The Irresistible Mac Rae

by Karen Ranney

  Riona shook her head. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her since dinner last night.”

  Susanna looked around, then flew to the side of the room where Riona’s hat lay.

  “I’ve decided not to wear it,” Riona said.

  Susanna held it in her hands, looking first at Riona and then at the scrap of material, lace, and feathers. Sighing deeply, she placed the hat back on the chair.

  The only time today, Riona thought, that she would get her way.

  “Harold is waiting.”

  Riona nodded, squaring her shoulders. Together they would walk to the church, followed by the people of Tyemorn Manor. A ceremony to be duplicated by Maureen when the time came.

  She was enveloped in a hug, and Susanna held on when Riona would have withdrawn.

  “Be happy, my dearest. There are ways.”

  “Yes,” she said. An agreement issued for the sake of politeness.

  Susanna handed her a nosegay of flowers from her garden. She thanked her and left the room, her mother following.

  Entering the parlor a few minutes later, she turned to Harold, presenting herself with a small curtsy.

  “You look beautiful,” he said, standing. “The loveliest bride I’ve ever seen.”

  For a moment, she could almost believe him sincere. But how like him not to realize that her coloring was too pale and her hands trembled. Or maybe he didn’t care. She would have told him that nerves kept her stomach lurching, and that she felt decidedly ill, but all she did was force a smile to her face and thank him in a wooden voice.

  She was strangling the flowers. The stems were damp, crushed by her fingers.

  “Are you ready?”

  She nodded, resigned to her fate. Together they left the house.

  The procession was delayed while another search was made for Maureen.

  “I cannot believe your sister would do something so inconsiderate,” Susanna said, when she couldn’t be found. “What with everything else happening today.”

  “Maybe she left for the church early,” Riona volunteered. “Or she’s gone to pick some mint for my stomach. She knew I was ill last night.” There were a dozen or so reasons why she couldn’t be found.

  “You’re right, of course,” Susanna said. “She’ll just have to catch up with us.”

  They walked silently, forming a procession. Behind them were Susanna and Ned. Polly was still ill, but in attendance, but poor Abigail had been left behind to finish the wedding supper since Cook’s fever had not abated. But following them were the men and women who worked at Tyemorn Manor.

  The kirk was crowded, the happy faces of the villagers beaming back at her as she and Harold entered. Slowly, they made their way to the communion table as those from Tyemorn Manor found their places among the congregation.

  The afternoon sunlight filtered through the stained-glass windows, bathing the front of the church in soft hues of red, blue, and green. The windows were from another time, when the church had first been constructed and the service was more ornate. Popish, she’d heard it called.

  This ceremony would be plain and unadorned. A simple declaration from them both and blessed by the church.

  Mr. Dunant smiled in approval as they took their places before him.

  Her dress was strangling her. Nor could she breathe. It wasn’t the constriction of her laces as much as a growing feeling of utter horror.

  What was she doing?

  Sometimes, as a girl, she’d dreamed of her wedding. Her imagination had furnished the day with sunshine, singing birds, smiles and laughter. Although her childish visions had a shadowy figure as the groom, she knew only too well that this bridegroom was not the man he should have been.

  She couldn’t marry him. She glanced at Harold, feeling as if she were waking from a nightmare. Except, of course, that this was real.

  If James had never come into her life, she would have accepted this marriage. Not with good grace, true, but she wouldn’t have felt the sense of despair she was experiencing now. But he had come into her life, and despite the fact that he had left Tyemorn Manor, he was still here. Simply because he would always be in her heart.

  Once she’d loved like that, how could she forget it? How could she ignore it? How could she trade that for Harold McDougal?

  She looked wildly around for Maureen. She needed to talk to her sister, explain why this marriage couldn’t continue. Surely James was correct. If Samuel really loved Maureen, wouldn’t he want her? Scandal wouldn’t matter.

  It hadn’t mattered to James.

