Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3)(17)

Dairine blurted, “You talk funny, Lachlan.”

Her mother tsked. “Dairine—”

“But it’s true! It’s like he rolls his words in his mouth before he says them.”

Lachlan smiled. “You’ve never met a Scot, little lass?”

“I met a Gascon once,” she said. “Ma talked to him, babble babble babble, and it didn’t make any sense at all.” Dairine’s face crumpled in concentration the way it did sometimes when Ma was trying to teach her numbers. “And once Da healed a sailor whose skin was as black as charred peat. He even let me touch his skin to see if the darkness would rub off.”

Lachlan’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “Such creatures you’ve had at your table.”

“You must be a really good swimmer,” her sister continued, “to have made it to the strand the day Cairenn found you.”

“I am, though I’m glad to be out of the sea now.”

“But why?”

“So I can be sitting near a warm fire, eating this fine soup with kind folk like you.”

Will you take Cairenn to be your wife in the sea?

“Eat your soup, Dairine,” Cairenn said, before the girl could speak her thought, “and stop asking so many questions.”

“But—”

Cairenn raised a brow. Disappointment and frustration rippled through the girl, as well as a bit of rebellion. But though Dairine was reckless, she wasn’t thoughtless.

Lachlan ventured, “So your name is Dairine, little lass?”

Her sister nodded.

“I have a half-sister a little older than you. I haven’t seen her in a while, she’s living with relatives. Elspeth is her name. She’s just as curious and full of questions as you are, but she doesn’t have any older sisters to boss her around.”

Dairine covered a giggle with her hand. Cairenn wrinkled her nose at her playfully, but her mind was elsewhere. This talk of his siblings made her realize how little she knew about Lachlan’s larger world. Normally when she looked into anyone’s mind, she sensed the nearness of those they loved—parents, siblings, husbands, wives, lovers—so many points of warmth that permeated their thoughts.

In her mind, Lachlan had been as lonely as a wolf on a mountaintop.

Naill spoke up. “Cairenn tells us that you’ve been to Rome.”

“Did she?” Lachlan’s gaze slid to hers.

Dairine piped, “Is Rome under the sea?”

“No, wee lass,” he said, his gaze making Cairenn blush. “It’s far away from here where it is always warm.”

“Da has been to it,” her brother Declan ventured from the other end of the table. “He says it’s full of roads paved in stone and great bridges and it was a wonder to behold until the Vandals came.”

Lachlan’s brows twitched. “The Vandals you say? It’s been centuries since that happened. Your father looks young for his age.”

A joke, she thought, he meant it as a joke, but not a soul at the table laughed. From the cradle, they’d all been taught never to speak a word about their special gifts to strangers, and this kind of talk came perilously close.

Everyone turned at once to Ma as if they’d been the one to say too much. Then a great crack of lightning shook the timbers and everyone startled.

“Tell my brothers what you were doing in Rome, Lachlan,” Cairenn said to smooth over the awkwardness. “It’ll give them something to think about when they’re laboring over their slates.”

“I was studying.” Lachlan looked from face to face with a deepening line between his brows. “There are great churches full of statues and paintings, and buildings made of massive blocks of stone the likes of which I’d never seen.”

Niall said, “Most men go to Rome to become priests.”

Wouldn’t that be a bad bit of luck for you, my sister, if he were dedicated to celibacy.

“Careful, brother,” she snapped, “or I’ll poison your soup.”

Lachlan watched the interchange intently. “I don’t mind the questions,” he ventured as a great howling wind rustled the roof. “It must seem like a curious thing, for a man to go all the way to Rome.”

Dairine said, “Did you swim the whole way?”

“I took a ship.” He gave Dairine a wink. “Easier on the fins.”

Niall persisted despite her sharp kick. “So, Lachlan, you’re not a priest then?”

“My uncle is a priest. He offered me a place to stay and granted me entry to the best private libraries in the city. I begged my father to let me go. I wanted to study architecture and there was no better place.”

Niall’s eyes had begun to dance. “So you plan to build a coliseum by the North Sea?”

“Nothing so grand.” Lachlan waited until a new roll of thunder abated. “I want to build bridges over estuaries. There are lots of them where I come from, difficult to pass even in low tide. The mud can swallow a sheep.”

Dairine said, “What’s an estuary?”

“A place where the sea sends a finger across the land,” Lachlan said. “It empties at low tide, fills up again at high tide. There are always lots of seals.”

I like him. I hope Cairenn marries him so I can visit the seals.