His earliest memories were of sadness and disappointment—listening to his mother weep from inside her chamber. She scarcely looked at him when she emerged from her bedchamber, but when she did it was only to remind him that he was cursed.
That his life must be about denial or he would end up as miserable as her.
Never make the mistake yer da did. Never forget the curse. It is real and it will hunt ye like a bloodhound. There be no escape.
And yet here was this lass, her lovely face upturned, her tempting lips promising him a chance. A future different from the one he’d always assumed to be his destiny.
Perhaps he could beat the curse, after all, and have a semblance of a marriage. For months, at least, he could have her in his bed. Then, when that ended, he’d still have something left. Something worthwhile. He’d be a father.
“I did no’ change my mind,” he finally answered her. “I meant it.” However rash it seemed even now, he would marry her if she would have him. He would take this girl and her child and claim them both as his own. “Should ye agree, we should act quickly. Given your condition . . . as soon as possible.” He glanced to her stomach. She was not yet noticeably increasing, but time would affect that change soon enough.
Her face reddened and she nodded jerkily. “Once I’ve made up my mind on the matter, you will be the first to know.”
“I await your pleasure.” He inclined his head, a thrill coursing through him. He tried to tamp it down. She had not accepted definitively. Until she did, he should be temperate. Patient. He should be the man he always was, expecting nothing when it came to women and matters of the heart.
She studied him a moment longer, distrust lingering in her gaze. It appeared as though she would say more, but then she held silent, pressing her lips together in a mutinous line. There was more to this lass. A great deal more and he was keenly interested to know everything there was to know about her.
“I will inform my brother that I’m considering your suit and you will be staying a little longer.” She gave an efficient nod.
Before he could say anything else or peel back a layer for a deeper glimpse of her, she spun around and fled down the corridor.
Chapter 7
Clara’s heart pounded a hard tempo as she closed her hand around the latch of her bedchamber door and pushed it open, ready to flee inside. Her words chased after her, though, nipping at her heels, echoing inside her head as if someone else had uttered them.
I will inform my brother that I’m considering your suit and you will be staying a little longer.
Unbelievably the words had originated from her.
“Clara!”
She jumped at the unquiet whisper and whirled around to face her friend in the dimly lit corridor. The wall sconces cast flickering shadows over Marian’s lovely face.
“Marian!” Clara sighed, pressing a hand to her heart. “You gave me a fright.” With a quick glance up and down the corridor, she pulled her friend inside her chamber.
“Nothing compared to the fright you gave me when I spotted you slipping out of MacLarin’s room!” Marian’s voice dipped to a hush at the mention of his name.
“I did not go inside his chamber.” The distinction mattered. “I merely wanted a word with him—”
“A word?” Marian canted her head. “About what?”
Clara sighed. “I wanted him to know that I have decided to give his proposal proper consideration.”
Marian smiled widely. “Ah. Then it begins.”
An uneasy trickle started down Clara’s spine. “What begins?”
“The courtship, of course. And this time will be different. Last time I stayed out of it, but no more. You need me.” With a decisive nod, Marian clasped Clara’s hands and gave them a tight squeeze. “This time we will be certain before you agree to marry him.”
Clara eyed her friend warily. “We?” She snorted. “And how do we go about acquiring such certainty?” After all that had transpired over the last few months, she doubted she would ever feel certain of any man . . . much less ever certain of her judgment when it came to them. She would, in fact, value her friend’s opinion on the matter.
“With your secret weapon, of course.” A martial look entered Marian’s eyes.
“What secret weapon?”
“Me.”
“You?”
Marian bobbed her head. “It’s time for me to infiltrate the staff.”
It took Marian less than twenty-four hours for her self-proclaimed infiltration of the staff. In point of fact, before breakfast. She stormed into Clara’s bedchamber and brusquely ushered the maid out of the room as she was putting the finishing touches on Clara’s hair.
“I’ve solved it! I know why he wants to marry you!” she declared once she had rid the room of the girl.
“You do?” Clara could not help the skepticism from creeping into her voice. MacLarin did not strike her as the sort of man to share his inner thoughts—especially not with members of the staff who were wont to gossip.
“I do. John, one of the upstairs footmen, is quite enamored of me. I permitted him certain liberties—”
“Marian! You didn’t!”
Marian waved a hand. “Pah. ’Tis not what you think. Don’t look so horrified. He merely smelled my hair.”
“Smelled . . . your hair?” Clara shook her head in bewilderment.
“Yes. Well, he wanted other things as well, but that was the only liberty I permitted.”
“Why?”
“For information, of course, and it was worth it.” Marian’s eyes gleamed in satisfaction.
Clara leaned forward on the edge of her bench. “Well, then. Tell me. What information have you gathered?”
“He is cursed.”
“Cursed?” she echoed. She did not know what she had been expecting to hear, but definitely not that. The word felt foreign on her tongue, something nonsensical. “What does that even mean?” Certainly Marian did not mean cursed in the sense of one who was hexed.
