She placed her hand on his arm to get his attention. “Nae one’s that good of an actor, Kenneth. I ken him. He wouldnae be able to keep yer McIlvain a secret, and neither would my mother.”
Slowly, he nodded, then glanced up the passageway ahead of them. “Then mayhap he was here without yer father’s knowledge.”
“Och, aye. I would guess there’s plenty of things which go on without my father’s knowledge.” Lifting her skirts, she led the way down the shadowed passage once more. “Let us look in the most out-of-the-way tunnels to see if we see signs of yer prey.”
“And yer mother?”
Leanna clucked her tongue. “She never comes in here. Says the dust irritates her sinusitis, whatever that is.”
It was only one of many ailments Leanna was convinced her mother had made up. Like Restless Leg Syndrome and Taxes.
Behind her, there was a sound which might’ve been a chuckle. “I meant, are there things which go on at Oliphant Castle without yer mother’s knowledge? My mother ran the— ran her home with a steel grip.”
Leanna made note of that verbal stumble. Well, Kenneth, ye’re dropping enough hints to be interesting, for certes.
“Kenneth, I’m fairly certain almost everything that goes on at Oliphant Castle is beyond her knowledge. Ye’ve met her too; she’s mostly interested in Fen’s dinner menu, and the cure Nicola can mix up for whatever her latest ailment might be. Och, and threads. The woman has an unhealthy interest in thread.”
“As in…embroidery thread?”
Chuckling, Leanna came to a three-way split in the passage and chose the left-most corridor. It had been many years since she’d explored this route. “Aye. I’m sorry to confess I have nae skill nor interest in embroidery—the thread or the final product.”
“I find myself completely indifferent to yer confession.” There was a hint of humor in his tone. “As I, myself, have little interest nor skill in embroidery.”
She snorted. “Aye, but men are supposed to be warriors and protect their hearth and family. Women are supposed to sit by said hearth, sewing, and producing said family.”
“Ye dinnae want a family?”
When she swung around to face him, she allowed her shock to slip into her voice. “Och, nay! I want a family! I want bairns, and I’m going to love them the way a mother should…but I’m no’ going to sit still and let them and my husband have all the fun!”
Something in his expression shifted, from concern, to a sort of satisfaction. While her chest still rang with desperation to get him to understand, he smiled softly and lifted one hand to her temple.
When he gently brushed a tendril of hair, likely filthy from cobwebs and dust, away from her skin, she felt herself melt.
“I never doubted ye would be a fine mother, Leanna,” he said in a low voice, absolutely calculated—she was certain—to make her insides go all gooey. “And a man would be lucky to have someone like ye by his side, bringing adventure into what might otherwise be a boring life.”
She narrowed her eyes. “How?”
“How what?”
“How could I bring adventure into my husband’s life, while he’s off fighting evil or feeling sheep or shearing trees or whatnot?”
“Feeling sheep?” he asked with a twitch of his lips.
In exasperation, she dropped her free hand to her hip, loving the way the candlelight threw his expression into sharp relief.
“Or hunting for a root; I dinnae ken!”
One of his brows rose. “Why would he be hunting for a root?”
“I asked him that!” she huffed in exasperation. “We have the damned root we need right there in the larder! But nay, he must have the fresh root, because ‘tis the best way, according to him. And he’s suddenly an expert on roots! But in order to get the root, he must go find the wagon, and then he discovers the axle’s cracked, so he takes the damned thing to the woodworker, but the woodworker’s ax is broken, so the pair of them hie off to find the blacksmith, who’s died in the recent plague. And there I am, hugely pregnant, holding the bairn on one hip and the washing on the other, while the twins run circles around me, and I havenae slept in two days, and I just need the damn root, and he’s all, ‘Well, what do ye think I’m doing, lass? I’m getting the root!’”
She subsided, her chest heaving, already furious at her non-existent husband.
Shocked silence stretched between them, and as her pulse slowed, she realized what a fool she’d just made of herself.
But slowly, Kenneth’s lips pulled into a grin. Hesitantly, hers answered them. And when he began to chuckle, she joined him, until they were both guffawing there in the semi-darkness between the walls.
After a long while, once the laughter subsided, he leaned toward her and touched her cheek. Still grinning, he said, “I kenned ye’d be an adventure, lass. Any man who marries ye will be lucky to have yer sense of spirit in his life, even during the mundane adventures like fetching roots or dead blacksmiths.”