by Cara Colter
Sophie’s hand was in his again, Lancaster thought, bemused. After the other night, when he had felt the astonishing comfort and strength when her hand had found his in front of that terrible place where the cottage had burned, he had made a vow.
No more.
It was a weakness to accept what she offered. It was a weakness because it opened a door that was better left shut.
When she had called him, the next day, it had seemed as if that vow would be easy to keep, indeed. How could she even ask him to come to something like this? How could she have missed the point of the depth and breadth of his sorrow so completely? How could she have missed the point that it had altered him? He had fallen off the wall, and there was no putting him back together again.
And yet now his hand closed around hers, again. And by his own invitation!
He needed to remember this about Sophie: a vow could fall around her as easily as a tree before a logger’s ax.
But perhaps even more astonishing than the fact her hand was in his again, was the fact that he had hated the thought of coming here tonight.
And yet now that he was here, the music and the songs and the sense of joyous community called to some part of him that he had left sleeping for a long, long time. He felt something in him, long held tense, relax, as the music swirled and he lined up next to Sophie, instead of across from her, on the dance floor.
It was too loud to really instruct her, and the dances were fast moving, familiar to every person here, except her.
She was hesitant, uncharacteristically self-conscious.
He dropped his lips close to her ears so that she could hear him above the racket. “Just relax. Try not to think about it too much.”
“Everyone’s watching me. They think I’ll make a fool of myself, and I will.”
This seemed to be something new about her, Lancaster thought. In all the years he’d known her, there had never been any shortage of confidence. Now, even though she had that new layer of sophistication, something had knocked her down a peg or two.
The lost fiancé and job, no doubt.
“They’re watching you because you’re bloody gorgeous,” he said, firmly, “and I don’t think anyone on Havenhurst, including me, has ever seen a dress like that before. At least not with Western boots.”
She laughed and tossed that shining black wave of hair over her shoulder. He thought, That’s more like it, as he felt, in that simple gesture, how effortlessly she drew all the male attention in the room to herself.
Still, her effort to replicate the steps he showed her was hesitant at best.
“I should have encouraged you to drink more,” he said, with a sigh. “Now, don’t pay any attention to them. Just me.”
He quickly regretted that when her eyes locked on his, and he could feel himself pulled toward her as if she was a lifeboat and he was a man drowning. Just a second! He was saving her at the moment.
From what? a voice deep inside him whispered.
“My feet?” he suggested.
“Oh!” she said, and blushed before she looked down.
Ignoring the tempo of the music and the swirl of motion around him, he took her through a very basic step sequence, again, thanking his gods that the beginning sequences did not involve any kind of contact between them, because his awareness of her made him feel raw and open.
“That’s good,” he said.
She beamed at him—a look a man could live for and want to spend the rest of his life coming home to—and some hiss of pure chemistry leaped in the air between them. It mixed him up about the next sequence, and Ricky’s lass came over, and watched critically.
“Ach. You big oaf,” she said. “Get out of the way.”
He stared at her in stunned silence for a moment, and then stepped back with a slight bow and great relief.
Where had that thought come from? That Sophie was a girl a man could want to spend the rest of his life coming home to?
It turned out Becky was the natural-born dance teacher who Lancaster was not. Under her tutelage, Sophie caught on extremely quickly. No doubt that lack of that sizzling hiss of chemistry helped in the instruction process!
“That’s it,” Becky called, as she faced her, dancing, and got Sophie to mirror her moves. “Toe, heel, toe, heel, right kick, left kick, turn. I meant turn the other way.”
Both women howled with laughter at Sophie’s missteps, and then a circle of women formed around them, clapping and encouraging them. And then the whole circle was dancing, fanning out into a line that snaked through the tables and benches, and Sophie and Becky were absorbed in all that feminine color and motion as the watching men roared their approval.
After that, it felt to Lancaster as if it was just a full-time job trying to figure out where she was. Every man in the place wanted to meet her, face off with her, loop arms with her. Many of the dances involved switching off partners multiple times, and he would catch sight of that yellow dress, with its crazy parrot pattern, through walls of people, see that fabric swirling around slender legs. He could hear her shout of laughter, catch glimpses of her face, flushed with excitement, her hair flying, no longer the least embarrassed by how she was messing up the dances.
No one else cared either. She was gorgeous and her confidence had been restored. She was in her element. As Lancaster watched, she took off her coat, tossing it carelessly into the crowd. She was in her element. Sophie was the life of the party. And as far as he could tell, except for that first sip, her drink was untouched at their table.
He saw a man holding her a little too long when he should have let go, and he saw something flash in her face. More than discomfort. Fear? He quickly stepped in, sending the man on his way, and when he looked to Sophie he felt he might have misread the situation. She was as effervescent as champagne bubbles. And yet, after that he watched even more closely, and performed several more interventions.
