time to break the ice.
She turned and caught Iain staring at her. He instantly dropped his eyes and feigned a healthy interest in the trencher of venison that rested before him.
“Iain, I—”
“All save a few call me Laird—but I shall allow ye to call me Iain, if ye wish.” He speared a hunk of meat with his dirk and raised it to his mouth.
Good God, he was arrogant. Mayhap the insufferable boy she remembered lived still inside the man.
“And you may call me Alena,” she shot back.
He halted his attack on the venison in midbite and looked at her with a kind of surprise. He started to speak but then changed his mind, his mouth opening and closing a few times—much like a trout.
Now was clearly not a good time to provoke him. They ate in silence for a while, then she thought to try again at conversation. “Your uncle is laird here?”
“Aye,” Iain said. “He is The Davidson.”
“Yet you sit at the head of his table.”
“In his absence I am responsible for his clan and his lands.”
This surprised her. “Has he no son—or daughter,” she couldn’t help adding, “to lead in his stead?”
Iain looked directly at her. “Nay. Alistair and Margaret have no issue. When Gilchrist is of age, he will be laird here.”
“But he is a Mackintosh. Surely the Davidsons will protest.”
Iain smiled—more to himself than to her, as if remembering something. “Gilchrist is a Davidson and a Mackintosh. He was raised here and is well loved by my mother’s clan. Nay, they will accept him. They already do.”
He nodded toward Gilchrist who was engaged in telling some bawdy joke to the Davidson clansmen at the other end of the table.
“I see what you mean. And what of you, Iain Mackintosh? Where lies your future?”
For the second time in as many days his eyes reached into her soul. “Elsewhere,” he breathed.
Jesu, but the man had a power over her she could not explain. In truth, he always had. She wet her lips as he held her in a gaze so intense, so personal, she felt both the strength and the will to break away slip from her.
The sounds of the diners faded from her perception as he leaned in close. His face hovered inches from hers. She tilted her chin toward him, her lips parting of their own accord in some dreamlike expectation.
A deafening hurrah shattered her momentary enchantment and she turned to see half a dozen clansmen on their feet, horns and goblets raised. They were toasting her, she realized, and quickly collected herself.
Her heart was still thrumming in her chest when Iain stood and let go her hand. Why, she hadn’t even realized he’d been holding it!
From the other end of the room, Duncan related in a loud and very drunken voice how she had tamed the wild stallion and saved Conall from certain death. The old stablemaster embellished the facts to the point Alena was embarrassed. But the warriors echoed Duncan’s pleasure, and she accepted their praise with as much grace as she could muster.
She glanced at Conall, who was fair beaming, and then at Hamish and Will, who lifted their ale cups to her. The room settled back into its normal state of chaos and she turned her attention to Iain, who promptly took his seat.
He fidgeted in his chair and would not look at her. Finally he said, “I didna thank ye, Lady, for saving my brother today.”
She felt a tightening in her chest. Never once when they were children had he thanked her for anything. “’Twas nothing, Laird, I assure you. I am well skilled with horses.”
“So ’twould seem. But ye must promise me you’ll ne’er take such a fool’s chance again.”
“Truly, Iain, there was no danger to me.”
His eyes clouded and she watched him swallow hard. He grasped her hand and squeezed it tight. Her heart was in her throat and, had she willed it, she couldn’t have spoken a word at that moment to save her life.
“Ye…ye could have been killed.” He squeezed her hand tighter, and she thought surely she would swoon from the tenderness in his eyes.
He did care. He did!
The realization was a bolt of white heat that shook her to the mettle. Her expression, she feared, betrayed her raw emotion, her desire, her love. All that she felt for him.
“Iain, I…” She leaned closer, then felt his hand slip away.
He drew back abruptly. His eyes, which only a moment ago brimmed with tenderness, grew cold. He fisted his hands and pressed them, white-knuckled, into the table.
A well-practiced scowl, the one she was beginning to think he reserved solely for her, etched his face. “Ye will no’ go near that stallion again, d’ye understand? ’Tis a valuable animal.”
It took a full second for his words to sink in.
“D’ye hear me, woman?”
Her anger rose faster than the galloping chestnut who’d thrown her into Iain Mackintosh’s cursed path. “A valuable animal? Is that all you care—”
“Enough! I’ll hear no more on it.”
The hall went deadly quiet. All eyes were on the laird. Iain stood, shoved back his chair hard enough to send it sprawling, and stormed from the hall.
She sat there wondering what on earth had just happened. His disposition was more changeable than the weather! One minute he was concerned for her safety, and the next…
Her head spinning, she turned to Gilchrist and shot him a questioning look.
A stupefying grin bloomed on the young warrior’s face. “I’ll be damned. He’s in love.”
Chapter Five
’Twas time to find out just how much he knew.
At dawn Alena splashed some water on her face, quickly dressed, and went to the stable in search of Duncan. She found him repairing a bridle in one of the connecting buildings that housed the Davidson livery.
“Good morrow, Duncan,” she said brightly.
The old man looked up and smiled. “Ah, Alena, lass. Ye’re about early. Did ye sleep well?”
“Aye, I did. And you?” she asked mischievously, recalling his drunken state the previous evening.
“Weel, it’s no’ the lack o’ sleep, but the bluidy headache the next day that can do an old man in.”
She laughed at that, then turned her thoughts to more serious matters. “You are stablemaster here, Duncan?”
“I am,” he said, his eyes on his work.
He’d worn the Mackintosh plaid the day they’d arrived at Braedûn, but today he was dressed in leather breeches and a russet shirt. She studied the clan badge pinned to his bonnet: a cat reared up on hind legs. “But you are a Mackintosh.”
Duncan looked up from his work. “Aye, that, too.” He stared at her for a few moments, then said, “I came here with Lady Ellen and the lads—after Iain’s da was killed.”
“So you’ve known Iain since he was a boy.”
Duncan sheathed his dirk and tossed the bridle over a post. He gestured to a stool next to the one on which he was perched. “Sit here, lass.”
She obeyed and Duncan settled in, resting his leathered forearms on his thighs. “Ye see, Colum Mackintosh and I grew up together. My own da was stablemaster to his da. And when Colum and Ellen had those boys, weel,