Chapter 5
Shame pumpedthrough Fen with each beat of her pulse, but she couldn’t seem to do a thing about it. Why did being in crowds make her so uncomfortable? Her family was one thing—although Mother’s disapproval never seemed to get easier—but others?
She shuddered. “Tarts.”
“I didnae get to try any,” murmured the man at her side. “They looked good.”
She’d made lemon tarts for the meal, but she hadn’t been able to stomach them any more than the rabbit or leeks or hearty brown bread. But she didn’t need to in order to defend them. “They were delicious, I’ll have ye ken.” Her voice sounded weak, even to her.
The breath he huffed out was as close to a laugh as she’d ever heard from him, and his arm tightened around her middle as he steered her toward the big—now empty—kitchen. “I dinnae doubt it, lass. But seems a shame no’ to take the time to enjoy them.”
Sitting in the main hall, at the table, with all those strangers…eating? Fen would’ve vomited.
“I think…” she began, then gasped as she reached for the counter, holding onto the edge as if it could stop the world spinning, “’tis best I no’ risk it.”
She could hear him moving away from her, the peculiar stomp-click of his gait with the crutch familiar after these last several weeks.
“Why was today so bad, lass?” he called from behind her. “I hoped, with someone at yer side ye could trust…”
Could she trust him?
Aye.
The answer came immediately, though she wasn’t sure what that knowledge signified.
But still, she swallowed down her shame, her fear, and closed her eyes, trying to articulate how it made her feel being in situations such as the one they’d just escaped. “I… The strangers. They were men.”
“Aye,” he growled, and she heard him step up beside her. “Here.”
When she opened her eyes, she found him staring impassively at her, offering a cup of water. Gratefully, she took it and the cool drink soothed her.
Or mayhap ‘twas the knowledge he’d cared enough to bring it to her.
“Ye dinnae like men?” he prompted. “Strange men? Ye have a reason to fear them?”
Like Gordon.
Brodie’s tone had dropped into the menacing range, and when she sighed, “Aye,” she definitely heard him snarl.
And realized he was worried for her.
“Nay, no’ like that,” she tried to reassure him, then sighed and drank again. “I’ve always been wary and nervous around strangers, all strangers, and even some distant family. But ye ken…my father declared we must all be married?”
His expression didn’t change, but she thought she saw a flicker of surprise in the dark depths of his eyes.
“We must all marry, and I only recently realized he meant me as well. I thought…” She glanced down at the remaining water. “I’d thought I was safe,” she whispered.
He hesitated a few moments before asking, “Ye…didnae want to be married?”
Swallowing, she wrestled with her words, wrestled with telling him the truth. She didn’t want to give up her place here, the only place where she felt truly at ease, and marriage would mean putting someone else first. But…
“There are certain aspects of marriage I wouldnae mind”—like everything the Gray Lady had taught Wynda—“but the thought of being married to someone like them…”
“Like Gordon?” he growled.
“Like any of them.” She peeked up at him. “I dinnae want to leave Oliphant Castle,” she confessed pitifully. It was as close as she could come to the truth. “This is my place; ‘tis where I belong. I ken my parents were parading us in front of Laird MacBain, and Gordon and the others, in the hopes of snagging their interest. And the way he kept showing special attention to me…”
She shuddered as the familiar roiling returned to her stomach. In fact, despite the fact the danger—not that it was real danger, but she’d never seemed to be able to convince her body of that—was past, Fen snaked her arm around her middle once more. Her breathing was becoming uneven once again, and she hurried to gulp down the remainder of the water.