“I suggest ye set her down before I break your arms,” Ian said. “Better yet, I’ll take her.”
“I can stand,” Sileas said. “Put me down.”
“Whatever ye say, lass,” Alex said, and set her down.
Ian itched to give his cousin a clout across his smiling face, but he wanted some answers first. “What in the hell were ye doing, having her out on the water with that storm coming? And don’t tell me ye didn’t see it.”
“ ’Course I saw it coming,” Alex said, easy as could be. “I may have cut it a wee bit close, because we were having such a grand time, ye see. But we made it in all right.”
Ian glared down at Sileas and did not feel at all badly when she trembled. With her color high from the wind and her hair wild about her, she looked like a sea nymph come to shore hoping to be ravished.
“What were the two of ye doing out there so long?” he said to her. “I didn’t see any fish in the damned boat.”
“It was a poor day for fishing,” she said.
Now that he thought of it, there wasn’t even a net in the boat.
“Then just what were ye doing all this time?” he yelled, with the image of her arms around Alex’s neck as he carried her to shore vivid in his mind. “Is it not enough that ye have Gordan Graumach eating out of your hand?”
“Ye may find it strange, but I enjoy being with a man who doesn’t shout at me,” she said, shouting herself.
“Enjoying Alex, were ye?”
With her green eyes flashing and her hair whipping about her face, she looked like the magnificent Celtic warrior queen, Scathach, herself.
“Ye have no call to accuse me of what ye are,” she said, poking her finger into his chest.
Her statement calmed him a bit. Sileas wouldn’t lie to him.
“Ye should mind how it looks when ye go about with other men,” he said. “I won’t be made a fool of.”
Sileas sputtered what might have been curses but was lost in the wind. When he reached for her hand, she kicked him in the shin. He stood dumbfounded as she turned and ran up the beach to the path above.
Ian looked to his cousin, expecting commiseration—and the apology he was owed.
“What in the name of heaven is wrong with ye?” Alex said, raising his hands in the air. “Did ye have to yell at her?”
“Me? You’re blaming me for this?”
“Accuse me of anything ye like,” Alex said, with a hard edge to his voice. “But there’s no excuse for insulting Sileas.”
“I hope you’re telling me that nothing happened between ye out there,” Ian said, clenching his fists.
“I was out there doing my best to persuade her that ye are not the idget that ye are. You’ve somehow managed, in spite of yourself, to get the perfect wife, and now ye seem to be doing all ye can to lose her.”
Alex, who was usually hard to rile, was pacing back and forth and gesturing with his hands as he ranted.
“Sileas is not just lovely, but she’s sensible and kind as well,” Alex said. “Adding to this miracle, your family adores the lass.”
“I’ve told her I want her,” Ian said. “What more does she want from me?”
“Why have ye done nothing to make amends to her?” Alex said, spreading his arms wide. “Would it be so hard to show her that ye admire her, that ye care for her? I tell ye, I’m disgusted with ye.”
With that, Alex turned and left Ian alone on the beach staring after him. He was still standing there when the heavens opened up and drenched him.
CHAPTER 11
Sileas sat at the small table in her bedchamber with her letter to the now-dead King James and a clean sheet of parchment before her. How did one address a letter to a widowed queen who was also Regent? She brushed the feather of her quill against her cheek as she considered the question.
That should suffice. She bit her lip as she copied the rest of her original letter. It annoyed her that she had Ian to thank for the skill. Did she have no pleasant memories from her childhood that did not involve him?
Her mother had never been well long enough to teach her to write, and it wouldn’t have crossed her father’s mind to hire a tutor for her. When it was apparent that no one else would teach her, Ian did. For a boy who never liked to sit, he had been diligent, spending hours with her. The result was that while she did not have an elegant, feminine hand, she was a slow but competent writer.
She smudged the ink and had to start over on a clean sheet of parchment. When she finished, she blew on the letter and read it over again. It would do.
The problem now was how to get it delivered to the queen at Stirling Castle.
She started at the sound of a rap on her door and shoved the letters under the sheaf of accounts stacked on the table. “Who is it?” she called out.
Ian stuck his head through the door.
He gave her a smile that raised her heartbeat. Why did he have this effect on her? She had avoided him since yesterday—no small task when they were living under the same roof—because she feared seeing him would weaken her resolve.
“May I come in?”
