Page 5 of The Road to Cavan Town
Feminine instinct can be a wonderful thing. Useful, at the very least. The man, Alice realized on the instant, was a touch jealous. And if he could be jealous of her friendship with another man, he couldn’t be quite as determined to court Sophia Kilchrest as he professed to be. Part of him, at least, must have some feelings forher.
Alice clasped her hands behind her back and walked slowly down the road, not looking back, but certain he would follow. “Aye, my dear, dear friend. He welcomes me to Cavan Town each Saturday and sees me off every Sunday.”
Isaac caught up to her. “Why is it I’ve never seen him?” He looked back over his shoulder several times.
She shrugged. “Ye’ve been a bit distracted, ya must admit. Fighting off hordes of fellow knights in shining armor takes all the concentration a man can muster.”
“But ye’ve never even mentioned him.”
Aye, jealous he was and no doubting it. “I’m certain I have.”
She kept up her somewhat brisk pace, quickly leaving behind the outskirts of Cavan. That Isaac kept up with her without protest seemed a good sign.
Alice picked up a topic other than Billy. ’Twould do Isaac a world of good to let things spin about in his mind a while. “You were to have a monumental weekend if memory serves. How did things go with Miss Kilchrest?”
She’d dreaded the conversation for two days, but found herself equal to it. Perhaps she hadn’t lost her opportunity after all.
He buttoned his coat higher as they walked further from town, the chill of approaching winter stronger even than it had been the day before. “I had a chance to speak with her during that bit of rain we got yesterday.”
Alice’s heart stumbled a bit in her chest. She did her utmost to keep her expression and her tone light and unconcerned. “A proposal in the rain? Tis hard to set a more romantic scene than that. Perhaps if ye’d arranged for a dusting of snow.”
Isaac yet watched her with creased brow. “Yerdearfriend, he is?”
A smile tipped one side of her mouth. The situation wasn’t entirely hopeless. “Never ya mind about Billy. Tell me how Miss Kilchrest answered yer question. Has yer courtship become etched in stone?”
Please say no. Please say no.
“Well...” He didn’t seem to know just how to answer. “I asked if she’d consider me her one and only suitor and...” Again his face twisted in thought. “She didn’t say ‘no.’”
“Did she ‘yes,’ then?”
Isaac shook his head.
“Not yes, but not no.” Alice took some comfort in that. “And ya mean to ask again, do ya?” But how soon? How insistent did he mean to be?
“I mean to go back and try my hand again.” He gave her a quick but earnest look.
“Even if she makes that effort difficult?”
“The difficult things are often the most worthwhile.” He nodded just off the path in the direction of the lake. “Like this here.” He stepped off the path and bent over, plucking a bright yellow flower from the ground. “Blooming so late in the season is hardly an easy thing, and yet this daisy here has managed it.”
“Tis a sowthistle.” She smiled through the light correction.
The look he gave her was utterly amused. “Daisy. Sowthistle.Colaimbín. Ya can’t expect a man to know the difference.”
“Perhaps that is yer problem with Miss Kilchrest. Perhaps she’s a flower expert and is disheartened by yer ignorance.”
Isaac eyed her hair a moment. Her hair? What was the man about? He pulled a few low leaves off the stem of the sowthistle he’d picked and tucked the flower into her bun. Alice ordered her cheeks not to heat, but they only paid her the tiniest heed.
A tender gesture it was. A man couldn’t be entirely indifferent to a woman and have such a thought even cross his mind.
Isaac didn’t linger over the moment as Alice would have loved him to do. He simply nodded and continued on down the road.
“Ye’ll help me, won’t ya?” he asked.
Alice shook off her scrambled thoughts. “Help ya with what?” She lightly fingered the flower in her hair. She’d never look on a sowthistle the same way again.
“Help me work out just what will turn Miss Kilchrest’s head? I’m all at sea in this.”
