Page 38 of Laird of Smoke
Their home?For a moment, she was still thinking about what he wanted in a wife.Had he already wedded her in his mind?
Then she realized he was speaking of their family home, as her brother Ronan.
“Have ye ne’er been to Ireland?”she asked.
“Nay.”
She hadn’t either.But never having seen a place didn’t stop her from pretending she’d grown up there.
“Though I’ve heard ’tis like Scotland,” he said.“Just greener, with rollin’ hills.”
“That’s right.”She’d heard the same.
“Do ye get along with our sisters?”he asked.
She’d never considered that.The Bhallachs were fictional sisters, after all.“I suppose I do.”
“Tell me a story about them.”
Her mind went blank.Then she remembered an incident from her own real childhood and her four older sisters.
“When I was a lass,” she recounted, “my sisters were playin’ with an orphaned lamb on the Sabbath.They accidentally chased the wee beast into a bog.It was bleatin’ for dear life.But my sisters were afraid to go after it, for they were wearin’ their fine Sabbath clothes.Well, I couldn’t stand by and let the poor thing drown.So I lumbered into the bog and pried the beast out o’ the mud.It thrashed and spattered me with muck, but I managed to save it.When my da saw me, he said I wasn’t fit to go to church.He shut me in the sheep pen with the rest o’ the beasts until they returned from Mass.”
To Eve, it was a funny story.
Adam, however, didn’t see the humor at all.
“Did your sisters not defend ye?”
“For what?’Twas my own unwise choice.”
“’Twasn’t unwise.’Twas merciful.The lamb might have died otherwise.”
He was right.She’d never thought of it like that before.And a small part of her heart warmed at the idea that he was defending her.
But he wasn’t done.He stared at the path, shaking his head and muttering.“What kind o’ father shuts his daughter in a filthy sheep pen?”
It hadn’t been so bad.Not really.She loved the sheep.And her da’s impatience was partly due to raising a family on his own after her ma died.As far as missing church, she knew God didn’t care if a person prayed in a chapel or a sheep pen.Still, for the first time in her life, Adam was forcing her to question her father’s rigid sense of discipline.
“If I’d been there, as your brother Ronan,” he said, “I would have stayed behind and helped ye clean up.”
Her heart melted at his earnest declaration.His words made her wish shehadhad a brother around to protect her.Then she began to imagine Adam helping her clean up.Stripping off her muddy clothes.Easing her into the warm bathwater.Running a wet linen cloth gently over every filthy inch of her.
Her face grew hot.She had to change the subject before he noticed.
“What about ye?”she choked out.“Do ye have any tales o’ childhood misdeeds?”
“Misdeeds?”he scoffed.“Nay, Ronan was an angel.”
“Ronan was hardly an angel,” she decided.“As I recall, he tied the steward’s boot laces together while he was sleepin’.Put frogs in our sisters’ beds.And regularly fed the hounds under the table.”
“All that?”
“Aye, and more.”
“I fear the truth o’ my childhood is far less interestin’.”
“What is the truth then?”
