He forced himself to return his attention to Douglas. “If Alexander will not speak to the English king,” he began, “then allow a contingency—”
“Nay,” Douglas said, his voice firm. “I will not, and well you know it.”
Reid drank as both men fell silent. While some of the chiefs agreed with Douglas, they’d all witnessed the increase in raids. There was no denying the audacity of the English reivers was growing, a situation that would undoubtedly worsen under the new warden.
“If the clans decide to boycott the Day of Truce—”
“That will not happen. Not yet.” Douglas stood up straighter. “Clan Kerr will not be swayed?”
Reid looked the warden directly in the eyes. “Nay, we will not.”
That both men wanted the same thing hardly mattered.
“Alex—”
“Does not speak for Toren.”
Would Douglas have questioned his brother this way?
Nay, likely not, but Reid could hardly blame him. He had not gone out of his way to try earning the man’s respect.
“Then who will?”
Douglas was asking not about this council but about the future of Clan Kerr. A subject he did not care to discuss. He would have said as much, except this was Douglas, and no one, not even his brothers, would dare ignore a question from this man.
“Toren has not yet named a second.”
Allie stood with Lady Gillian, who seemed to be upset, though no less so than her sister.
“Some say you are not interested.”
Reid had wondered how long it would take him to ask. “I am not.”
He waited for more questions.
Why are you not interested? What does Toren think of your decision? Who will be named his second?
But they never came. Instead, Douglas looked at him as his father might have done were he alive, with a combination of surprise and censure. He said only, “You would do well in the position.”
Reid ignored the comment and instead took his own advice, clearing his expression of emotion, and continued to watch Allie and Gillian’s argument.
“To think she could have married Covington,” Douglas observed. Though he spoke of Gillian, the same could be said for Allie. What father would promise not one, but two, of his daughters to such a man? They were fortunate to have escaped that sentence.
“They say the father has come back to our side.”
“According to Graeme, he only entertained the Earl of Covington to save Lyndwood. As a longtime friend to Kenshire, he must wish for peace as we do.” Douglas made a sound that told Reid he was not fully convinced.
“You know as well as I do,” Reid said, “allegiances are sometimes complicated.”
Again, Douglas did not hide his displeasure. “For some, perhaps. We shall speak more tomorrow.” With that, he nodded and walked away.
Reid himself was about to leave when Allie spun away from her sister and fled. It only took him a moment to recover before following her.
And sealing his fate.
10
“Allie?”
Reid thought he had seen her go this way, but she was nowhere to be found. He searched the inner courtyard, walked past a vegetable garden, and stood in the center of the vast, open space, unsure how he could have missed her.
There.
She was halfway up a set of stairs that led to the battlement near the gatehouse when he felt something at his feet. Looking down, he knew his Englishwoman would have to wait. Reid picked up the kitten, pushing back early memories of his mother who refused to allow an animal to go unloved, and placed her so close to his face their noses touched.
“You have no owner,” he told her, the grays and browns of her fur melding together like a seamless patchwork. “And are a jumpy one.” Though she tried to get out of his grasp, Reid held her a moment longer.
“White paws.” The mark of an angel. He smiled remembering his father’s reaction to that particular assertation made by the woman he’d thought abandoned him. “Well, my wee angel, hear me well. Take what you’re offered.”
Still now, he had no idea what the words meant. But his mother had uttered them often enough, and inexplicably, all manner of animals returned to her for the nourishment they needed to survive.
With a final rub just beneath her head, Reid put the kitten down and said a silent prayer she would heed his words . . . and live.
When he looked up, Reid called louder to Allie this time. But it seemed there had been no need. She’d already been looking down at him.
“I can’t—”
“You are upset.”
He always knew what to say, how to say it, and was never at a loss for words.
A guard moved from his position, heading toward them, but he stopped when Allie shook her head.
“Will you walk with me?” He sounded like one of his damn brothers. Maybe even like Catrina’s proper English husband. But Reid refused to leave her.
“That depends.”
“On?”
“Which Reid is asking?”
He frowned. “There is only one.”
“Nay.” She shook her head. “There is not. And I do not have patience this eve to spar with the one my sister met at The Wild Boar. The one I met on his first night at Highgate End.”
So it was as he suspected. Allie’s fight with Gillian had been about him.
“I can be whomever the lady wishes.” He said it jokingly, but Allie did not laugh. But she did pick up the hem of her gown and walk back down the stairs.
“Walk with me,” he repeated. Offering his elbow in a courtly gesture he’d seen but never had use for before, Reid led Allie back toward the inner gate. When he turned into the grassy area along the walls, Allie did not protest. With only two entrances leading from the outer bailey back toward the keep, they would not separate for at least half of the distance of Highgate Castle.
The sky, lit only by the light of the moon and the torches punctuating the tops of both walls, was at least clear this eve. Reid remained silent, waiting.
“She forbade me to speak to you.”
