She felt something else she could not quite as yet name…but it left her feeling warm and golden.
When the sun had gone down and enough ale and whiskey had been drunk to float a galleon, the dancing was begun in earnest. Alan found them on the hillside and asked Mared to dance a Scottish reel. Laughing, the two of them went around the ring of eight, turning left, then right. When the dance was ended, Alan handed her to a friend, and they danced a jig, and then she danced with Harold at Una’s urging, then a rather stodgy Douglas cousin who eyed her bosom the entire set of another reel.
When another country dance was begun, she was handed back to Alan, and she twirled away from him, stepped to her left, then to her right, and back again. But it was not Alan’s hand that landed on her waist, it was Payton’s.
“Ye’re even bonnier when ye dance, Mared,” he said in her ear, and she stepped forward, to the right, to the left, and back again. “I shall dream of this dance in far more intimate circumstances,” he added, and Mared laughed as he twirled her around. Her twirl was stopped by the hard wall of his chest. He grinned down at her with smoldering eyes—she could feel the force of his gaze rifle through her like a shooting star, landing squarely in the middle of her chest.
They continued the dance, Payton expertly twirling her this way and that, catching her close to his body, then letting her go. They were spinning and twirling and going around again in the light of five campfires, grabbing hands and pulling into one another, then letting go and drifting on to the next dancer, until they were united again, their eyes never leaving one another.
They danced until their breath was labored and they finally stopped for ale, at which point they noticed a boisterous crowd had begun to take up the call to send the bride and groom to their bridal chamber.
In the golden glow of the firelight, Mared watched the happy couple and the friends who would attempt to assist them.
Payton touched the small of her back. Impulsive, foolish thoughts, born out of Anna and Ellie’s speech to her, were suddenly rattling around in her head like a caged animal, desperate to be out, and Mared put aside her ale and turned to face Payton, eyeing him quizzically. “How would it be, do ye think, if the bride were a Lockhart, and he a Douglas?”
He seemed surprised by the question. “No consequence.”
Mared smiled a little and lifted a skeptical brow. “No?”
“No. There is no Douglas or Lockhart where they go tonight.”
“How is that possible, assuming he was a Douglas and she a Lockhart? How could they possibly forget it?”
“Very easily, lass,” he said with a grin, and at her look, he took her hand in his. “Rather plainly put, when a man loves a woman, his heart calls to hers. And if the woman loves the man, her heart responds. The two hearts, then, they begin to beat as one. Names cease to exist—nothing exists but the rhythm of those two hearts, beating in time with one another…until one is practically indistinguishable from the next.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles.
The roar of the crowd caught their attention, and they both turned to look. The crowd was moving with the bridal couple down the path to the front entrance of the castle where they would be wildly serenaded as they were escorted inside.
Mared twisted her hand so that her palm was against Payton’s and laced her fingers through his. She stared at their hands for a long moment, then asked, “Does a lass know if a lad’s heart is calling to her?”
“Aye,” he said quietly. “She knows.”
“Do ye suppose,” she whispered, stepping closer to him, “that his heart knows when hers has tilted in his direction?”
“He doesna know…but he hopes,” he murmured, his gaze falling to her mouth again. He leaned down and touched his lips reverently to hers.
When he lifted his head, Mared smiled softly and stepped backward, tugging at him, silently asking him to come with her.
Payton’s brow wrinkled—but Mared tugged at his hand again and stepped back, still tugging, until they were slowly but surely moving.
“Mared—”
She quickly pushed a finger to his lips, and with a low laugh, she tugged once more.
A wickedly seductive smile suddenly spread across his lips, and he caught her chin in his fingers and kissed her soundly before catching her around the waist and making her run with him into the dark.
Twenty-three
B ecause the crowd followed the bridal couple to fete them on the way to their marriage bed, Payton and Mared slipped in through the servants’ entrance unnoticed, and made their way in complete darkness to his chamber, where he slid the bolt in place and locked them away from the world.