Forbidden Heart (Hearts of the Highlands #6) - Paula Quinn Page 0,12
but if they are unjust or show no mercy, there is no beauty in them and one day what is on the inside will come creeping out.”
Galeren wondered if she was talking about someone like him. He was called Galeren the Bonny back home. Did she consider his heart ugly because he was a Scottish soldier?
“We need to get movin’,” he said. “We have already lost time.”
He met her at the horses and lifted her to the saddle.
Two days. It was nothing. He’d traveled seven days one way to get to Invergarry last summer, and longer than that to France and England. He could do this. She was forbidden. Nothing else mattered but that and the reasons why. So, what was he doing? He wanted to laugh. He’d suffered a lapse in good sense for a few hours. It was nothing more serious than that.
“Forgive me for being such trouble, Captain.”
He let out a great breath, expelling his thoughts. “Ye are no trouble at all.”
“I must ask you to stop again for prayers.”
His heart sank. “Now?”
She giggled and the tinkle of a hundred bells rose up to his ears. He wanted to hear the sound of it again.
“In one hour.”
“Verra well.” What else could he say?
“Thank you for being so kind to me, Captain.”
He closed his eyes behind her, feeling a little guilty for thinking about being more aloof with her. “Ye dinna have to thank me fer that,” he told her quietly.
“You are not at all what I imagined,” she confessed.
“What did ye imagine?” He didn’t know why he was asking.
She turned a little in his lap and blushed looking up at him. “I imagined someone who only cared for war. Someone more savage and mean.”
“Ye thought the captain was Mac?” Will asked, hearing as he passed them and answering before Galeren did.
He moved on and Mac rode up in his place. “What did that bastard say aboot me?”
“He said you were savage and mean and only cared for war,” she told Mac, surprising Galeren that she possessed a bold bone in her body. “A compliment of the highest form,” she continued. “For a warrior, aye?”
Galeren watched with a smile as Mac nodded slowly, admitting no offense had been committed. He was still smiling when his friend rode away. She turned to look up at him from beneath her veil.
“No one has ever turned his heart away from fightin’,” Galeren marveled.
“’Tis evident by his appearance,” she told him softly. “Fighting is likely his whole life.”
Galeren nodded.
“How can a man take offense to a friend’s accolades?”
He laughed. Indeed, how could he? She was correct and it had worked on the most cynical of them all.
“So, all I have had to do all these years,” said Galeren with the residue of laughter on his lips, “was compliment him?”
Her smile widened and made her sea-blue eyes dance. “Aye, ’twas all you had to do.”
“Eventually, I would have two Wills on my hands!” he exclaimed in a horrified whisper closer to her ear.
She laughed. The most dangerous, powerful sound to his ears.
“How many years have you known them?”
“I have known Mac fer nine years, Morgann fer one, and Padrig and Will fer seven. Padrig and Will are brothers,” he told her. “Padrig is the oldest. When they were seven and nine, their parents were executed before their eyes by the English king. Their mother was a chambermaid fer Lord and Lady Edmund Everhart. She was accused of stealin’ a costly jewelry set. Padrig and Will were sent back to an orphanage in Scotland. I dinna know the entire tale. Best ye let them tell it.”
She nodded. “Thank you, Captain. I will. What about you?”
He blinked. Did she want him to share some of himself with her? No. It was a bad idea. She was his charge. He had to keep his head on straight. There was no reason to get to know her better when he would deliver her back to Bamburgh and the priory in a fortnight and never see her again. “There is nothin’ we need to know of each other on this journey, Sister.”
“I see,” she breathed after a moment. “I did not know we could not be friends.”
“We canna.” He could not look at her and kept his gaze on the road.
After an hour, they stopped in a forest so she could pray. Galeren was determined not to let her affect him. He had a duty to see to and see to it, he would. He didn’t need to