Reid was not surprised. “Yet here we are.”
Her arm fit perfectly in the crook of his elbow. Despite her ominous words, Reid was very much enjoying their simple walk.
“She means well,” Allie said. “Gillian is accustomed to playing the role of my mother.”
“You say that as if your own mother does not play her role well.”
She looked at him as if asking a silent question.
Though he rarely talked about his own mother, Reid did not hesitate. “As I’m sure you know, the story of my own is complicated. For many years we thought she abandoned my siblings and I, but we learned just recently she tried only to protect us.”
“I had heard she was found and returned to Scotland.”
The pang in his chest every time he thought of the mother he hated for leaving, the one they’d been reunited with now living with his brother . . .
“Aye,” he said, wanting to tell her more, to explain how her leaving just after his father died had affected him. But instead, he brought them back to her own observation of Gillian’s role. “And your own mother? Is she not the nurturing kind?”
Allie’s laugh usually lit up everything around her, but this time it sounded bitter. “Nurturing, indeed. She bows to her husband in all things, even when they are wrong.”
“Covington?”
It was nearly as quiet here as in the woods where they trained. Reid would have to remember this spot . . . finding privacy in any castle was a difficult feat to accomplish, but he’d had occasion to practice.
“Covington, our tutoring, his insistence Gillian and I should be sheltered at all times. Do you know I have never been to a tournament?”
“Graeme mentioned that you had been sheltered—”
“Father would allow visits only to Kenshire, and my sister was permitted to go more often than I was. ‘Reivers,’ he would say. ‘Dangers everywhere.’”
“He is not wrong.”
“Were you able to leave Brockburg?”
She already knew the answer, but he gave one anyway. “We were actually raised at Dunmure Tower and only moved to Brockburg later. But aye, lass, I was able to leave. I also had been trained—”
“Nay, please do not,” she said. “I already know your arguments. I’ve heard them many times over the years.”
Reid tried to imagine what it would have been like growing up in one place and never leaving. The very thought pressed in on him. “Did you try?”
Her sigh was one of frustration, of longing, and of lost opportunities.
“I’m sorry,” he said, pulling her to a stop.
“You were not there. Why are you sorry for—”
“Not for your upbringing,” he said, knowing his next words would change everything. Somehow that knowledge didn’t stop him from speaking them. It was as if he were no longer in control of himself. “I’m sorry your sister dislikes me.”
Her perfectly arched brows lifted.
“I know I can be hard to . . . like.”
“Nay, you are not hard to like at all. Not this Reid.”
“Allie, there is only one Reid. Both are a part of me, and as such I could never be good enough to deserve you. I tried to tell you precisely that earlier today. This is why I’ve attempted to distance myself from you, why I should not have asked you to dance earlier, and why I should most definitely not be with you now.”
She should reject him. Hell, he would reject himself.
“What are you saying?”
If he were a clever man, he would not answer that question. He would do everything in his power to forget this conversation, forget Allie, and ignore her until the council was over.
But he could not.
She had enchanted him. He was drawn to her warmness and enthusiasm, drawn to her bravery and honesty, drawn to everything he was not. And as despicable as he might be, Reid would not dishonor his brothers or his clan, which left him with one choice.
A choice he’d never thought to make.
“I’m asking you if you will accept both sides of me.”
Either she was not as surprised as he would have expected, or his lessons on concealing emotion had been shockingly effective. “Accept?”
“I want to kiss you again,” he started. “But I’d like to do much more than that. I would feel your every curve beneath my hands, make you mine right here if such a thing were possible.”
Her eyes widened.
“I want to be the only man to train you. To dance with you. And I know we’ve only just met. But I—”
“Aye, Reid. I will marry you.”
* * *
Gillian was right. Allie was not thinking clearly. At least, she must not have been since there was no other explanation for the words that just escaped her lips.
Reid Kerr was the very last man she would have imagined as her husband. He was rude and arrogant, the kind of man who pretended not to care when his actions indicated otherwise. Oddly enough, it was Aidan who had helped her get to know him. The moment he’d agreed to allow Reid to take over her training, she’d been forced to see the man in a different light.
She didn’t know much about love, never having experienced it for a man before, but she’d run from the hall earlier after her sister had said, “He cannot leave Highgate soon enough.” She’d been upset with her sister, but it had also struck her that she might never see Reid Kerr again after the council ended.
The thought had filled her with emptiness, along with the knowledge that, once again, what she wanted did not matter . . .
And then he was there.
“You will?”
Oh God, was that not what he had meant? “I thought . . . when you said . . . did you mean—”
“Aye! I did . . . I do want that.” He grasped her by both cheeks and forced her to look at him. “But you still don’t understand.”
“I do,” she said. “And my answer remains the same.”
His expression softened. “You are too good—”
“Stop,” she said. “If your intent is to dissuade me, know that I can be quite stubborn.”
