Page 23 of Sighs of the Highland Wind
However, he needed to find a way out, and consequently, he crept along the wall again as far as the kitchens and looked inside. Kenna and her mother were conversing in low tones, but it was so quiet that he could hear every word they were saying.
“How many o’ these dreams have ye been havin’ lately?” Flora was asking Kenna. Her voice sounded anxious.
“Not many,” Kenna answered. “That was the first one for ages, Mammy.”
“I am worried about ye, hen,” her mother said softly. “Ye should be courtin’ by now. Many lassies yer age are already married. I dinnae want ye tae end up an auld maid. Havin’ a nice, big, warm man in yer bed will help wi’ yer bad dreams.”
Maxwell heard Kenna’s tinkling laughter as he sat motionless in the cramped space, and it made him smile.
“Mammy, if that happens, then it happens. I will still have the fun of being with the children in the castle, and there are many good men in the castle who are my friends.”
Flora frowned. “That is no’ what I meant, hen, an’ ye know it. Do ye no’ feel the need o’ a man’s arms around ye sometimes?”
Kenna sighed. “Mammy, what are you trying to say?”
Flora turned Kenna toward herself.
“One o’ the stable lads has been askin’ me if he can court ye. I said I was yer mother, no’ yer keeper, an’ he must ask ye.”
Kenna was used to being flirted with in a lighthearted way by many of the men on the staff, but it never came to anything.
“Who is it?” she asked.
She could not remember anyone making his presence especially noticeable to her.
“Roy Nicholson,” Flora replied. “Good-lookin’ lad, an’ a good heart an’ a’.”
Kenna thought for a moment. She knew the man in question, but only slightly, and while she might have considered him before,now that she had met Ewan, no one else compared. But even as she pondered over it, she dismissed the thought. Ewan was leaving. He had been a diverting interlude in her mundane life, but that was all.
Roy Nicholson was blond, blue-eyed, and tall, with an impressive physique. He worked with the men in the stables, although he had other duties too, and Kenna had always found him pleasant enough to talk to. She would never in a thousand years have thought he would be interested in her, though, since he had so many other admirers.
“I don’t think much of a man who is too cowardly to ask me himself.” Kenna’s voice was scathing. “Let him come and speak to me himself if he can pluck up the courage!”
“I knew ye would say that,” Flora replied, chuckling. “Has there never been a boy that caught yer eye, hen? I have never seen ye look at any o’ them.”
“Not really, Mammy.”
Kenna smiled at Flora as she told her the biggest lie of her life. There had been no one at all until two days ago when Ewan Montgomery had come to her and brought life into her otherwise tedious existence.
He was everything she could ever want in a man, but he could never be hers, and not only because he was obviously several steps above her on the social ladder. He had never told her so, granted, but everything about him pointed to it. No, it was because he had erected a wall between them that she could not breach. It was an invisible wall, but it was there nonetheless.
“If any young lad wants to come and talk to me, I am happy to listen, but nobody has.” She sighed, then chuckled. “Maybe they are afraid of me.”
Flora leaned over and kissed her daughter.
“No’ in the way ye mean, hen,” she said fondly. “They are afraid ye will push them away because ye are sae lovely. They dinnae feel worthy.”
Kenna shook her head, laughing.
“That is the silliest thing I ever heard, Mammy.”
She wiped her hands on her apron, then excused herself and made her way out into the corridor again.
From his hideaway, Maxwell watched Kenna as she walked gracefully down the corridor carrying a large basket on her arm. There were no flowers left in the garden, but a fire was kept going in a glasshouse near the kitchen where some exotic flowers could grow late into the year. Kenna was going to pick some, a job she enjoyed because the scent of the roses always clung to her skin for a long time afterward.
As Kenna walked out of the kitchen, she felt a blast of cold wind take her breath away, and she hurried into the glasshouse, her feet already soaked from the carpet of snow on the ground. The warmth and the overwhelming scent of roses wrapped around her like a warm blanket at once, and she stood for a moment, eyes closed, breathing in the luscious scent.
There was a scent she would rather be inhaling, but by now, it would be gone because Ewan was gone.
