Page 50 of Blood of the Thistle

Anna said nothing, but quietly digested this, somehow not surprised by anything she had learned from him.

They rode on in companionable silence before Bram said, “If ye date a man to decide whether he’d make a suitable husband, what is it ye judge him by? Beyond honesty, I expect.”

Anna wrinkled her nose, surprised by how difficult the question proved to answer.

“Hm. When I was younger, I probably would’ve said I wanted to marry someone funny. Or handsome. Someone who wanted ten kids or something benign like that.” She watched a pair of robins dart through the underbrush while she considered her answer more thoughtfully. “Now...” She shrugged. “I think I just want someone whose actions match his words. Someone dependable. Someone kind.” She fell quiet, the unspoken truth aching in her chest: what she really wanted was someone who chose her every day, without question.

“And at eight and twenty,” he said, “ye’ve yet to find such a man?”

Before she could stop herself, Anna burst out laughing.

Whether he realized how his question might be interpreted or didn’t fully grasp the reason behind her laughter, he said, “Surely ye were courted often.”

Anna glanced back at him and saw only his shoulder and a bit of his beard, yet the certainty in his voice caught her off guard. “Yeah, I’ve dated a bit.”

“And none became yer husband?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Why nae?”

“Different reasons, I suppose.” She shifted in the saddle. “One wanted to move across the country for graduate school and decided a relationship didn’t fit into his plans. One wasn’t ready to settle down after all.” She sank a bit, imagining she sounded fairly pathetic. “To my knowledge, Aaron was the only one who chose another woman.”

“And ye? Ye chose them? Or ye would have?”

“I guess,” she admitted, feeling suddenly even worse. “Or, at the time I did.”

Well, this conversation had certainly taken a turn. They’d gone from discussing general modern dating versus fourteenth century courting to having her own spectacular lack of success laid out like evidence at an inquest.

Great.

Heat crept into her cheeks. She suddenly felt absurdly self-conscious, as though she’d just confessed to some embarrassing personal failing instead of simply having lived her life with hope.

She managed a weak smile and forced her voice to sound bright. “Anyway, it’s probably not the greatest endorsement of my instincts. I guess I’m just not very good at judging people.”

Bram offered no response, and she was grateful for it.

She’d wondered about this before, usually late at night after a breakup. She thought she was sensible, and none of the men she’d dated had seemed like terrible choices at the beginning. Yet her heart had gone to men who, in the end, always chose something else. Had she simply seen what she wanted to see? Found the qualities she admired and filled in the rest with whatever she hoped might be there?

The thought was uncomfortable enough on its own. It became considerably more so when she realized she had spent much of the last three days doing something very similar with Bram.

Not imagining qualities he didn’t possess, exactly. If anything, Bram MacCailin had given her more evidence of his character in three days than some men managed in three months. He’d escaped captivity, endured torture without betraying his country, and had spoken of both with the same matter-of-fact composure one might use to discuss the weather. He could break a man’s neck without hesitation if circumstances demanded it, yet he’d spent ten patient minutes removing a thorn from her foot earlier. She admired his courage, his competence, even the gruff kindness he seemed determined not to acknowledge as kindness at all.

And she was attracted to him—or, at the very least, ridiculously intrigued by him. There was little point pretending otherwise.

But that was precisely why the reminder of her questionable judgment had come at such an inconvenient time.

She had spent three days in Bram’s company and still could not predict him, could not place him beside any other man she’d known and say, there, that is what he is. More importantly, she knew almost nothing of who he was when he wasn’t fleeing English soldiers, trying to keep them alive, or finding his way home. She knew what he had done under extraordinary circumstances. That was not necessarily the same thing as knowing the man.

It was one thing to be fascinated by someone who seemed to have stepped straight out of a history book. That much was probably inevitable. It was another thing entirely to mistake fascination and attraction for something more—or, worse, to let them become something more simply because she wanted them to. If her instincts where men were concerned were as questionable as this conversation had just reminded her, perhaps Bram MacCailin was best admired as one might admire a thunderstorm or a tidal wave: from a respectful distance.

***

They rode for quite a while without speaking again. While the silence between them wasn’t exactly companionable, it no longer felt as strained as it had previously.

Bram found his thoughts returning to the curious little square tucked securely into the waistband of his breeches. He had noticed it lying forgotten on the floor of the collier’s hut that morning, just before discovering the axe hidden beneath a pile of debris, the perfectly captured image of Anastasia and him.

He still could not fathom how such a thing had come into being. He had spent time in noble halls and royal keeps, had seen portraits commissioned from accomplished artists, yet even the finest among them required weeks, often months, to complete, and commanded coin beyond the reach of most men. What Anastasia’s curious contraption produced in minutes possessed a realism that defied all explanation, a sorcery he could not dismiss or comprehend.