Marian leaned forward and whispered as though foretelling a grave prophecy. “His family, the men of his line, all die once they’ve fathered a child. For the past five generations not a one of them has lived past the birth of their firstborn.”
Clara stared at her friend, waiting for her to confess this was some grand jest.
Marian simply gazed back at her, sober as a vicar at a funeral.
Clara let out a puff of nervous laughter. “You jest.”
Marian shook her head. “No.”
“Come, you’re having me on. There is no such thing as a curse.”
Marian lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “You know that and I know that, but apparently Laird MacLarin does not. In fact, I think most everyone around here thinks the curse exists. After John, I questioned one of the stable hands. Even he knew of it. The curse is common knowledge in these parts.”
“You mean they believe in the lore of it? The fairy tale. They cannot believe it is anything more than rubbish.”
“As God’s truth, they believe it to be real. MacLarin’s father died a few weeks before his birth . . . and his own grandfather died, I’m told, in a fall from his horse when he was riding back to the castle upon news that his wife had gone into labor. Broke his neck, he did! Apparently it is customary for all the MacLarin men to die before the birth of their firstborn.” She winced. “Rather, their onlyborn.”
Clara released a breath and leaned back on the bench until the edge of the vanity table dug into her back, absorbing everything Marian just revealed.
Not a one of them has lived past the birth of their firstborn.
She shook her head, rejecting that possibility. “Unfortunate accidents. No more.”
Marian looked at her grimly. “You cannot persuade any of these locals to that effect.”
She remembered his words then. He said he could not have a child, that he was not able. This was what he meant then? Not that he wasn’t capable of fathering a child, but that he could not—he
should not.
“He thinks marrying me shall spare him this curse,” she said slowly, full understanding dawning.
“More than that.” Marian nodded. “He believes you will be giving him another man’s child, but one he can claim as his own . . . effectively cheating the curse.”
She digested that, comprehending how it might seem that way to someone who believed himself the subject of such a curse.
“Only I won’t be giving him another man’s child.” Indeed, that was quite impossible.
“No, you won’t.” Marian inclined her head in agreement. “But if he knows that particular truth, he won’t wish to wed you.”
It was a strange reality in which virtue and her maidenly status nullified her eligibility as his wife.
“No,” she murmured. “He would not wish to wed me in that case.”
Marian snorted. “Ironic, is it not?”
“Indeed.” Clara nodded brusquely. “That decides it then.”
“What is decided?”
“Well. Clearly he wants a certain type of wife, which I am not. It should lead me to refusing his suit.”
“It would seem so, yes.”
She inhaled. Rationally, she knew she should refuse his proposal. He was not offering marriage out of any altruistic motivations or because he was besotted with her as her brother seemed to think. He wanted the lie. He wanted the Clara she was pretending to be. Not the real Clara.
The real Clara would send him running.
She should decline his offer and remain as she was—soiled goods without prospects. No offers of marriage ever forthcoming. A lifelong burden to her family.
Marian watched her face closely, as though she could read Clara’s thoughts. “You know there are no such things as curses or spells.”
Clara nodded in agreement. “Of course.”
Marian went on, “So why not go ahead and marry the fool man and show him just how wrong he is?”
Clara felt her eyes widen in her face at what Marian was suggesting. “You’re mad,” she muttered.
Marian shrugged. “Now we know his motivation. Mad as it is, it’s harmless. He’s not an evil man. By all accounts, he treats his staff well. Your brother likes him, recommends him . . . and that lovely face of his is no hardship to look at.”
Clara fell quiet for some time, turning everything over in her mind. “So . . . I . . . I’d be doing him a favor of a sort? Saving him from his own superstition. Once we’re wed and our marriage takes its natural course . . .” Her voice faded, and she shook her head. “I don’t think so. He wants a child. Not me. He can find someone else to give him that.”
“When you end up increasing with his child, he shall thank you,” Marian finished confidently.
Her lips twisted wryly. “I suppose that would be one way for him to realize there is no curse.” Clara shook her head.
If she agreed. If she embraced a union with MacLarin. If she went ahead and married him.
If she allowed herself to trust a man again.
Her friend was overlooking that she’d have to marry him first. Live with him. Welcome him into her bed, her body—all before telling him the truth.
That was terrifying.
She smoothed her palms down the front of her dressing robe, fortifying herself. She had earlier decided to consider MacLarin’s proposal . . . now she wasn’t sure.
“I need to talk to my brother.” It was past time she told him the truth. She was eager to get that over with. Then she would decide what to do about the Laird MacLarin . . . and the rest of her life.
“And what will you tell your brother?”
She took a restorative breath. “Everything.”
Chapter 8
“You should marry him.”
Clara gazed at her brother. He stared back at her solemnly.
“Did you not hear anything I just told you?”
“I heard everything, and you should marry him, Clara,” he repeated, each word falling heavily on the air. “Of course, you can live out your days here with us . . . or you can seize a chance at respectability. A chance at a family and home of your own. I won’t force you to wed him, but you should consider it.”
