Page 25 of The Dragon Laird’s Obsession

She held her hands out before her, fingers spread, while half the clan’s children circled her in breathless mischief. Her hair had come partly loose, light-brown strands curling at her temples and nape. Her gown was simple, a soft yellow that made her look like a candle flame set among the gray stone. She laughed as one small boy darted close enough to tug her sleeve then leaped away before she could catch him.

“Coward!” Ailis cried, turning blindly.

The children dissolved into giggles. Marion stood nearby with Beth and Jane, all three women smiling as if the morning had been made for no purpose but this.

Gordon should have looked away, but he did not. Watching Ailis was becoming a weakness, and he liked that no more than a soldier liked a crack in his shield. Still, he remained at the window, looking down upon the garden while the letters cooled behind him.

She moved with careless grace, not polished like court ladies trained to be admired but alive. All quick turns, bright laughter, and skirts brushing the wet grass. She stumbled once, caught herself, and laughed harder than any of the children.

Something eased inside him against his will. Not desire alone, though desire never strayed far from her. It stirred whenever the wind pressed her gown against her form, whenever her mouth parted in laughter, whenever she lifted her chin as though daring the world to disappoint her and promising to make poetry of it if it did.

But this is worse. I enjoy watchin’ her.

There was no honorable way to dress that truth.

He liked the sound of her laughter in his garden. He liked the way children ran toward her without fear. He liked how Marion’s sternness softened around her, how Beth spoke more freely, and how Jane seemed to forget her shyness. In only a few days, Ailis had gone about his keep like spring after a long winter.

She does nay belong here.

The thought struck hard, reminding him that a woman like Ailis could not benefit anything from being with him. All his life, he had only ever known violence, blood and duty. He could not make her happy, and she deserved better than the life he could offer.

All he could ever offer her was protection. He could stake his life on that. But anything else?

A bairn? A life with him?

Gordon did not think he was capable of it.

He turned away from the window, returned to the table, sat, took up his quill, and stared at Rowan’s letter as though the page had wronged him.

A few moments later, more laughter rose, and he looked toward the window again. Now the children had abandoned the game and gathered near the herb beds. Ailis sat in the grass beside Marion, listening with solemn attention as his aunt held up sprigs of thyme, rosemary, and tansy.

One child sniffed lavender and sneezed. Another tried to eat mint straight from the stem until Beth caught his wrist. Then Gordon saw Lileas, an orphaned bairn from the village who lost her parents to a drought fire the previous year. He had brought her to the keep because she had no other family in the village to care for her.

The wee lass stood a little apart from the others, her dark curls tangled about her face, her hands knotted in her skirt. She was a quiet child, thin as a reed and watchful as a forest thing. Ailis rose from the herb bed, picked up a small rose sapling wrapped in damp cloth, and crossed the grass to Lileas.

Whatever she said made the child glance down then nod. Ailis knelt beside her without care for the wet earth staining her gown and guided Lileas’s small hands around the sapling.

Gordon moved back to the window before he knew he had stood.

Ailis helped the child press soil around the roots, her hands gentle over Lileas’s. The other children fell quiet, watching as if a sacred rite were being performed. He longed to hear what they were saying, and he moved before thinking too much about it, heading out of the drawing room and toward the garden.

“It will grow with ye,” Ailis said softly as he approached, her voice carrying faintly through the air. “And if ye care for it, it will remember.”

Lileas nodded solemnly.

Gordon’s throat tightened at the sight. He did not know why such a simple thing should strike him so fiercely. Mayhap because Ailis spoke as if the little orphan mattered, as if something she had planted deserved to take root and live.

Ailis glanced up and their gazes met.

Gordon did not look away fast enough. For once, she did not say a thing. She only looked at him, steady and quiet, as if she had caught him doing wrong.

“Come help,” she said, motioning to him in the next moment with a hand gesture.

The words were simple, but Gordon hesitated because he didn’t know what she had in mind. Every instinct in him warned against it. He did not belong in soft garden scenes with bairns and roses. He belonged on training grounds, in council chambers, in fields where men feared giving bad news.

But Lileas looked up at him too, dirt on her fingers and hope held so carefully in her face that it nearly undid him.

He took the first step toward Ailis and the child, aware of his aunt and the other children watching him. The children quieted when he approached. Some stepped back. Ailis noticed, and her eyes softened in a way that made him wish she had not.