The Hiring Fair by Laura Strickland

Author:Laura Strickland [Strickland, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Historical, Scottish
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Published: 2016-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

Tam glanced for the third or fourth time down the lane that led away from Annie’s gate—as if he thought he would see her returning so soon. She had left just yesterday morning, traveling with Rory MacBain, who seemed a sturdy sort and had a cart with a good team. The journey would take many days. Unless something happened to make them turn back, he would not see her yet.

That did not keep him from longing.

Their parting yesterday had gone hard with him. After the intensity of their joining the night before—the sheer blistering intimacy of it—he felt seared and full of chagrin, despising himself for failing to tell her what he truly felt. But in the light of morning, the flurry of leaving, with Sonsie and MacBain present, he had no second chance.

Even though she’d looked so beautiful it made his heart hurt, clad all in her green gown and cloak as he’d first seen her, with Sol’s feather bobbing in her hat and her black eyes snapping.

Wee Crow, her uncle had called her, and it fit. Watching her so, all decked out and spurred by intent, made him love her all the more, even as he experienced his unworthiness. Who was he to deserve such a woman?

But when the furor died down, once they’d parted with just a lingering touch of hands, he discovered she’d taken all the joy with her, the life—the magic from this place. He’d not realized till then how he’d been living on the strength of that magic, but he had.

Now he felt like a petulant child, thoughts he neither wanted nor needed running through his mind. To be sure, Annie lived to serve others: Sonsie and Jockie, all her beloved creatures, her neighbors, and those who came to her for help. But what of him? Did she not consider him at all in her reckoning, how it would feel for him living without her, even if only for the span of a few days, how he needed her?

Nay, fool, for you ha’ no’ told her. You ha’ failed to dredge up the words from your heart and present them to her ears.

He should have done just that, should have told her last night after he’d tasted her so deeply it felt as if part of her spirit had mingled with his, when she lay shedding tears over the task ahead of her. Yet she’d wed him only to keep the wolf at bay—one particularly vicious wolf. Tam was in fact naught but the lesser of two evils. Och, she might feel some affection toward him, having healed his hand, having taken him to her bed. Annie felt affection for most everyone in her world.

That was not love, the kind of love Tam now knew he felt for her—wide as a sea, strong as a storm wind, consuming as fire and unchanging as the rock beneath his feet.

Aye, he should have told her. Instead he stood here whinging while he might be finishing his chores.

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