Heart of Ashes by Paula Quinn

Author:Paula Quinn
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Highland
Published: 2019-01-13T18:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

ALEYSIA DIDN’T SPEAK to him again for the next four days. In fact, she did everything in her power to avoid him. Which was what he wanted. She spent most of her time with Matilda, and more time than he would have expected with Father Timothy and William.

Cain didn’t mind being alone. The first day. The trouble wasn’t loneliness. He’d been alone his whole life. He liked eating alone on the battlements with just his thoughts. But his familiar, comforting reasonings had turned traitor on him, and filled his head with images of her, angry and rebellious, like a wild mare never to be tamed. What fool would ever want to tame her?

Her smile invaded the darkest recesses of his being, shaking him from the foundation. The more he forbade himself to think about her, the more things about her he remembered, like the stubborn tilt of her jaw, the way she looked with her long, black locks flowing freely. Hell, even her damned scent haunted him.

He’d looked death straight in the face from an early age. He didn’t fear it. It was nothing compared to what he saw in her eyes when he told her about Robert.

But it was better if she never forgave him—better if she hated him. Let Father Timothy convince her how to keep her holdings. It was best that Cain had no more contact with her.

He’d put away his emotions as a boy. The loss of his family had been too great. He’d wanted to die more days than he wanted to live. It was Father Timothy who had kept his will to survive alive. He’d never let himself care for anyone since then. Emotions were a soldier’s weakness, and love, the most dangerous.

But he found himself seeking her out, watching her from across the hall while she and Matilda rehung the tapestries. She and her handmaiden had also retrieved Aleysia’s clothes from wherever she had hidden them, providing the lady of the castle with more breeches and léines to wear while she flitted around, seeing to the daily needs of her home.

In the early morning of the fifth day, someone knocked at the door to the small room he’d chosen for himself while he readied for a day of hunting and staying away from the keep.

When he saw Father Timothy, he waved him inside and finished securing his plaid. “All is well, Father?”

The priest nodded and tucked his hands into the wide sleeves of his robes. “Aye, all is well, Cainnech. As well as can be expected.”

Cain gritted his teeth and pulled on his boots. He knew the priest well enough to know something was vexing him. “What is it?” If it had anything to do with Miss d’Argentan, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“Ye have not been practicin’,” his friend began.

“I have been practicin’ alone while the rest of ye are asleep. Ye know I like the quiet.”

The priest waved his words away and gave him a frank look. “I mean with the men.

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