Page 103 of Laird of Flint
Her heart melted.
“And I’ve ne’er loved amanmore.” Even as the words left her lips, it seemed a silly thing to say. “Actually,” she admitted, “I’ve ne’er loved a man at all.”
He smiled. “Not even one of the Boyle brothers?”
She shuddered.
He hugged her then. A sweet, chaste, fond hug. A hug that may not have ignited her like the flint of his kiss. But a reassuring, protective, and loving embrace that she could definitely get used to.
“Will we marry, do ye think?” she murmured against his chest.
“Are you proposing?”
She wished it were so simple. It seemed to be so with most clanfolk. They were free to court and kiss and wed who they wished. They were even allowed to have a trial marriage for a year and a day. But she was the only daughter of a laird. And Hew was a border warrior from an illustrious clan. Their destinies would be determined by the king.
“I wish we could run away and be handfasted like the clanfolk,” she said.
“I don’t think the king would approve, ne’er mind your father.”
“My father likes ye. He wants ye for a son.”
“He won’t like me if I run off with his daughter.”
She shrugged. That was probably true.
She sighed against him. “What are we to do?”
“Bide our time,” he said, lifting his hand to caress her hair. “First I have to complete my duty to the monastery and uncover the outlaw. Then we can ask my laird and yours to petition the king for permission to wed.”
Her heart fluttered at the certainty in his voice. If all went to plan, thiswasgoing to happen. She and Hew would be married.
Still, it seemed somehow far-off and unattainable, like a rainbow glimpsed and never found.
An iron-gray cloud passed just then between the sun and the window, darkening the solar, and casting a pall over Carenza’s good mood. She bit her lip. It felt like an omen. A warning that not everything was going to fall into place so easily. That what she’d found with Hew might slip through her grasp like sand through her fingers.
If that was so, then time was of the essence.
She pushed back from Hew’s embrace and straightened with purpose.
“I have to go.”
He looked disappointed. “Where are you going?”
“To the monastery.”
His brows lowered in disapproval.
But before he could protest, she reminded him, “I told ye I was goin’.”
“Alone?”
“I’ll take Symon with me.”
He let out a weighted sigh.
She soothed his discontent with a coaxing smile. “The sooner we solve this crime, the sooner we can be married.”
He grumbled something that sounded like “There can’t be a marriage without a bride.”