She’d heard him, but it was difficult to accept.
It was too incredible that he thought she should still move forward and marry MacLarin even after she told him the truth of what happened in London. She had expected Marcus to put an end to that notion once she made her confession. She had expected him to tell her the idea of marriage to MacLarin was ludicrous.
None of that happened.
He stood before the fireplace, one hand propped on the ornate mantel, his expression grim. His body was as rigid as a slat of wood, but he looked away from her—almost as though he could not look at her because he was that disappointed in her.
It hurt.
She had very little memory of her father. Life had always been Mama, Marcus and Enid. Growing up, Marcus had been larger than life. A father figure. Eleven years her senior, he had always taken the time to dote on her, spend time with her. Even if that meant playing dolls. He never minded.
Oh, she knew Marcus had been a bit of a rake. Women, drinking, gaming. Even as a girl, the tales had reached her ears.
But he’d always had time for her. Her handsome older brother would sweep her up into his arms and throw her in the air like she weighed a feather. He’d never treated her like a half sibling. She was always his precious baby sister in every sense.
Except right now.
Right now she felt as though she had failed him. Failed him in the worst sense . . . and that crushed her.
She had known it was going to be difficult confessing the truth to her brother, but nothing could have prepared her for this. When he thought she was pregnant, she had felt pity from him. Seen it mingling with the sadness in his eyes.
Now there was only anger and frustration in his face, in every tense line of his body, in the slight flaring of his nostrils. She had the vague impression that he wished to throttle her, and that was a wholly new sensation. She had always amused him. His patience with her had been boundless.
Clara turned her gaze from him. She could not bear it. She wanted him to look at her as he used to, not like this.
Alyse sat on a settee nearby, her knitting forgotten on her lap. She was in the process of fashioning a baby’s bonnet. At least she had been, before Clara’s intrusion and shocking revelations.
“How can you say that, Marcus?” Alyse asked. “After everything she just revealed? She needn’t feel so very compelled to marry now. She’s not ruined. Not at all! It was all a misunderstanding—”
“The need still remains. I wish it did not, but it does.” He released a heavy sigh and rubbed at the center of his forehead. “Rolland saw to that. The damage is done. No one will believe she didn’t cuckold the bastard. Her good name is forever lost. That will never change. Nothing has changed.” He looked at Clara rather bleakly and she felt wretched.
At these words, she wavered in her determination not to wed MacLarin.
She wondered if there was not something she could have done differently, and the only thing she could think of was never meeting the earl—never attending that afternoon lawn party or any of the other fetes where Rolland had been present. Once she met him, her course had been charted.
“Hasn’t it, though?” Alyse asked. “Clara is not compromised. She is not increasing—”
“But sullied just the same, thanks to that blackguard.” Marcus’s hand on the mantel tightened into a fist. “I’ve half a mind to ride to London and call the bastard out.”
Evidently Clara wasn’t the only one he wanted to throttle. At least there was that.
Alyse’s face paled at his declaration.
“Put that nonsense out of your head directly,” Clara admonished with a wave at her sister-in-law. “You’ve Alyse to consider and your child soon arriving. See how your words have affected her.” She tsked in disapproval.
With one glan
ce at Alyse’s face, Marcus moved to sit at her side and gather her into his arms. “I’m speaking rashly. Forgive me. I would never do such a fool thing, of course. It will benefit no one.” His gaze met Clara’s over his wife’s head. “This matter with Clara will be resolved to all our satisfaction.”
Clara tried not to look so surprised. “Is that so?”
“You have an offer from Laird MacLarin. He comes from a fine old family with extensive property and a prodigious amount of respect in this area. A simple glower from him will quell any rumors, should there be any this far north. These Highlanders do not put a great deal of stock in what occurs to the south of the River Tweed anyway.”
“Yes. About MacLarin . . .” Something in her voice must have alerted him that she wasn’t finished with confessions this day. She cleared her throat. She had not yet told them about the curse.
He looked at her sharply. “What about him?”
“My visage alone did not prompt him to propose. The man is not some lovesick swain, contrary to your suggestion that I have snared his ardor.”
“Then tell me . . . why does he want to marry you?”
“He believes himself cursed.” Heavens. That sounded even more ridiculous uttered out loud than it did in her head.
“Cursed?” Alyse echoed.
Clara made short work explaining everything Marian had learned to them.
Alyse gave an airy laugh. “Hunt cannot be that superstitious. He’s much too reasonable.”
“He believes in this curse,” Clara insisted.
“Well, then what? He’ll never marry? Never father a child? Absurd!” Alyse looked bewildered. “He will let this superstition rule him? I cannot believe it.”
“That would appear to be the situation. Well, that is until I arrived and he thought he found the perfect bride.” She snorted. “One already begotten with child.”
Throughout the entire conversation, Marcus stared down into the flickering fire as though mesmerized by its fiery dance. She knew he was listening, but she had no notion of his thoughts until he at last said, “Marry him.”
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