“No’ only would I nay be caught dead sitting on my arse whilst my people suffer,” she interrupted, “but we havenae the leisure or the money to buy such resources for needlepoint and music thanks to y—”
“Aileana has always been our wildling,” Peigi interjected with a sidelong glance, the soft edge of love coating her words. “Our dear mother tried to mold her into a lady, but she’s always been headstrong, and since our eviction two years ago”—Peigi’s implication was the closest thing her ladylike sister would make to an accusation, and James’s eyes cut back and forth between them as if bracing for an onslaught—“my sister has done everything she can, as have we all, to help uplift our people. She’s a skilled healer and prefers romping along the shores of Loch Ness or tending our parents’ graves in the cemetery or helping the peasants with their tasks. But a real asset, she is, for she’s never afeard of rolling up her dress sleeves to get work done. And she’s always been motivated by kindness and love.”
Aileana drew her brows together and gazed at MacDonald. “I suppose being like a lad has its benefits, eh? I make a good work mule, is what she’s saying.”
“’Tis nay, sister!” Peigi protested.
“Enough, Aileana,” Seamus said, with little conviction to his voice, as he dragged his hand through his hair.
The kitchen maids began delivering meager platters of flatbread and roughly hollowed wooden trenchers of watery broth and bits of floating vegetables. A cowbell was rung in the bailey, and off-duty servants and guardsmen hurried through the front doors, bringing a draft of cold air and sprinkling snow across the threshold as they cast wary glances at their supper guest. Pathetic, Aileana thought, feeling her throat thicken with emotion. Their meal was already so meager, and now they had to share it with the Devil MacDonald. He’d see firsthand how little they had to celebrate this Christmastide.
Aileana breezed around James, who examined the hall as if assessing the worth of it all, before sitting. Perhaps lamenting that he had missed his chance to own it when her brother had returned with the Earl of Huntly’s soldiers to evict the MacDonald squatters. His eyes cut to Seamus while he twisted the stem of his goblet, as if weighing options, and she squirmed with curiosity to know what he was thinking. His eyes lifted to hers as if sensing her stare. Aye, her guard rose. Without a doubt, he was scheming something.
The meal began solemnly, and Aileana tried to stare at her bowl instead. Watching their guest sent butterflies through her stomach with each searing gaze and did nothing to keep her nerves calm.
“And so, James,” Seamus addressed him, “let us discuss how to make my sister’s thievery right with ye.”
Just like that, her eyes lifted to the enemy’s again. She shivered. Watched him tear off a bite of flatbread, watched his jaw muscles bulge with each chew. His gaze held hers so tightly, she couldn’t look away. Another shiver washed over her, for he seemed ready to voice whatever he’d been thinking—
“I need a wife,” James said as if this somehow answered her brother’s question. Peigi gasped. Aileana’s stomach roiled. Silence fell like an iron gate upon the hall as utensils clattered down. “One of yer sisters will do.”
Trepidation washed over Aileana like floodwaters. She knew which sister he wanted.
Chapter Two
Ye’re a whoreson, James, for playing at such an intrigue. But this infernal lass, with the glossy voice of an angel belying her barbed words—and the Highland clans called him a devil—had given him an opportunity he desperately needed that he never thought he’d get. He desired his inheritance. And thanks to restrictions thrust upon him, more like a curse, the only way to claim four hundred pounds was to take a Grant wife and conquer Grant lands by his twenty-fifth birthday—which happened to fall upon Twelfth Night. Best never let her ken that I’m desperate for a wife, or she’ll be sure to rib me mercilessly.
The people of the western isles and Highlands feared him as a warlord dominating the MacDonalds of Clanranald, who’d claimed the Earldom of Ross. They needn’t know that while his castle coffers were rich, his personal ones were not, thanks to his stepmother—
Enough about that.
The silence in the wake of his demand was deafening. Grant wouldn’t marry a sister to him. Still, he chewed the unleavened bread, swallowed, tore off another bite, and chewed, remaining impassive even though the spark that had ignited in Lady Aileana’s eyes intrigued him further. He’d heard that Clan Grant bred fetching women, but this one… He’d been unable to look away from Aileana’s untamed beauty since she’d squared off with him, her chin high, her auburn waves bonny on the breeze.
What fool had allowed her to think herself plain? Aye, she was fresh-faced, unpainted by makeup, but she looked like Scotland would look as a person. Wild. Unyielding. Proud. Beautiful around every curve, every edge, as the crags and straths appeared in the glowing sunset.
“Too bad ye’ll never ken a whit about my tongue…” Christ above, didn’t Lady Aileana know a remark like that would do nothing but pique a man’s curiosity and heat his blood for a challenge? Add brazen to her list of qualities. That comment had repeated in his mind like a bell tolling. He couldn’t shake it away. What gently bred woman spoke like that, challenging him to pick up his sword of words and parry with her?
Yet wouldnae that be the ultimate conquest? To determine more than a whit about her tongue for myself?
