all days, to dig his heels in and insist that he get his time alone with Mary. There would come another chance for that, when the time was right. For now, he had made his impression, he had gotten her name. All else could wait.

He took Mary’s hand for a moment, squeezing it lightly.

“A pleasure to see you again, my lady.”

With that, he backed off into the crowd, leaving Mary staring after him, her hand tingling from the pressure of where he had just touched her, and her lips parted in shock.

Then, Mary rounded on Arran.

“What was all that about?” she demanded. She felt bad for snapping at him so on a day like this one, but she was irritated, and she could not very well hide it.

“Stay away from that man, Mary.”

Arran intoned his command in a low voice, watching as Kiernan—that was his name, wasn’t it? Mary was quite sure that she had heard Arran refer to him in such terms—vanished into the crowd. She noticed a few other women glancing in his direction, and had to bite back even more annoyance. After so long, she had finally found the man she had been thinking about all this time, only for her brother-in-law to cut in and stop her from doing what she wanted to do.

Whatever that might have been.

“It’s fer your own good, lass,” he snapped back at her, his voice dropping into a low and threatening tone that told her everything she needed to know. No matter how much she might have craved his presence, that man was bad news. As she glanced after him once more, though, she found herself wondering just how bad that news could have been, given the way her body tingled in response to him.

“Why? What has he done?” she demanded, her eyes narrowing. He shook his head.

“Keep yer distance. Ye’ll never need to find out.”

Before she could interrogate him on the matter any further, a slightly drunken woman appeared at his side to offer her congratulations on the birth of his son. Arran quickly covered his anger with a smile, and it was as though the confrontation with Kiernan hadn’t happened at all.

She turned that name over in her head. Kiernan. It seemed to suit him, somehow, as though that name belonged to him, as though nobody else could ever have called it theirs.

She rubbed her thumb along her knuckles, where he had touched her, so lightly that she could almost have told herself she’d imagined it. But she knew it had been real. She knew she could never have invented the wash of excitement that pulsed through her body when he had caressed her, the draw to him, her body craving more, aching for something she’d never ached for in her life.

Peering into the crowd, she suddenly realized that she had lost sight of him—was he dancing with someone else again?

A twinge of jealousy nagged inside her again. Was he with someone else, already? Was he spending the night dancing with another woman, like the one she had seen him with earlier, just as he had danced with her all those months ago? Had he thought of that night as often as she had, or was she just another in a long line of women he’d flirted with and then abandoned?

She had no idea, but she knew that there was a part of her that craved answers, a part of her that was even more fascinated than she had been before Arran had told her to keep her distance.

And she knew, deep down, that she was not going to be able to shake the memory of him any better than she already had. No, his hooks were even deeper into her than they had been before—and, much as she knew it was wrong to admit it, she wouldn’t have changed a thing.