Entrusted to a Highlander (Highland Promise Trilogy #2) - Donna Fletcher Page 0,59
but she couldn’t glance back since he kept propelling her forward.
“Not fair,” she whispered when they were finally seated at the table beside each other.
“I don’t always play fair,” he said with a wink and kissed her cheek.
She wondered if he realized that he teased her, that the old, playful Arran was escaping, freeing himself from wherever restraints had been forced on him. She didn’t intend to point to it or make mention of it to him, for fear he’d retreat. She’d let him rediscover himself in his own time, welcoming every peek he revealed.
“Tell me what you’ve learned,” she said, changing the conversation for her own sanity.
The sparkle faded from his eyes and she was sorry to see it go, though grew a bit worried when he took her hand.
“Your father is ill,” he said.
“How ill can he be if he rides off for a week?” she asked, the news not that upsetting to her.
“Some say he goes to find a healer and others wonder if he went to make a deal with Wolf while some speculate that he went in search of you.”
“If he searched for me it would be to make sure I wed,” Purity said and gave a sad shake of her head. “When I first took refuge in the woods with the others, I had this recurring thought that my father would be worried about me and search for me. He didn’t.”
“Perhaps he thought you safer if you stayed hidden away,” Arran offered. “If you had returned, surely you would have been forced to wed one of Wolf’s warriors and your father feared that.”
“My father feared the loss of his land and power. He wasn’t worried about me, only what I as his daughter could do for him. I shiver to think of who he might have married me to,” she said and actually shuddered at the frightening thought. She paled suddenly and gripped her husband’s hand. “What if that’s what he has done? What if he’s struck a bargain with another clan? What if he went off and wed me by proxy to someone?”
A sense of dread gripped Arran, but he remained calm outwardly. “We’re wed. There’s nothing he can do.”
“What if he wed me to someone before we wed? Would that invalidate our marriage?” she asked anxiously.
He held her hand tight and brought it to his lips to kiss. “No one will ever take you from me, this I promise you. Your father no doubt went to find a healer in hopes of helping him get well.”
Purity nodded, but silently asked herself, why her father hadn’t gone to Wren?
Arran saw that his words had done nothing to soothe his wife’s worries and they hadn’t tempered his own as well. He hadn’t given such a possibility thought. He’d like to assume it was unlikely, but with the man’s failing health could he have come to the conclusion that he had had no choice?
He wanted to kick himself for not sealing their vows right after they had taken them. He’d waited far too long. It should have been done by now, his seed already taken root.
A thought did strike him that might help. “I’ll send a missive to the monastery to make certain Brother Noble recorded our marriage.”
“Aye, we should see to it right away,” Purity agreed. “But who do we trust to take it? I would say Quiver but he gets too easily lost in the woods.”
“I trust Quiver to take a message to Royden. He’ll send someone that can be trusted. I’ll send Quiver in the morning.”
“And tonight we seal our vows,” she whispered, her arm wrapping around his as if she didn’t intend to let him go. So her question surprised him. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
His response surprised him as well. “You’re all I want.”
Purity heard much more. She heard that he loved her and she responded in kind. “I love you, too.”
Arran once again surprised himself by kissing her instead of telling her that he never said he loved her. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her that, to hurt her that way, or was it because it was true and he didn’t have the courage to believe it?
After food, drink, and much talk, Purity and Arran went for a walk through the village, Princess and King wandering off as soon as they got outside.
Purity made an effort of smiling and stopping to talk with some of the people. How did she expect them to accept her