FINALLY, LANCASTER GOT Sophie safely outside, past the obstacle of her many new admirers. He felt as if he had run a gauntlet, with the twist of having a prize to guard, which everyone wanted. He herded her toward the vehicle.
“I know everyone is speaking English,” Sophie said, “but I can only understand about every second word. No, make that every tenth word.”
Kiss, Lancaster thought darkly. Did you understand kiss?
Not that he could go there, right now. Or ever.
Despite that vow, his eyes drifted to her lips, which looked full and plump, the color of pomegranate juice. They could appear under the heading Temptation in an illustrated dictionary.
“That was so much fun,” she said breathlessly, seemingly determined to hide the fact something had truly frightened her. She appeared to be oblivious to his darkening mood. “My feet hurt. I think I have blisters. Can you look?”
“I cannot,” he said grimly. He realized his hand was still on her elbow, and he let it go as if the touch of her skin had burned him.
Jealous? Him? That was ridiculous. More than ridiculous.
But he thought of that brief moment of chemistry that had sizzled between them at the beginning of the dance, that renegade thought he’d had about her look, that a man could live for a look like that and want to spend the rest of his life coming home to it, and he felt a moment of appalling self-realization.
He deliberately did not look at her again as she walked—limped—beside him. She probably really did have blisters. Should he look? When they got back to the palace? As a soldier, he knew a blister, a small thing, had to be looked after immediately, before it became a large thing.
But then he could imagine kneeling before her, sliding that boot off, the tininess of her foot in his hand…
Terrible thoughts. Completely inappropriate. Talk about small things becoming large things! If he was not very, very careful, this thing was going to go seriously off the rails.
“Connal!”
At first he didn’t even react. It was a common enough name, after all. But then Sophie startled beside him, and he felt a hand on his shoulder. He was instantly alert. His hand went to the hilt that wasn’t there—his first thought of protecting Sophie. And then it fell away as he spun and recognized his cousin.
Calum clapped him on the shoulder. “I thought I saw you in there. I should know better than to come up behind you, man. How are you?”
The two men embraced.
“I haven’t seen you since—”
It hung there between them. The funeral. There it was. The reason Lancaster needed to keep this thing with Sophie from going completely off the rails.
“Who’s your lass?”
Yes, that was a good question. Who was this lass to him?
He avoided the question. “Sophie, this is my cousin Calum.”
“You look alike,” Sophie said, and offered her hand.
Calum, of course, had to be an idiot because that was a genetic quality in the Lancaster family. He bowed over her hand, took it and kissed it. Deeply. There was that little twitch again. Please not jealousy.
“My mum misses you something fierce,” he said, when he straightened and looked at Lancaster. “Did you know Mackay had a babe? That’s my brother,” he said to Sophie. “Come to the christening party. Please. It’s on Saturday evening at Mum’s.”
Calum turned to Sophie. “Has he taken you to a proper ceilidh?”
“I’m afraid the only place he’s taken me is to—” She stopped and looked mischievously at Lancaster. For an awful moment, he thought she was going to name the underwear shop. But she didn’t. She said, “Here.”
Would it just be plain churlish to say We are not dating?
“I don’t understand that word,” Sophie said. “Kay-lee?”
Of course she massacred the pronunciation, and Calum looked ridiculously charmed.
“You’re American?”
“Yes, I’m here visiting my friend Maddie.”
Calum should have been rocked back a bit by that, Lancaster thought darkly. A friend of the princess’s really was not going to be a friend of his. But oh, no.
“A ceilidh is a party. You haven’t really experienced our culture until you’ve been to one. Will you bring her?” he asked Lancaster.
“We’ll see,” Lancaster said.
“We’ll be there,” Sophie declared, ignoring his glare. Completely.
After Calum had walked away, Lancaster took her by the elbow, again, and ushered her firmly to the car.
“I won’t be able to go. To the christening ceilidh,” he said steadfastly once he had started the car. “I have a previous commitment.”
He did not, and he should have known by now there was a price attached to telling innocent lies to her.
“Oh, that’s fine,” Sophie said sweetly. “I’m sure you can detail someone else to take me.”
“You’d go to my cousin’s party on your own?”
“Calum invited me,” she said simply. “He wants me to experience your culture.”
Hidden in there was the little knife of suggestion, inferring he, Lancaster, would deprive her of that experience for no reason except basic mean-spiritedness.
“I’ll rearrange my schedule,” he was astonished to hear himself say.
“By the way, I like your name,” Sophie said thoughtfully, turning the tables on him in a blink. “I’m not sure why you’re so secretive about it. I thought maybe it was an embarrassing name like Percival, or one that could be perceived as a girl’s name, like Marion.”
“Those are both perfectly good names,” he said sternly.
“But not for you.”
What did that mean? He was not going to give her the pleasure of asking.
