Enraptured by the Highlander

“You said Sir Duglas was the one who brought you to Peter?” she asked.

“Aye,” Caelan said. He drank the milk and then said, “He did.”

“And you said you were only told about it after you came to the place, Arnside, was it?” Adelaine asked again.

“Aye,” he said. “We had just arrived when Duglas asked if there was a doctor among us. I lifted me hand and was taken to yer brother’s side up in the annex tower.”

“And this was almost two days after the battle,” Adelaine asked again.

“Aye, Me Lady,” Caelan was beginning to get suspicious.

“But,” she sounded despairing. “Robert is my brother’s best friend. Surely he would have known about Peter being injured and called for a doctor earlier?”

“Ach, lass,” Caelan said, not mindful that he had left off the honorific. “Duglas told me that he was only made aware of it that same day.”

“But…” her voice wavered. “I still don’t understand. Robert should have known that beforehand, before it all got so grave.”

“Oh, lass,” Caelan grimaced. “I wondered that too. I kent it was that yer brother hadnae kent his injury was that perilous and believed he could take care of it alone.”

Her face was tight and her shoulders—once stiff—sagged. “That sounds like Peter. He was always one to do things his way and not ask for help, sometimes even to the point when he absolutely had to.”

The sorrowful silence they shared felt just a little better as they both felt the pain. It was uneven as Caelan had barely known Peter but Adelaine had been with him her whole life.

“Perhaps you right,” Adelaine murmured, her lovely eyes flitting up to his. Her orbs held unspeakable pain and sorrow. “Perhaps he did accept his fate.”

He finished his drink and resisted licking his lips. “Was Peter the type to forge his own path?”

“Peter was…” she hesitated, “…a contradiction. He was mild-mannered, peaceful if you were in his company, but was a good fighter. How he managed to take orders but made sure to not submit to anyone still confuses me. He tried to be a good friend to everyone and hardly argued but for many years, as he grew, he and father had a lot of arguments.”

“About what?” Caelan asked while twirling the pewter cup. His frown was light but his confusion was deep.

Her slim shoulder rose and fell. “Little thing at first, like Peter staying in to play with me rather than going out to train with the squires. Then they grew to bigger things like him wanting to go off to university but my father saying the knighthood was better for him. He managed to go off to Oxford for a year but father brought him back, saying that he was wasting his time.”

“Isnae yer faither a businessman too?” Caelan asked. “Wouldnae an education in business be a good investment for all ye lot?”

“I thought so,” Adelaine said wryly. “My father, did not. They’d had a large row over that one too.”

Caelan shook his head, then looked at the lass. “What about ye? Has ye faither ever treated ye that way?”

“Me?” She looked at him with some form of humor on her face. “No, he has never demanded anything of me. I’m close to a royal princess in his eyes.”

“Me Lady, forgive me for being prying but how old are ye?”

She looked a bit wary, “I am one-and-twenty, and you?”

“Two-and-thirty,” Caelan said dryly. “I am an old man, Me Lady.”

“Why did you ask my age?” Adelaine asked. “I’ve been told I look years younger than really am. Is that why you asked?”

“Nay,” Caelan shook his head. “I asked because I’d imagine a lady like ye would be married. I kept kenning that a man, yer husband, would come with ye and after seeing me, bar ye from coming here.”

“Sadly, I’m not,” Adelaine replied. “Father…I don’t know. Many women my age would be married by now but I don’t know why father has not taken any propositions for my hand. And I would ask you the same question.”

r /> “Unmarried as well. A man of me age should have had a wife and an heir by now, but somehow, I never found the right lady,” Caelan admitted. Then he took in her posture. Her shoulders were hunched, and her eyes cast down. It was the perfect position for him to look at her without interruption. Her face was softly oval with the arch of her cheekbones sculpting her face into one that painter would die to paint.

Her hair was still under her cap but he saw strands of dark brown curling at her temples. She was nibbling on her lip and twisting her hands in a clear sign of anxiety.

He sat the cup down. “What’s troubling ye, Me Lady?”