Crown Jewels (Off-Limits Romance #1)(48)

My cheeks are.

“I’m not usually this way,” I tell him, folding my own arms.

He moves closer to me, stopping with about a foot of distance between us. I can feel him want to touch me—but he doesn’t. He just smiles, the gentle smile, the one I like almost as much as I like his boisterous laugh.

“I know you’re not, Lucille.” The way he sounds—it’s like he really knows. It’s like he knows me.

“You better stop using that dirty word, or I’ll use yours.”

“Willahelm?” And bless my thudding heart, that voice of his makes it sound sexy.

I nod. “Yep.”

“Lucille and Willahelm.” He smiles again. I smile back.

“Maybe we should carve it in a tree.”

“We should. Speaking of trees…” He glances at the castle. “Heath is scheduled to be back tonight—from polo. He’ll be bitchy and hung-over and he might have some lady friends with him. I texted him to tell him not to bring a posse, but he hasn’t texted back. Would you want to…go somewhere? Sleep somewhere not the castle?”

“Somewhere not the castle,” I tease. “This sounds like a riddle. Where would we be going?”

His lips flatten out. He slides his hands into his pockets. “Just an island near here. It’s got cabanas and a few tree houses. Sometimes we use it for entertaining. Hot springs too,” he says. His voice is low and quiet.

Something prickles in the back of my mind, firing for a moment before it triggers my memory.

“I live between the ocean and a…lake. In the lake, there’s an island. My mum used to call it Pirate Island. We would take a canoe there and bring a picnic.”

My chest and throat go hot. “Is that the island that you mentioned on the phone?”

He shrugs. “It’s just the nearest one. In Loch Haar.”

He starts walking toward Don Juan, and I follow. “What does Haar mean? Loch means lake, I think I’m right on that.”

“You are,” he says, collecting my arrows. “Haar means fog, or sea fog. This loch is often foggy, so the name.”

“So the name.” I smile, catching his eye as he puts the arrows back into the leather quiver.

His lips curve up, a little slower than other times. “So the name,” he says again, shrugging.

“You know, your accent isn’t as thick as some of the ones I’ve heard, but sometimes you say little things that sound really Gael-ish.”

“Gaelic?” he smiles.

“Gael-ish. Because I’m not meaning Gaelic like the language. I mean Gael-ish, like your country. Were you guys ever part of Scotland? You weren’t, were you?”

“No. Gael was settled by the—people you might call the Irish,” he corrects, “in the twelfth century. People living in Gaelic Ireland who fled after the Norman invasion and all that trouble. Technically, there were some Scots here at that time as well.”

I’m embarrassed to admit I don’t remember the historical details of the Norman invasion of Ireland, but Liam goes on.

“King Henry II backed the Anglo-Norman invasion and the battling that went on after. Religious and other reasons. Henry and his crew wanted to control the Irish Church. Also, think of it as empire-building. Why wouldn’t Henry want to add Ireland to his empire?”

“I guess he would.”

“He would,” Liam says. “And Henry had the backing of the Pope. It was a rough time to live in Ireland. The people who set off and wound up here were peaceful.”

“Your ancestors were peaceful?” I tease.

“Some of them. Some not.” Liam stops off to store his bow in a nook inside the castle’s base, then leads me to a side entrance. “What do you think?” he asks as he pushes the door open. “Do you want to stay the night on Pirate Island?”

“That’s the name of it?”

He nods, and as we step inside, a delicious smell fills my head. I’m going to ask if there are pirates, but we’re in the kitchen. Not a dining hall, but the kitchen—same as last night. Only today, it’s bustling with people, including a tall, big-boned, gray-haired woman who marches right up to Liam and me with a ladle in her hand, looking at me first, and then Liam.

“So here she is, the reason our vacation was cut short.”

My mouth drops open, and Liam reaches out and slaps the woman in the arm. “Mora.” He laughs. “She’s joking, Lucy. Mora, go back to your stew.”

“Is that an order, little king?”

“It’s an order, big Mora.”

It’s a struggle to keep my mouth from hanging open.

“Big and beautiful,” the woman smiles.

“Of course,” Liam says. He looks to me, as Mora steps back toward the stove, where three are three simmering pots. I watch her give orders to a few other people in the kitchen as Liam turns to me. “Mora is like a mother to me, if you couldn’t tell.”

“How old is she?”

“Fifty last month. My mother hired her when she was much younger. We’ve never let her go. She’s trained all over the world at this point. One of the best chefs anywhere.”

“God, the smell.”

“It’s a twist on Irish Beef stew, but Mora adds cheese.”