  Live with me on the abbey land. I’ll build our home and we’ll be impervious to scandal or whispers. Let the biddies say what they will. We simply won’t care.

  She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t marry Harold.

  A few weeks ago, the idea had been repugnant but necessary. Now it seemed even more loathsome and not quite as important.

  She turned and looked at Harold, staring at him full face in front of the congregation.

  Frankly, she no longer cared that he’d once threatened her with scandal. Or still posed a danger. She would no doubt horrify her mother and the rest of the congregation by doing what her heart decreed. But she no longer cared about that, either.

  All that mattered was that she loved James. As soon as she could, she was going to travel to Gilmuir, to beg him to forgive her.

  But first, she had to stop this marriage.

  “Do you love anyone in your life, Harold?” she asked him. He turned and looked at her, surprised.

  “Are we at that again, Riona? I had thought we’d settled that.”

  “I don’t care what you feel for me, Harold,” she said shaking her head. “But tell me this, is there anyone else in your life whom you love? Truly, completely, absolutely? Someone who makes your heart beat faster just by being in the same room? Someone who makes you smile? Someone who makes you daydream?”

  He impatiently turned back to Mr. Dunant, nodding for the ceremony to begin.

  She held up her hand, and the minister stopped in mid-word, frowning.

  “I do,” she said, hearing the words echo through the church. “I love him beyond any measure.” Beyond sin or society’s dictates. Eons past propriety or even reason.

  She scanned the congregation once again. Her mother sat there, and beside her, Ned. But of Maureen, there was no sign. “I cannot do this, Harold,” she said, feeling an absurd desire to laugh. She compromised by smiling. “I can’t marry you.”

  “Have you forgotten our arrangement, Riona?” His eyes narrowed as he whispered the words to her.

  “No,” she said, sending a silent apology to her absent sister. “I haven’t forgotten. But it doesn’t matter. You can say what you will to whomever you will, whenever you will.”

  “Then you leave me no choice.” He was threatening her, and yet she still felt almost buoyant with relief.

  “I doubt anyone will care what you have to say, McDougal,” a voice boomed out.

  Riona turned and looked up at the choir gallery, empty save for one figure. James stood there, attired in his captain’s finery. A commanding presence, one who now had the attention of every pair of eyes in the church.

  Riona’s smile widened.

  He turned and disappeared from sight, and she heard his boots on the steps. A moment later he appeared at the end of the aisle. The members of the congregation turned and looked at him, then at her.

  She left Harold’s side, dropping her bouquet on the floor.

  “Tell the story far and wide,” James said, his voice booming throughout the church. “Maureen and Captain Hastings were wed this morning at Gretna Green.”

  Slowly, Riona walked down the aisle toward him, ignoring Harold and the minister, and the avid eyes of those who watched. She noticed only one person. James.

  “You didn’t leave me after all,” she said, reaching him.

  “How could I?”

  She stretched out her hands, but instead of taking them, he placed his hands
on her waist. “Will you be my bride, Riona McKinsey?” he said, loud enough so that anyone in the church could hear him.

  “Oh yes, James,” she said.

  He startled her by picking her up and holding her above him while he turned in a slow circle. She braced her hands on his shoulders, thinking that now was a strange time to begin to weep. But perhaps tears came with joy as well as grief.

  “You once asked what were my weaknesses,” he said. “I’ve only one. You.”

  She began to smile through her tears, startled by his words and his wild and reckless mood. She’d never seen him this way, with his smile flashing bright and a lock of hair falling over his brow.

  “And you’re my temptation,” she said, bending her head, still smiling even as he kissed her.

  Chapter 33

  S usanna decided that it would be more proper to move from the church, to hold the wedding in the parlor at Tyemorn Manor, which meant, of course, that few people would witness the nuptials. But since she and James had given the village of Ayleshire enough to talk about for months, the private ceremony was more to Riona’s liking.