No. He’d never been one to play at intrigues with women. In fact, being raised a bastard had instilled fear in him. How could he ever be flagrant with his male urges and make bairns out of wedlock on a woman, shattering her reputation and shrouding his seed in a lifetime of shame, to be raised in the shadow of criticisms, whispers, and gossip, as he’d been raised?
“Mine ears must have misheard ye, friend,” Laird Grant said, seething.
Ha! Friend indeed. More like a knife in me back the first moment I turn around.
Aileana snorted, too. Damned lass. “Aye, a friend who leaves wreckage in his wake.”
“Ye want to act like a victim, lady?” James challenged, taking the bait, and did he hope for her rebuttal? “Yer brother rode on Tioram Castle and helped the Frasers evict me to instate their own choice of chief, a cousin of mine so distant, and with so thin a claim to the lairdship he was easy enough to quell, thank God—”
“I willnae dare believe yer accusations that Seamus is guilty of the cruelties ye’ve bestowed on others. And it nay changes the fact that ye reaved against us, stealing our cattle, our stores of grain—”
“Aileana, for bloody’s sake—”
“Aye, as was deserved.” James cut off Seamus’s attempt to interrupt the argument. “Because yer brother rode on us, too, stealing ours,” he retorted.
“And ’twas yer faither who maimed mine,” she seethed, sitting forward in her seat as if she wished to claw her way across the damned table into his lap to scratch at him. He wouldn’t mind her in his lap. “He—”
“Enough, both of ye!” thundered Seamus, shooting to his feet.
Aileana jumped at her brother’s outburst, and again, the strange protectiveness that had afflicted him when he’d watched Seamus scold Aileana outdoors flared in his stomach. Why? Because of Marjorie… Nay, Aileana could clearly hold her own. He was daft to fear for this hellion, who would just as soon see a dirk lodged in his heart at first chance.
Grant jerked his belts straight and eased back into his seat.
“Yer ears have nay misheard me,” James finally replied. “I need a woman. Ye have two sisters, Seamus, neither of whom ye can afford.”
Horror dropped Peigi’s mouth wide, as it did to the silent Lady Elizabeth. Aileana gaped at him.
Ye, James mouthed at her so boldly, it was a wonder he wasn’t a randy stag who regularly bedded wenches.
Her eyes widened farther. Why does needling the lass please me so? Aye, his curiosity was piqued. He watched sunbursts
erupt on her creamy cheeks, sprinkled with endearing freckles… “Fairies’ wee kisses,” Marjorie had always told him when he was a lad and his own face had been plagued with freckles—now faded. He swallowed at the stab of pain thoughts of his oldest half sister always induced, willing the memory away. Why hadn’t anyone made Aileana believe the truth? That they made her beautiful? His blood stirred at the mere thought of pecking kisses upon each one. A man would think them kissable, until she opens her mouth and tells him off. He harrumphed to himself.
“I’ll consider the debt owed me paid. It would ease yer purse strings to have one less mouth to feed.”
Seamus harrumphed now, too. “Try again, man. Why the hell would I give a beloved sister to such a bastard?”
James swallowed the anger that flared at the insult and sat still.
“Surely ye would be cruel to her out of spite,” Grant added.
Hell, he’d never been cruel to a woman in his life. He thought of Marjorie again, one of the two older sisters who’d doted on him, despite their mother’s hatred of him. She’d been married off to that brute… In sooth, Marjorie’s lot had made him think closely about his. Would he be able to remain tempered? Careful? Rational? With a woman of his own? Or did all men turn into unfaithful husbands like his father or violent beasts like Marjorie’s?
“The absolute horror,” whispered Peigi to Aileana, whose hazel-green eyes were still wide.
His brow knitted. Shock and surprise were understandable. But horror? He knew these people disliked him, but was he really so repulsive, too? Still, he felt an ounce of satisfaction. So it is possible to render this hellion Aileana speechless. The satisfaction induced a fleeting smile he tried miserably to suppress as he filled his mouth with another bite of bread.
“And besides, what does needing a wife have to do with anything?” Seamus Grant growled, rising slowly from his seat. “My sister stole vegetables. Coin is a sufficient compensation. She ought no’ pay with her life.”
“That’s a fatal way of putting it,” James replied. “No one aims to send her to the gallows. I seek an accord, ’tis all. Yer clan wronged mine. I need a wife. Ye have two unmarried sisters with no dowries, no doubt.” He eyed Lady Aileana again. “And I’d never harm a woman—”
“Because ye stole them from us!” she exclaimed, slamming her goblet down like a man at a tavern and jumping to her feet. “And as to yer claim that ye’d never harm a woman, true, yer reputation for benevolence and compassion are known throughout the land,” she said with a dramatic sweep of the hand, as if entertaining a court.
She was trying to piss him off, and succeeding. He mustn’t give her the satisfaction of winning. “I speak truth, woman,” he drawled, his mouth tugging up so that he knew a divot creased his cheek. “Nary a complaint I’ve heard from the maids yet.”
“So smug,” Aileana muttered under her breath. “And they are no doubt women with poor taste if they lie with the likes of ye—”
“Sister, I demand ye stop.” Seamus’s reminder for silence, however, still didn’t seem to affect Aileana, for she lifted her chin, then lifted her goblet and took a measured sip, her hazel eyes never leaving his, as if daring him for a rebuttal.
