His compelling eyes looked speculative over the rim of his tankard. “Did she, now?”
“Aye.” Avoiding his gaze, she tossed the dice and made her move. “I don’t intend to have children at all, let alone four of them.”
He stuck the dice back in their cup and rattled it, his gaze straying to the window beside them. “Do you not like children?”
“I like them fine. It’s the necessary husband I’d as soon do without.”
He set down the dice cup, raising a brow. “So much for the happy marriage she predicted.”
“Are you going to take your turn?”
Slowly he reached across the small table and traced a fingertip across the back of her hand. A shiver ran through her. “But are you not sensitive?”
She was sensitive, all right. It took everything she had not to leap across the table and kiss him, or perhaps throttle him—she couldn’t decide which. Why was he toying with her? Last night he’d made it abundantly clear he didn’t want her, and now here he was, flirting and touching her hand. Was he fickle?
She crossed her arms. “Why should you care if I’m sensitive?”
“Perhaps I’ve had a change of heart.” He smiled crookedly. “Like you will when your precious amulet changes hands.”
Shaking her head, she took the dice cup and firmly wrapped his fingers back around it. “The amulet will not change hands. The Gypsy was wrong.”
Even with the noises of conversations and dishes rattling around them, the dice sounded loud as Jason shook them and spilled them onto the leather board. Two more of his pieces made their way into his haphazard pile. “Someday—”
“Nay. I won’t ever take it off.” She bit her lip, then decided the truth might serve to shut him up. “My mother took it off only once. To wear a pretty necklace my father had just brought her from Edinburgh. She died that day. Broke her neck when she was thrown from her horse.”
“You blame your father for her death,” Jason said.
“I don’t.” She was startled into meeting his eyes. “I never have.”
Silent for a minute, he watched her drop the dice back into the cup, slowly, one by one. “You blame her,” he finally said.
“Nay.” Maybe she’d thought it, but she didn’t believe it. “Though I won’t tempt fate by making the same mistake.”
“It’s naught but metal and stone,” he said gently.
“It’s more than metal and stone,” she disagreed. “It’s been in my family for centuries.”
“Has it?” He dipped a piece of bread into his soup. “Is there a story behind it?”
“Of course. We Scots have a story for everything.” As he glanced out the window again, she touched the amulet and rolled the dice, smiling when they came up double fives. She moved her last two markers into home court and stacked another two neatly by the board. “I was made to memorize it word for word before the necklace could be mine.”
“I enjoy your stories. Tell me.”
She handed him the cup. “In 1330, Sir Simon Leslie set out to accompany James, Lord Douglas, who was charged with returning the heart of King Robert the Bruce to the Holy Land. On their way through Spain, they fought with the Moors, and Douglas was killed.” She paused for a sip of ale. “Leslie went on to Palestine, and there he fought the Saracens and captured one of their chiefs. When the chief’s mother came to beg for his release, she dropped an emerald from her purse and hurried to scoop it up. Leslie realized it was of great importance to her, and he demanded it as part of the deal for the release of her son.”
She stopped, because Jason was staring out the window again. “Go on,” he said, looking back to her.
“That is it, really.” Gazing down at the amulet, she traced its scrolled setting with a finger. “He had it set in this bezel and brought it home, claiming it had miraculous powers for seeing him through the journey. It’s been handed down through the generations. People once came from far and wide to obtain water it had been dipped in. They would put a bottle of this water by their door, or hang it overhead, for protection against the evil eye.”
His bowl empty, he set down his spoon and rolled the dice. His last two pieces clicked as he dropped them onto his pile. “But not anymore?”
She shook her head. “The old ways and beliefs are dying.”
“Yet you won’t take it off.”
“Maybe it’s nothing more than unwarranted superstition.” She wrapped her fingers around the emerald. “But there will be no change of hands.”
Nor, she thought fiercely, would there be the change of heart the Gypsy had predicted.
His gaze had returned to the window yet again. “You won,” she said, and he nodded without looking at her. Idly she started making his pile of markers into two tall stacks. “Are you seeing something?”
“Not exactly.” He lifted his tankard of ale. “I’m just getting that feeling I had last night…”
One of the stacks toppled over. She narrowed her eyes at him. “You mean that strange feeling that gives you an excuse to kiss me?”
His tankard hit the table with a thud. “I mean the feeling that we might be followed.”
Cait looked out the window at the red-brick walls of the George Inn across Buckden’s busy High Street. People rode or strolled by. Ordinary people. No one appeared suspicious or familiar. “I see nothing.”
He shrugged.
“Here,” she said, pushing the rest of her Dutch pudding toward him. “I’m not finding myself very hungry.”
He dug into the remains of her dinner. “Still worried about your fortune and future?”
“Of course not. It was naught but a lark. I’ve forgotten it already.”
In truth, she hadn’t, not really. But she was more intrigued than anything, and not by the fortune-teller’s