As the evening went on, as Sophie relaxed more and more, he felt himself becoming more and more alert as more alcohol was consumed and inhibitions were careening out the door. The night was becoming more wild and raucous with each passing minute. Men who had had too much to drink and were flushed with the excitement in the room were hovering around Sophie.
Well, this was Lancaster’s job. It was what he had come to do. Protect her. She had been right. It wasn’t the kind of job he would have wanted to leave to Ricky.
Yet another man dropped his head to her, saying something in her ear. Lancaster felt a furious need to know what had been said, especially when Sophie beamed at the man as if he had put the bloody sun in the sky this morning.
Havenhurst boys loved to ask a pretty girl to step out. Of course, Sophie would have no idea what that meant. She might think it was just an invitation for a breath of fresh air. Or worse, she might like the idea of... Lancaster shoved bodies out of the way to intercede, but just as he arrived, the man turned toward him.
It was Brody. Who was here with his wife of over twenty years. He would no more be inviting Sophie to step out than he would be inviting her on a trip to the moon.
Why had Lancaster arrived at that erroneous conclusion so swiftly? Brody gave Lancaster a nod of acknowledgment, then left Sophie.
Lancaster felt frozen in his tracks as a realization hit him. He hadn’t moved toward Sophie with such swiftness because he was protecting her.
Or at least not entirely.
He considered a horrible—and foreign—possibility.
Was he jealous?
“Have you come to dance with me?” she asked. Her very eagerness made his heart leap in a way it had no right to.
“No, I was going to suggest we leave. Are you ready to go?” he asked her, his tone clipped.
She obviously was not. “Will it go on much longer?”
“They could go all night. I have to work tomorrow.”
&nbs
p; “Oh. I guess I do, too. One wouldn’t want to be tired around Ryan. Who knows what could get flushed! I have to find my jacket.”
It spoke to the growing drunkenness in the hall that they found her jacket being worn like a babushka by a reveler. He surrendered his newfound headgear reluctantly, but without a fight after a single look from Lancaster.
On their way out they passed a table full of men, not members of the guard and so not under his control. They were absolutely besotted with her, and inebriated enough to not be intimidated by Lancaster. They begged her to stay.
“Lass, I haven’t danced with you yet.”
“I’ll die if I go home before claiming a dance.”
“Have you ever kissed a Havenhurst lad? I could be your first.”
She thought it was funny, until one of them grabbed her, and then he saw a look of panic on her face. This time he knew he was not mistaken, even though she covered it quickly.
Lancaster took a firm grip on Sophie’s elbow and got her by that table. He was aware he felt as though he wanted to smash something. Preferably heads together!
CHAPTER SEVEN
FINALLY, LANCASTER GOT Sophie safely outside, past the obstacle of her many new admirers. He felt as if he had run a gauntlet, with the twist of having a prize to guard, which everyone wanted. He herded her toward the vehicle.
“I know everyone is speaking English,” Sophie said, “but I can only understand about every second word. No, make that every tenth word.”
Kiss, Lancaster thought darkly. Did you understand kiss?
Not that he could go there, right now. Or ever.
Despite that vow, his eyes drifted to her lips, which looked full and plump, the color of pomegranate juice. They could appear under the heading Temptation in an illustrated dictionary.
“That was so much fun,” she said breathlessly, seemingly determined to hide the fact something had truly frightened her. She appeared to be oblivious to his darkening mood. “My feet hurt. I think I have blisters. Can you look?”
“I cannot,” he said grimly. He realized his hand was still on her elbow, and he let it go as if the touch of her skin had burned him.
Jealous? Him? That was ridiculous. More than ridiculous.
But he thought of that brief moment of chemistry that had sizzled between them at the beginning of the dance, that renegade thought he’d had about her look, that a man could live for a look like that and want to spend the rest of his life coming home to it, and he felt a moment of appalling self-realization.
He deliberately did not look at her again as she walked—limped—beside him. She probably really did have blisters. Should he look? When they got back to the palace? As a soldier, he knew a blister, a small thing, had to be looked after immediately, before it became a large thing.
But then he could imagine kneeling before her, sliding that boot off, the tininess of her foot in his hand...
Terrible thoughts. Completely inappropriate. Talk about small things becoming large things! If he was not very, very careful, this thing was going to go seriously off the rails.
“Connal!”
At first he didn’t even react. It was a common enough name, after all. But then Sophie startled beside him, and he felt a hand on his shoulder. He was instantly alert. His hand went to the hilt that wasn’t there—his first thought of protecting Sophie. And then it fell away as he spun and recognized his cousin.
Calum clapped him on the shoulder. “I thought I saw you in there. I should know better than to come up behind you, man. How are you?”
The two men embraced.
“I haven’t seen you since—”
It hung there between them. The funeral. There it was. The reason Lancaster needed to keep this thing with Sophie from going completely off the rails.
“Who’s your lass?”
Yes, that was a good question. Who was this lass to him?
He avoided the question. “Sophie, this is my cousin Calum.”
