Married to the Icy Highlander (Unwanted Highland Wives #3)

Chapter 16

16

C eana wove through the throngs of people, her mind still fixed on the reading she just had. If the cards were to be believed, then she and Neil were some sort of fated, meant-to-be nonsense—which didn’t suit her in the slightest.

Did it?

Ceana had always taken great pride in being the one in control of her destiny. She had always worked very hard with her own two hands. She had stood on her own two feet and apart from this whole needing a husband thing, had never needed help from anybody.

That didn’t mean that she thought she was cruel or undeserving of assistance when she needed it. But she certainly didn’t want to credit all of her hard work and dedication to fate and nothing else. She would feel deprived of what she was owed if that was the case.

Alternatively, she didn’t really care for the idea that she had been struggling for so long, only for the circumstances to push them together.

The implications of that were just too much for her to wrap her head around. It was too much. Never mind what she would have to say to Jeanie if that were the case. She could have grown up with her mother, but instead, she had been deprived of a mother figure until Ceana came around? Well, it just wasn’t fair.

Some small, romantic part of her wanted to believe that she and Neil had just happened to be thrown into a situation together and they were making the best of it. She liked the thought that maybe, just maybe, he was falling for her against his better judgment. But then again, that just wasn’t their arrangement.

Ceana was so lost in thought that she barely avoided colliding with a villager carrying two very large, very full pints of ale. She pivoted out of the way, spinning with some difficulty to find her footing, and nearly ran straight into Jeanie.

“There ye are, Ceana!” Jeanie exclaimed, grabbing hold of Ceana’s skirt and immediately pulling her toward the dance floor.

“Careful now, or ye’ll throw me off balance!” Ceana protested, still feeling slightly off-kilter. “Were yer ears ringin’?”

“What does that mean?” Jeanie asked over her shoulder with a toothy grin.

Ceana skipped forward so she wouldn’t be dragged along. “I just mean that I was thinkin’ about ye and yer pretty dress!”

Jeanie’s grin widened. “I was dancin’! But maybe I wasnae dancin’ as well as ye do—ye are a very skilled dancer, after all. Ye promised to teach me, remember?”

Ceana felt her face flush at the compliment. “I do remember. I dinnae ken if I’m a very skilled dancer, but I do enjoy meself. That’s the secret!”

“Ersie says that, too! But she says that she has two left feet and a handful of thumbs!”

“Ersie doesnae have anything of the sort! Her skills are just more suited to a battlefield. I could never dance across a fight the way she does with her sword, mind ye. It’s just a different sort of dancin’ entirely. No less pretty for it either!” Ceana complimented.

If she were being honest, she had never seen anybody move around with as much grace and fluidity as she had seen Ersie do so many times ever since she met her, thanks to Emily and Freya.

“But Ersie wouldnae teach me how to dance, and ye said ye will. Can we start now? Please?”

“Well, since ye’re askin’ so nicely, I cannae deny ye, lass,” Ceana relented as they stepped behind the circle of people moving rhythmically around one another.

The small band playing in the corner was half drunk, but they were all having more fun as a result.

Jeanie blushed, keeping her hand in Ceana’s as they waited for their turn to join the circle. “Thank ye!”

“Well, I cannae say that I ken all the right steps, and I can be clumsy at times, but dancin’ is just so very freein’, ye ken?” Ceana bunched her skirt in her free hand and waited for Jeanie to do the same before she tightened her grip on her hand. “Ready? We have to move fast now. But if ye stumble, just keep goin’! The best way to learn is by doin’, ye ken.”

Jeanie’s smile could have lit up the night as she nodded readily.

Ceana waited until the beat was right and then yanked the pair of them into the circle. It was mostly just her pulling Jeanie along for a good portion of the dance, as the younger girl had to learn the steps and how to move without being jostled about by the people around her.

But Jeanie was a quick study, so much so that Ceana wasn’t sure why her marks weren’t higher. She couldn’t think of any reason other than perhaps Jeanie was just too bored by having to sit and learn versus being able to do things with her hands.

