Fear of Fire and Shadow (The Fade #1) - Samantha Young Page 0,88
bright with amusement. “Ye said his name in yer sleep last night. And the night before.”
Whatever she saw on my face made her laugh. “Ah, I be seein’. I just got a wee picture o’ ye kissin’ a fine-looking specimen o’ a man. Wee bit soft perhaps, but mighty fine.”
I felt the heat of indignation. “Wolfe is anything but soft,” I snapped.
L grinned mischievously. “He yer man, then? Yer betrothed?”
Like a thirteen-year-old, I blushed, shaking my head. “It’s complicated.”
I was rewarded with a scowl. “I can be keepin’ up.”
With a weary sigh, I went on to tell L about my family, about what Syracen had done to them. That Wolfe was Syracen’s son. How all these years I’d thought Wolfe had been after revenge. How I had recently discovered what Syracen had done to Wolfe. That Wolfe had feelings for me. That I had feelings for Wolfe but I knew that acting on them was a betrayal of my family.
I talked myself hoarse, surprised by how much I’d come to trust this girl in so little time. L listened patiently, her eyes betraying her interest and her sympathy.
Still, when I finished, she scratched her cheek and said gruffly, “Well, I isn’t no expert on these here things, but from what ye be tellin’ me, sounds to me as if ye be gettin’ things a wee bit backward.”
“Backward?” I puffed out a breath, glaring at her back. L turned and caught the look. She chuckled at my expression as we dug our feet into the hill, the incline growing steeper.
“Well, yer parents tried to protect ye, told ye to run. They died for ye.”
“Yes,” I replied through clenched teeth, hissing the s.
“Well, that be sayin’ to me that they was good folks. They just wanted ye to be free and happy.”
I frowned, wondering at the direction of her point, and if she was ever going to make it. “Yes?”
“If this Wolfe man—ha ha, wolfman.” She chortled and then noticed my belligerent expression. “Never mind. If this Wolfe makes ye feel free, makes ye happy, isn’t that all that be matterin’ to yer parents?”
“But his father killed my parents. Being with his son would be a betrayal of their memory.”
“That don’t be makin’ no kind o’ sense. Ye brought yer parents murderer to justice, Rogan, and ye saved Wolfe and his mother from a life o’ misery at that evil-doer’s hands. And this Wolfe person, he sounds like he be an upright kind o’ fella. And don’t he be some kind o’ nobility?”
I wiped the sweat off my forehead, my fingers trembling. “A vikomt.”
L grunted. “Lass, ye be gettin’ yerself a rich man. That’s every parent’s dream,” she joked.
When I didn’t respond, she threw me a wicked smile that transformed her from ordinary to pretty. “Ye joined giblets with yer Wolfe, then?”
I frowned, searching my brain for a translation.
L laughed at my confusion. “Has he bedded ye, Rogan?”
I grimaced at her forthright question, my cheeks flushing hotly. “No,” I bit out.
L sobered quite abruptly. “Ye a maiden, then?”
“Yes. Aren’t you?”
“O’ course.”
I nodded, having expected as much.
“Think on this then, Rogan …” She stopped to freeze me in her guileless stare. “What if I had no’ got to ye? Is that how ye would have wanted it? Raped and abused by a stranger in these here mountains, instead of it bein’ right and true with the man ye love?”
I was instantly chilled at the thought.
Then panicky, hot flutters melted the ice she’d created inside me with her directness.
“If there be one thing these here mountains learn us, Rogan, it be life is often harsh … and always temporary. Don’t run from love because ye lost so much o’ it as a child. Instead … love while ye can.”
Gulping back the emotion clogging my throat, I somehow managed to respond, “Is that what you intend to do, L?”
She threw me another quick grin before turning back up the mountain. “As soon as I be finding love like Ma and Papa’s.”
As I followed her, I found myself drowning in L’s practicality. I had been since the moment I met her, and now her pragmatism was starting to make sense. And with Wolfe, I didn’t want it to make sense.
“My plan wasn’t to marry—ever.”
“My plan for this week was to show Jr. how to be layin’ a trap without takin’ his hands off. Instead I’m stuck up in these here mountains with the dumbest smart person I ever be meetin’.”