“Well then, ye can all stop scheming. It will please ye to learn that I have found a wife.”
6
“Ye didnae meet a single man of interest the other night at the cèilidh?”
Emily knew that her mother was only attempting to be helpful, just wanted to gossip with her eldest daughter and keep their minds on lighter topics, but she was far too close to learning that therehadbeen one man who wouldn’t leave Emily’s thoughts, no matter how hard she tried to make him.
“Does it even truly matter anymore, Maither?”
Iona sat back on her heels, pulling her gardening gloves from her fingers slowly as she looked over at her daughter. “Of course, it does.”
Emily chose to focus more on the weeds in the garden bed in front of her, on yanking the things from the roots and tossing them into the basket that was already half full.
A part of her knew that it would benefit her to start thinking of what she was going to say before she spoke. But there was only so much self-restraint that she possessed.
“Faither is going to find me someone to marry yet again, so it hardly matters what I choose. Us women daenae get to choose our own lives.”
Iona’s face creased with hurt. “It isnae always such a bad thing to have yer husband chosen for ye.”
Emily sighed. “I daenae mean that it doesnae work forsomepeople. I ken that ye came to ken and love Faither. I ken that he means well. But this marriage business is turning him into a beast, and ye cannae deny that!”
“And who is to say that the man yer faither chooses willnae be a good man that ye can come to love in time as well?” Iona asked with an arched eyebrow.
Emily wasn’t going to answer that question. There were things about the first man that she had been engaged to that she wasn’t going to tell anyone. It would only hurt her mother, and she had no desire to be the reason that her mother ached. It would kill her father, and she could not allow herself to be the cause of that either.
She sat back on her heels, wiping her brow with the back of her gloved hand, no doubt getting soil on her forehead, but she didn’t much mind. It wasn’t as if she didn’t already have dirt all over the dress that she had chosen this morning anyway.
Iona squinted at something behind her, and curiosity made her turn around to see two men, one much taller than the other, walking up to the castle doors. “Who is that?”
Emily pushed herself to her feet, knocking some of the loose soil from her skirts and then clapping her hands together in an attempt to clean part of her gloves. “I daenae ken. Were we expecting company?”
“If we were, I wasnae privy to it,” Iona answered.
It wasn’t until the two men drew closer to the doors that Emily recognized the colors of the kilt and tartan wrapped around the taller man. The man beside him was wearing very similar colors.
“Laird Muir…” she trailed off, her feet carrying her to the door.
She didn’t much care if he saw her, but it seemed that both he and his companion were set on whatever task that they were here for and did not wish to be swayed from it.
What was he doing here? He had certainly never come here before, and it wasn’t as if they were close to one another. His lands didn’t border her father’s on any side. Yet here he was.
Something strange was swirling inside her. Some emotion that she was too unfamiliar with to name.
Unconsciously, she pulled her gloves off as she went. She was so flustered that she didn’t even realize when she attempted to tuck them into her pockets, one dropped entirely and was left behind.
“Ka—” She caught herself, remembering that it would be better to be formal until she learned the reason behind the visit.
“Laird Muir?” she called out, stepping into the cool, shadowed entryway of the keep.
Kaden slowly turned around to face her, then took three steps toward her, closing the distance between them.
“Lady Emily,” he greeted with an incline of his head.
“What brings ye all the way here?” Emily asked rudely, knowing that it wasn’t polite to speak so bluntly to a man she hardly knew.
But at least he didn’t seem to mind.
The corner of his lip twitched upward slightly. “I have unfinished business with Laird Reid after the festivities the other night.”