“I like the sound of it. Connal,” she said, and then as if it hadn’t whispered across his spine like a silk scarf of sensuality, she said it again. Connal.
“Would you stop?” he snapped, and then had the decency to be embarrassed that he had snapped at her for no real purpose.
She regarded him thoughtfully, and then said softly, “It isn’t really because you don’t want people to know your first name that you don’t use it. It’s because you don’t want people to get close to you. A first name is a highly personal thing, isn’t it?”
He said nothing.
“I suppose it means something? All your names seem to mean something.”
Really? He didn’t want her to know his first name, he didn’t want her using it, he didn’t want her analyzing why he didn’t give it to people, he didn’t want her knowing its meaning.
And he certainly didn’t want to go to his cousin’s ceilidh with her.
He felt much angrier than any of those things warranted.
He must have managed to make her a tiny bit miffed, too, because when they arrived at the palace, she opened her own door without waiting for him to do it for her, and slammed it a little harder than might have been necessary. She didn’t say good-night.
“Hey,” he got out of the car and called to her. “Don’t go to the hot springs tonight.”
She didn’t even turn back.
“Do you hear me?”
No response. A guardsman on the door opened it for her, but Lancaster didn’t start the car again until he’d seen the door swing close after the little yellow dress had swished through it.
Why did he feel so angry?
It was obvious. Because Sophie Kettle was shaking his sense of being in control, even over himself.
And he did not like it. He did not like it one little bit.
He got out of the car and strode up to the door. “Call me if she leaves here,” he told the guardsman tersely.
If the guardsman was in any way surprised by the reiteration of instructions he already had, unlike Lancaster tonight, he was enough of a professional not to show it.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
* * *
“Hot springs, indeed,” Sophie muttered to herself. She was exhausted and her feet hurt.
She made her way through the now familiar passages of the palace to her own suite. There she yanked off the boots, and then peeled off her socks, and winced at what she saw.
Blisters.
“Well,” Sophie told herself, “that went well. Not!”
And she was not referring to her blisters, either. She put a few inches of hot water in the tub, and sat on the edge of it, soaking her feet and contemplating the evening.
She had actually been congratulating herself on achieving a modicum of success. Even one of Lancaster’s guardsmen, Brody, had thanked her for getting Lancaster out.
“It’s good to see the lad among us again,” he had said.
But then “the lad”—good grief, who looked at a mountain of a man like Lancaster and saw a lad—had appeared, and everything in his face and the way he had been holding himself had said the party was over.
He’d been angry about something even before they’d met his cousin, even before his cousin had revealed his name, even before she had announced she would go to the ceilidh without him.
Sophie reminded herself, with a sigh, the goal had been to help Lancaster have fun.
Thinking of the look of thunder on his face as he drove her silently home, she thought her grade was probably an F. She should probably give up on her plan to save Lancaster from a dour life. It was a mission that seemed more hopeless than when she had set out tonight.
Of course, partway through the mission, she’d totally forgotten it was supposed to be about Lancaster, and just given herself over to the pure merriment of the evening. Except for that man grabbing her at the end, and that moment of overwhelming panic until she had remembered Lancaster was there, the outing had been perfect. The music, and the dancing, the joyous spirit of celebration in the room, had been totally contagious. It was the first time since her breakup that she had glimpsed the possibility she might be happy again.
Forever single, but happy, she told herself firmly.
So, she had found hope for herself, but failed in her mission to Lancaster.
“I think you are selfish and self-centered at heart,” Sophie assessed herself glumly. She took her feet out of the tub, toweled them off and then went and grabbed her computer.
Internet tonight! It was spotty on Havenhurst at best.
Surrendering the utter weakness of it, she typed in meaning of the name Connal. It was, as she had thought it would be, a pure Celtic name.
And it meant mighty, ferocious, respected and respectful.
Who looked into the face of a tiny newborn baby and knew these things of him? Knew he would grow into that name, and be all those things, even as he left the name behind him?
Sophie put down her computer, put on her pajamas and climbed into bed.
Just before she slept, it occurred to her that maybe the evening had not been such a total failure after all.
Lancaster had enjoyed parts of the evening, maybe even most of it. She had seen his toes tapping to the music, seen him watch the dancing with enjoyment.
Had it been when Brody had spoken to her that something had shifted in Lancaster? Had he overheard the words, then?
Had he been angry with himself for letting his guard down, for giving himself over to the evening, for coming back among the people who held him in such respect, but also pitied him his loss?
Even anger was movement, Sophie realized. He was a man who was contained. He prided himself on control. He had disciplined himself to feel nothing.
So even anger was a step in the right direction, wasn’t it?
So, not an F.
“C minus,” she upgraded herself sleepily. It wasn’t a complete fail, after all. Plus, he’d agreed to accompany her to the ceilidh, even if he had done so grudgingly. She realized it was all the encouragement she needed. She wasn’t ready to give up on Lancaster’s happiness just yet.