Ye dumb fooker.
And now he’d finally had to tell her that.
Afterhe kissed her.
Why in damnation couldn’t he have had the ballocks to tell her that before?
Because ye wanted to kiss her.
So, so badly. He’d wanted to kiss her so badly.
“My father is waving us over.” Her tone was as rigid as her body language.
Glad for the excuse to look at anyone else, Kester searched the hall until he saw the laird in front of the hearth. The old man was, in fact, waving his hand over his head.
“Is that what he’s doing?” he muttered. “He looks as if he’s enthusiastically waving away a fart.”
Good God, did he just say that out loud? He was definitely rattled.
“Nay, Da’s hand is too high for that.” Robena’s tone was light, as if she was one of his men, joking about such a topic. “Unless he’s farting out of his mouth, which is sometimes called belching.”
He’d hurt her. He’d seen the hurt in her normally laughing brown eyes. He’d felt it in the way she’d held herself—was feeling it now. All that, and she could still make him smile?
God help him, he was doomed.
He was in love with a woman he couldn’t have.
By the time the pair of them wove their way through the gathered servants to stand before the Oliphant, Kester realized his man Mook stood beside the older man. He was looking somber, which meant someone had told him to be somber, because the big idiot was more than a few bricks shy of a wall.
“My lord,” Kester greeted Robena’s father formally. “The preparations for Lady Wynda’s wedding are in place?”
“Place, aye,” the older man repeated, as was his wont. He was smiling sort of vaguely as he glanced around the hall. “Coming together well, I think, although I’ve been told a man at a wedding is as useless as a third leg on a walnut.”
Kester politely joined him in the laughter, having become used to the man’s nonsensical metaphors.
“I cannae imagine why a walnut needs a third leg,” spoke up Robena.
He leaned closer. “‘Tis the point,” he muttered from the corner of his mouth, and heard her swallow her snort of laughter.
Well, he could still make her laugh. That was good, wasn’t it?
The rumble which preceded one of Mook’s statements started, and they all looked at him expectantly. After a while, he said, “My third leg has two nuts.”
Kester blanched.
Laird Oliphant blinked.
And Lady Robena burst into laughter. “Och, well done, Mook! Ye’re right! Two walnuts!”
“Bigger, milady,” the giant rumbled.
Holy fook,did the idiot really just make a joke about the size of his ballocks to a lady?
Well, ye’re the one who made a joke about passing gas to that same lady.
The lady in question had dropped her hold on Kester’s arm in order to wrap her arm across her stomach; that’s how hard she was laughing.
So, ‘twas difficult to claim Mook—who was grinning hugely—had offended her.