“You look alike,” Sophie said, and offered her hand.
Calum, of course, had to be an idiot because that was a genetic quality in the Lancaster family. He bowed over her hand, took it and kissed it. Deeply. There was that little twitch again. Please not jealousy.
“My mum misses you something fierce,” he said, when he straightened and looked at Lancaster. “Did you know Mackay had a babe? That’s my brother,” he said to Sophie. “Come to the christening party. Please. It’s on Saturday evening at Mum’s.”
Calum turned to Sophie. “Has he taken you to a proper ceilidh?”
“I’m afraid the only place he’s taken me is to—” She stopped and looked mischievously at Lancaster. For an awful moment, he thought she was going to name the underwear shop. But she didn’t. She said, “Here.”
Would it just be plain churlish to say We are not dating?
“I don’t understand that word,” Sophie said. “Kay-lee?”
Of course she massacred the pronunciation, and Calum looked ridiculously charmed.
“You’re American?”
“Yes, I’m here visiting my friend Maddie.”
Calum should have been rocked back a bit by that, Lancaster thought darkly. A friend of the princess’s really was not going to be a friend of his. But oh, no.
“A ceilidh is a party. You haven’t really experienced our culture until you’ve been to one. Will you bring her?” he asked Lancaster.
“We’ll see,” Lancaster said.
“We’ll be there,” Sophie declared, ignoring his glare. Completely.
After Calum had walked away, Lancaster took her by the elbow, again, and ushered her firmly to the car.
“I won’t be able to go. To the christening ceilidh,” he said steadfastly once he had started the car. “I have a previous commitment.”
He did not, and he should have known by now there was a price attached to telling innocent lies to her.
“Oh, that’s fine,” Sophie said sweetly. “I’m sure you can detail someone else to take me.”
“You’d go to my cousin’s party on your own?”
“Calum invited me,” she said simply. “He wants me to experience your culture.”
Hidden in there was the little knife of suggestion, inferring he, Lancaster, would deprive her of that experience for no reason except basic mean-spiritedness.
“I’ll rearrange my schedule,” he was astonished to hear himself say.
“By the way, I like your name,” Sophie said thoughtfully, turning the tables on him in a blink. “I’m not sure why you’re so secretive about it. I thought maybe it was an embarrassing name like Percival, or one that could be perceived as a girl’s name, like Marion.”
“Those are both perfectly good names,” he said sternly.
“But not for you.”
What did that mean? He was not going to give her the pleasure of asking.
“I like the sound of it. Connal,” she said, and then as if it hadn’t whispered across his spine like a silk scarf of sensuality, she said it again. Connal.
“Would you stop?” he snapped, and then had the decency to be embarrassed that he had snapped at her for no real purpose.
She regarded him thoughtfully, and then said softly, “It isn’t really because you don’t want people to know your first name that you don’t use it. It’s because you don’t want people to get close to you. A first name is a highly personal thing, isn’t it?”
He said nothing.
“I suppose it means something? All your names seem to mean something.”
Really? He didn’t want her to know his first name, he didn’t want her using it, he didn’t want her analyzing why he didn’t give it to people, he didn’t want her knowing its meaning.
And he certainly didn’t want to go to his cousin’s ceilidh with her.
He felt much an
grier than any of those things warranted.
He must have managed to make her a tiny bit miffed, too, because when they arrived at the palace, she opened her own door without waiting for him to do it for her, and slammed it a little harder than might have been necessary. She didn’t say good-night.
“Hey,” he got out of the car and called to her. “Don’t go to the hot springs tonight.”
She didn’t even turn back.
“Do you hear me?”
No response. A guardsman on the door opened it for her, but Lancaster didn’t start the car again until he’d seen the door swing close after the little yellow dress had swished through it.
Why did he feel so angry?
It was obvious. Because Sophie Kettle was shaking his sense of being in control, even over himself.
And he did not like it. He did not like it one little bit.
He got out of the car and strode up to the door. “Call me if she leaves here,” he told the guardsman tersely.
If the guardsman was in any way surprised by the reiteration of instructions he already had, unlike Lancaster tonight, he was enough of a professional not to show it.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
* * *
“Hot springs, indeed,” Sophie muttered to herself. She was exhausted and her feet hurt.
She made her way through the now familiar passages of the palace to her own suite. There she yanked off the boots, and then peeled off her socks, and winced at what she saw.
Blisters.
“Well,” Sophie told herself, “that went well. Not!”
And she was not referring to her blisters, either. She put a few inches of hot water in the tub, and sat on the edge of it, soaking her feet and contemplating the evening.
She had actually been congratulating herself on achieving a modicum of success. Even one of Lancaster’s guardsmen, Brody, had thanked her for getting Lancaster out.
“It’s good to see the lad among us again,” he had said.
But then “the lad”—good grief, who looked at a mountain of a man like Lancaster and saw a lad—had appeared, and everything in his face and the way he had been holding himself had said the party was over.
