They started walking together toward the others.
“Why were ye weepin’? Are ye afraid or sad aboot leavin’?”
“Aye,” she told him. “I’m both afraid and sad but my tears were not caused by sorrow.” She smiled slightly as if she had a secret—something he couldn’t understand.
They met up with the others and she sat to eat some fruit before they left.
Twice, Galeren had to admonish Morgann and Mac for gaping at her while she ate—after another quick prayer. She didn’t appear to mind their attention too much. In fact, he caught her a few times watching them, too. He saw the spark of amusement in her eyes when Padrig nearly fell off the tree trunk he was sitting on when Will politely asked her if she minded having all her hair cut off.
“Hair is an adornment.”
And hers was like a summer sunset.
“Does God want plain wives?”
This earned Will a punch from Mac on the other side of him.
Galeren neither pushed nor punched him. He glared at him and ordered him to ready the horses. Will did not refuse.
“A person can be beautiful,” she said after Will left, “the most beautiful in all the world, but if they are unjust or show no mercy, there is no beauty in them and one day what is on the inside will come creeping out.”
Galeren wondered if she was talking about someone like him. He was called Galeren the Bonny back home. Did she consider his heart ugly because he was a Scottish soldier?
“We need to get movin’,” he said. “We have already lost time.”
He met her at the horses and lifted her to the saddle.
Two days. It was nothing. He’d traveled seven days one way to get to Invergarry last summer, and longer than that to France and England. He could do this. She was forbidden. Nothing else mattered but that and the reasons why. So, what was he doing? He wanted to laugh. He’d suffered a lapse in good sense for a few hours. It was nothing more serious than that.
“Forgive me for being such trouble, Captain.”
He let out a great breath, expelling his thoughts. “Ye are no trouble at all.”
“I must ask you to stop again for prayers.”
His heart sank. “Now?”
She giggled and the tinkle of a hundred bells rose up to his ears. He wanted to hear the sound of it again.
“In one hour.”
“Verra well.” What else could he say?
“Thank you for being so kind to me, Captain.”
He closed his eyes behind her, feeling a little guilty for thinking about being more aloof with her. “Ye dinna have to thank me fer that,” he told her quietly.
“You are not at all what I imagined,” she confessed.
“What did ye imagine?” He didn’t know why he was asking.
She turned a little in his lap and blushed looking up at him. “I imagined someone who only cared for war. Someone more savage and mean.”
“Ye thought the captain was Mac?” Will asked, hearing as he passed them and answering before Galeren did.
He moved on and Mac rode up in his place. “What did that bastard say aboot me?”
“He said you were savage and mean and only cared for war,” she told Mac, surprising Galeren that she possessed a bold bone in her body. “A compliment of the highest form,” she continued. “For a warrior, aye?”