Page 13 of Claimed By the Heartless Highlander
“Aye.”
She blinked at the abrupt response. But then she recalled that her father never liked to admit it when he had a headache from too much mead or scotch, and even less if he’d had a poor night’s sleep.
“Did ye sleep poorly, bein’ away from home?”
Duncan hadn’t traveled away from his lands in a long time, according to Keith. She had always had difficulty sleeping during her first visits to Maisie.
“Slept well enough.”
The words were barely more than a grumble. She thought that his reticence might well be proof enough that she was right, so she tried for another topic.
“Is yer surname Muir?”
Her father was Laird Clyde, but his family name was Anderson.
“Wallace.”
That was interesting. “Are ye kin to The Wallace who fought for our freedom?”
There was no record of William Wallace, the legendary soldier, having children, but there was no whisper that he’d ever been clanless. For all she knew of the matter, there might have been cousins and cadet families who had never claimed the fame of their kinsman.
“Nay.”
She wondered if he truly was no kin to Warrior William Wallace, or if he simply didn’t know whether he was related to the famed Highlander. It had been centuries, and not all connections were well-documented.
If rumors and legends were correct, then Duncan Wallace certainly possessed rugged good looks on par with the legend that shared his surname. She blushed and chased away those thoughts as fast as she could.
“What sort of things do ye like to do in yer spare time?”
As a laird, he wouldn’t have much spare time, but every laird had to have some sort of hobby.
“Hunt. Ride.”
She waited, but he said nothing more, and she began to feel irritated.
She was trying to have a conversation. Couldn’t he at least make an effort to speak with her? Even if he was a man of few words, there was no need for him to be so rude.
A thought made her pause. If he was a man of few words and preferred silence to chatter, then perhaps she had another way to prove to him that they were poorly matched.
Keith had always said she was capable of talking a donkey into a stupor if she was of a mind. And it wasn’t as if she didn’t have plenty to talk about.
She smiled brightly at him, headache forgotten. “Well, ye ken, I have a number of hobbies. Some of them I’m sure I mentioned in me letters. Truth be told, what I love most is to read and write, and me friends and I have formed a book club of sorts—me friend Maisie’s husband calls us the Highland Hellions, mostly because of how he met his wife… But that’s their story to tell.”
A sip of water from the waterskin at her side, and she continued. “Now, ye might be surprised, but we all read very different things. Maisie and I both love our stories, and Leona will read anythin’, but Isobel is the type to like more practical tomes, like recipe books and herbals and…”
Duncan didn’t answer, but his silence no longer bothered her. After all, it meant she could say whatever came to mind, and talk about whatever caught her fancy.
She wondered how keen he’d be on marriage once he realized she could literally talk for hours on end about nothing of importance to anyone save herself.
* * *
Duncan wasn’t sure whether the chattering was a natural behavior of Ailis’s, or another ploy to irritate him into releasing her from their agreement. He also didn’t care enough to think about the matter too much.
The faint headache he’d woken up with was almost completely gone after an hour on the road. Such issues were usually banished by breathing in the fresh spring air. He wasn’t interested in talking, but he was quite content to listen to Ailis as she expounded on her hobbies, herbs, gardening, her visits with her friends, and the different books she’d read.
He wondered if she realized how much she was revealing about herself. And how much it contrasted with her previous attempts to coax information out of him.
She seemed to favor romance novels, in contrast to her friend’s more practical preferences. He had to admit, it explained many things about the letters she’d written to him and her addressing him by “Laird Imaginary.”