His smile elicited a tingling in her very core, a need to touch him back.
She covered his hands with her own. “You said you wanted to kiss me again.”
Reid groaned.
“So why don’t you—”
His lips came down on hers more firmly than before. This time, she opened for him immediately and was rewarded with an enveloping of warmth, as if she’d just stepped from a cold winter’s day directly into summer. His tongue swept inside, and when she touched it with her own, the sound he made burned a path straight to her soul.
Allie wanted to move closer, to feel him against her. Reid tilted his head, his lips seemingly everywhere at once. When he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer, Allie did the same with him. Their kiss consumed her, and she never wanted it to end.
“If we don’t stop,” he murmured, breaking away, “I will take you here in full view of him.”
It took a moment for Allie to understand. She followed his gaze up, and sure enough, a guard stood atop the outer wall, watching them. Though he immediately looked away, Allie moved back from Reid.
“He saw us!”
The corner of his mouth lifted ever so slightly. “So he did.”
Reid pulled her back toward him. Lifting her hair ever so gently from her shoulder, he leaned in and placed a kiss on her neck.
“But . . .” She tried to look up. “Should we—”
“Find a more private place? Aye, but only if you’re willing to relinquish your virginity this very night.”
Was he jesting? Allie pulled back. “Surely you don’t mean—”
Reid cocked his head to the side. “Go on.”
She would never reference such a thing out loud. Allie was bolder than her sister, but she was not that bold. “I just meant . . . you are indelicate.”
He did not disagree with her. Indeed, he nodded.
“And arrogant.”
Another nod.
“And—”
“Enamored,” he said. “Enthralled, enchanted, and bewildered by my own actions.”
He could be charming when it served him too, but Allie would not mention that. He already knew.
“What shall we do now?” she asked.
His slow smile told her he’d deliberately misunderstood.
“If you’re willing to ignore our curious friend, I can initiate you to a world of pleasure.”
“I meant”—and he knew this—“about us.”
Reid turned serious then, and she hated being responsible for that. But there were many obstacles for them still, including her own sister.
“Gillian forbade me to speak to you,” she added. “I hardly think she will agree to give her blessing to our marriage.”
Saying it aloud dampened her mood at once, but it did not shake her certainty. Allie hardly knew Reid, and a few days before she would have gladly tossed him into the moat . . . if Highgate had one. And yet, no one had ever before seemed to fit her the way he did. No, she had no doubts about her hasty decision. The idea of seeing him leave Highgate, never to return, made her feel as if the bottom of her stomach had dropped out.
“You do not need her blessing.”
“She is my sister. And in the absence of my father—”
“Allie.” Reid took her hand. “You need no one. We could handfast now. Or be married any time by simply saying the words.”
Though his words were, indeed, true, she could not do something like that behind Gillian’s back, knowing she did not approve. She tried to make him understand in a different way. “What if your brothers did not like me?”
He shrugged. “That would not matter, lass.”
“You would marry me even if Toren asked you to do otherwise?”
“He is married to an Englishwoman, as is my brother Alex.”
“Na
y,” she said, squeezing his hand, willing him to understand. “I meant to say, if Toren asked you not to marry me—”
“I would ignore him.”
“And if he asked as your chief?”
Reid’s eyes narrowed. “He’d never do such a thing.”
“Forget your brothers.” She frowned, pushing away from him with a prickling of doubt. “I want Gillian to like you.”
He was clearly not convinced, his arms shutting her out, folded in front of him.
“I want her to see you as I do. And for our families to have the kind of relationship you have with the Waryns. If not with Lyndwood, then with my sister at least. And Clan Scott.”
Reid scowled, his brows furrowing together. “You mean the kind of relationship you have with Aidan?”
What was his problem?
“Precisely!” she said, putting more emphasis on the word than was necessary.
And then she understood the source of his distress. He was not the only one who’d misjudged her relationship with Aidan. Others had made similar comments. She should not like that he was jealous of her brother-in-law, but a small part of her smiled inside.
“Reid, he is like a brother to me. He’s called me sister from the start. Aidan showed both Gillian and me kindness when we knew no one here.”
“I do not leave Highgate End without you.”
When he pulled her toward him once again, Allie breathed in his scent, still so unfamiliar to her, as was the man himself. Everything about this made no sense. She’d never been this rash before, nor had she intended to marry so soon. Indeed, she’d hidden here in Highgate End to avoid her father’s matchmaking. She’d wanted simple happiness here in Scotland, a reprieve from her staid life in Lyndwood.
There was nothing simple about the man whose arms were wrapped around her, the one she’d unbelievably agreed to marry. Yet she would not let him go. He needed her, and somehow she knew they would be right together. “Then you will just have to charm her as you did me.”
“That, my little lass,” he said, tucking her head against his chest, “I can do easily enough.”
11
Reid was going to strangle Lady Gillian.
The Rogue’s Redemption Page 7