  Harold was sent on his way, which was just as well, since it looked as if James would cheerfully pummel him again. The moment the carriage left, a pony cart arrived, bearing the minister and Mrs. Dunant.

  “I cannot believe that you don’t have to marry that odious man,” Susanna said, smoothing the folds of Riona’s dress. The second time she’d done so today. “I am so very pleased.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked. “I thought you approved of Harold.”

  Her mother looked disconcerted. “How could you think that?”

  “Because you urged me to marry him, that’s why,” Riona said in disbelief.

  “That was before James arrived.”

  She raised her eyebrows at that. But her mother didn’t add to the comment.

  “Just think, both my girls married on the same day.” Susanna looked inordinately pleased with herself.

  James had answered all her questions. “Captain Hastings assures me that he’ll bring Maureen back for a visit before they settle permanently in Inverness. At the moment, they’re staying with his parents.”

  Susanna’s look changed to concern and he reassured her. “I believe that Mrs. Parker’s worries on that score were greatly exaggerated. According to Hastings, his parents have no objection to the match.”

  “Or to the wedding? A most romantic thing for him to do,” Susanna said, smiling at him.

  “Yes.” But that’s all he would say.

  A spot had been cleared before the fireplace, and the large family Bible placed on the table. Behind it stood the parson, Mr. Dunant, and his wife. Her gaze was pleasant yet curious while the pastor, evidently irritated about the change of venue, glared at everyone in the room. In punishment, perhaps, for moving the wedding from the church, he’d retreated into an uncharacteristic sermon about sin and its consequences. Mrs. Dunant merely patted him on the arm from time to time, and he’d finally ceased.

  Her mother and Ned stood behind them, with Polly, Abigail, Rory, and Cook behind them.

  But it was James who was the focus of her attention, tall and overpoweringly male.

  Riona recited her vows in a voice that held laughter in it, unable to hide her joy. James’s voice sounded firm and sure. She slanted a glance at him as he stood there, unable to believe, even at that moment, that he was to be her husband.

  When the ceremony was over, he looked down at her, his impossibly blue eyes twinkling. “Are you up to a journey?” he asked.

  “Now?”

  “Now,” he said.

  Of course she was. Anywhere he wished to go.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Gilmuir.”

  A wedding trip to a castle. What could be more enchanted?

  Less than an hour later she found herself in their coach, her bags packed, and James beside her.

  “We’ll stay in Inverness tonight,” he said, after they’d waved goodbye to her family. “At an inn I know.”

  They reached the city after night had fallen, the journey surprisingly swift. But it might have been because she was with James. They’d sat together facing the horses, his arm around her. She couldn’t keep from patting him from time to time, or stroking her gloved hand across his sleeve, small touches that reassured her he was really there.

  “How did you arrange their elopement?” she asked, under no illusions that Captain Hastings had devised the plan on his own. It was the perfect solution to their problems, and yet it had taken James to ensure that it happened.

  “I merely told the good captain that the woman I love was determined to sacrifice herself for him. He agreed with me that such an event could not be allowed to happen. Even an Englishman has a sense of honor, Riona.”

  She smiled at him, shaking her head.

  “A very dramatic way of proposing, James.”

  “I was in the mood for a bit of claiming, Riona,” he said with a grin. “Call it public passion, if you will. We do fine in private, but I think the world needs to know how I feel about you.”

  That declaration earned him a kiss.

  The innkeeper’s wife and the tavern maid were as goggle-eyed as the women of her household around James. Riona didn’t bother frowning at them, knowing, from prior experience, that nothing she could do would have any effect.

  They were led to a chamber that startled her with its appointments. The third-floor room boasted a dressing table, a wardrobe, and a large fabric-draped screen in the corner. The fireplace, with its chiseled white stone mantel, dominated one wall. But it was the bed that commanded the room. Four tall, carved mahogany posts stretched upward to the ceiling, left undraped by curtains so that the ornate carving was revealed.