Ceana made a mental note to bring that up to Neil. Perhaps it would help her better comply with his request if she could appeal to Jeanie in another way.

Two songs later and both lasses were panting heavily. Ceana felt as if her legs were on fire. She hadn’t realized she was so out of practice.

“This is so much fun!” Jeanie exclaimed, but even her energy was starting to wane.

All the more reason to make sure that she had more dancing lessons moving forward. Anything that could help exhaust the girl could only ever be a good thing, was it not?

“Faither!” Jeanie suddenly exclaimed, looking up at the person behind Ceana.

Ceana was sorely tempted to turn around and look at him, but she didn’t trust herself to look him in the eye, knowing what the cards had said about the two of them a moment ago.

“Did ye see us dancin’?! Did ye?”

Neil extended a cup of juice toward Jeanie, and she happily accepted it, guzzling down its contents rather quickly. She was over the moon and could hardly stand still as she started to ramble on and on about the dance and how the other people around them were moving and how she learned what she needed to do. Neil extended a second goblet, this time full of wine, in Ceana’s direction. She accepted it with a demure smile, not wanting to detract from Jeanie’s story either.

He moved to stand next to her, slipping an arm around her shoulders, and the revelry around them started to fade away. Ceana was acutely aware of the weight of his arm on her shoulders. She couldn’t help but focus on the fact that she was half enveloped by his scent as he pulled her closer to his side. Otherwise, he seemed to ignore her and focus on his daughter instead. She couldn’t blame him for it, but she also couldn’t stop stealing glances at him either.

She sipped her wine as Jeanie finally finished her story, catching her breath and then drinking her little cup of juice so quickly that a good portion of it spilled down the front of her dress. Not that she seemed to notice in the slightest.

“Och! I love this song, dinnae ye, Faither?” Jeanie exclaimed, spinning around and dropping her cup on the ground, immediately forgetting that it was there.

Ceana smiled at the girl and bent to pick it up, instantly mourning the loss of Neil’s warmth around her. She hadn’t even realized how chilly the evening had become until the warmth of his body was gone. When she straightened, he took the cup from her hand and gave it to a passing villager. She might have questioned it, but Jeanie was grabbing both of their hands and pulling them to the clearing.

It was a slower dance, one that was meant to give the couples an excuse to stand slightly closer to one another. But since they were a group of three, it did make things slightly more awkward, as Jeanie didn’t seem as if she intended to let either of them go for anything in the world. She placed herself directly between them, one foot on Ceana’s and the other on Neil’s. She fisted her smaller hands in their clothes as they awkwardly closed their circle and started to sway together.

Whatever concerns Ceana had about behaving so silly in public faded away the moment Jeanie started to cackle. Neil put a hand on Jeanie’s upper back to steady her and slid his other hand around Ceana’s waist to keep them all together… and they moved like that. Sometimes they fumbled, sometimes they slipped, but Ceana found that she couldn’t stop smiling either.

The eyes of the villagers were upon them. She could feel their heavy gazes, watching and assessing. She knew that there were still many rumors floating around because of not only how quickly they got married but also because of the circumstances. They implied all manner of things, according to her mother, especially because she had bounced from one man to another so quickly.

They implied that she must have done something untoward in order to ‘upgrade’ her husband. She told herself that she didn’t care. She lived at the castle now anyway, so their petty remarks couldn’t harm her. But she did worry about what they might say or do to her mother or Peter.

So, she kept her head up high and did her very best to present herself as a proper Lady of Clan MacTristan. She leaned a little bit closer to her husband as they moved around the clearing. She smiled up at him as brightly as she possibly could. Even then, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from giggling as they stumbled through one dance and then another.

There was something so special about the way Neil kept looking at her. His gaze dropped to the neckline of her dress every time his grip on her waist tightened. It felt like a promise of things yet to come.

Ceana could lie and tell herself that it was all for show, that she just wanted to ensure that Jeanie had the best time at her first festival… but she knew better.

Though, she didn’t have to pretend very much—she couldn’t even remember the last time she had been this happy.