  James closed the door behind them, placing her valise near the vanity and putting his own bag next to it.

  “I can arrange a bath if you’d like,” he offered.

  “Perhaps later.” She opened her bag, removing her nightgown and her brush from the top.

  He stood at the edge of the screen erected in the corner. “This inn boasts a clever tub.”

  She walked to where he stood and peered around the screen. There, a tall armoire with a rounded top rested on a marble pedestal. James went to open it, but instead of it being a place to hold clothes, the unit tilted down until it rested on the floor, becoming a bath.

  “How marvelous,” she said, raising and lowering it herself. “But how did you know? Have you stayed here before?”

  He nodded.

  She pushed back the tendrils of hair from her face as she sat at the dressing table. Staring at herself in the mirror, she saw his reflection behind her. He was so large and the room, although commodious, was not built to house a MacRae.

  He was smiling at her in perfect accord. As if he understood every thought she had, including a feeling of shyness she’d never before felt around him.

  She stood and moved to him, beginning to smile as she neared him. “The innkeeper called me your wife.”

  “That he did,” he said easily, reaching for her. She went into his embrace easily. “Riona MacRae.”

  “It has a nice sound,” she admitted. “Will we be happy, do you think? Or will we argue and disagree from time to time?”

  His smile grew in scope. “We are neither of us saints, dear wife. If you thought yourself married to one, I must change your mind. Quickly.”

  “Oh, but you could be an angel,” she said, teasing him. “An angel with black hair and heavenly blue eyes. At least the barmaid thought so. And the innkeeper’s wife.”

  “And I never saw the one of them,” he said, smiling. “How foolish you women are, to judge a man by his appearance.”

  “And you men do not?” She frowned at him. “We are constrained to our corsets because of men’s idea of beauty. We must purse our lips just so and never seem to notice that our bodice barely covers our breasts. A woman’s hair must be long, however unrul
y it becomes. No, it is the men who judge a woman upon her appearance. Either that, or her fortune.”

  His smile faded. “Like Harold?”

  “Exactly like Harold.”

  He released her, stepping back and surveying her. “While I care little for your fortune. Thus I must have judged you solely on your character and your charm.”

  “Did you?” She felt her cheeks warm at his words.

  “I was entranced by your mind first, I recall. When we walked in the darkness together.”

  “A forbidden thing to do.”

  “Then I’m grateful for your wanton streak.”

  “I would be happier if you were not so handsome,” she told him, a confession from the depths of her heart. “It is easier, I think, to love a homely man than an impossibly beautiful one. A wife should not have to worry about women stumbling over themselves in an effort to see you.”

  “They do not,” he said, his face deepening in color.

  The sight of his discomfort made them equals in this moment of revelation.

  “Oh, but they do,” she said, smiling.

  “Would you prefer that I had a scar and a limp?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Her answer disconcerted him, she could tell. “Or if you had some flaws. Any that might be apparent.”

  He shook his head, his smile back in place. “Perhaps I can arrange a duel with Alisdair after we return to Gilmuir. Or fall down the stairs to the shipyard,” he added wryly.

  “I don’t want you hurt,” she was quick to say.

  “Then perhaps I can inquire if there are any faux scars for sale, like beauty patches.”

  “Or you could scowl more,” she suggested. “Look fiercer than you do. Or blacken one of your teeth.”

  He laughed, the sound echoing through the room. “I think you exaggerate, but my esteem has grown by it. Thank you.”

  She busied herself with unbraiding her plait, wishing for the thousandth time that she wasn’t cursed with such unmanageable hair. A few gold pins dropped to the ground, and both she and James bent to pick them up.

  “I hate my hair,” she said when they stood. The frizzed ends flared around her head. “Nothing else represents my life so much as my hair. Its length is measured by propriety, and it doesn’t matter how unruly it is, I must fashion it as society decrees.”