James’s blood burned for the challenge. Aileana had better be the bargain bride Seamus chose for him.
“I stole no dowries,” he scoffed, leaning back.
“Aye, man, ye did,” Seamus rumbled, defending her. “Ye stole Aileana’s jewels, and ye stole the purses set aside for their marriages.”
Jewelry. James took in the plainness of Aileana’s appearance. No jewels about her neck, nor bobbles hanging from her ears. Mayhap she wore none because she no longer had any. And at Peigi’s ears, he now noticed a pair of pearls inlaid in gold suspiciously like the ones his men had presented to him after their reave of Urquhart two years ago… Shite.
What had he just asked of these women? For the sake of fulfilling obligations for his inheritance, when he’d stolen theirs? And Aileana might be desperate and altruistic enough to accept his demand, to help her people, even if her bold tongue’s retribution would likely lash him at every opportunity for the rest of his days.
Aileana’s lips finally parted to argue, but Seamus held his hand to her for silence.
“I would speak, brother,” she argued anyway.
How did she do that? Speak such commands with softness in her voice? It was misleading, and it had the power to transfix a man right before she struck her target true.
“He’s coercing ye. He’s nay going to run to the Earl of Huntly over vegetables, nor is he going to run to the king. I say we call his threat what it is—a bluff—and send him on his way. I can keep helping the crofters and tending our sick, and if ye continue to hunt and barter, we’ll find a way to make it through and pray our recompense is awarded. Peigi’s piecework brings in some coin, too, during the convent’s seasonal faires. Bollocks to this tyrant.”
A twinge of guilt assailed James for insulting her outside, for right now, her face pinched with distress like it had then, as if her strength were an ugliness that made her repulsive, made her more suited to help haul hay, wearing a lad’s trews instead of a lady’s kirtle. And if she’d been the thief who’d successfully raided him, she was an expert horsewoman, who would no doubt love to gallop the hills with him—
Do nay be an eejit, man. The woman would spit in yer porridge with gladness.
“Ye can call it what ye like, lass, but my request is genuine, and I’ll turn a blind eye to the theft.”
“Nay, and that’s final,” Seamus growled. “My sisters are nay free for bartering.”
James leaned back in his chair, haughty as a monarch, and slung his arm over the back. At one point in time, his ancestors had truly been monarchs of this land. “I understand that the king might indeed rule in yer favor and order me to pay ye a handsome sum. Three hundred head of cattle and bundles of commodities? But if I bring a grievance before the court, I dare say yer sister’s thievery might put yer sterling reputation in jeopardy.”
“I offer ye hospitality and an honest wish to make amends, and ye would blackmail me into giving ye a sister? As if she were naught but a cow for bargaining?” Seamus’s voice rumbled, and now he unsheathed his dirk from his belt.
“Nay,” James said, shoving to his feet, too, and withdrawing his dirk.
Soldiers clattered forth.
“Drop yer weapon, MacDonald,” the man named Donegal said. “Ye forget yer place right now.”
James, his chest rising and falling, fuming, sheathed his dirk. He instead withdrew his riding gloves and shoved aside his chair.
“Ye all act wounded, as if yer clan has done no wrong to me. As if my anger is unwarranted. As if my raid on ye wasnae to resupply everything that yer clan stole from us when ye evicted me. Except I didnae go crying to the king like a bairn throwing a tantrum. I handled it and moved on. Fine. I care naught at all if she stole a pile of vegetables, or a bundle of coin. I go to complain and play dirty the way ye do.”
He stalked down the dais.
“I want my sword,” he called over his shoulder.
“He’s nay bluffing, sister,” he heard the Lady Peigi whisper through the silence.
He was nearly to the door beneath the censuring gazes of Urquhart’s inhabitants when Seamus called, “Stop!”
He stopped, pivoted over his shoulder, and grabbed the latch, for the guard at the door seemed disinclined to assist him.
“Please. Return to the board. Let us barter with words instead of weapons.”
Aye, Seamus Grant the peacemaker, the one to first draw his blade. James snorted.
He took his time deciding a course of action, then lumbered back to the dais. Aileana’s gaze was fixed on him. He assessed her, watched her sip more wine, watched the moisture make her lower lip glisten, watched her tongue run along the flesh to clean the remnants of dri
nk. That tongue. He wanted to know much more than a whit about it. He wanted to silence it with his.
He, too, scooped up his drink to take another sip, still standing. “She’d be taken care of in a rich house, would want for nothing, and would have a position of rank. And yer debt to me would be paid.”
Seamus scoffed, but it was obvious by the thoughtful furrow capturing his brow that he was beginning to consider the merits of the offer. Seamus sighed. “I’ll need to discuss the matter with my sisters—”
“Ye cannae be serious!” Aileana exclaimed. “Did ye nay hear a word that I said? The nàmhaid is coercing ye!”
Her wild hair was fraying in wisps about her face, and her pert nose wrinkled. She’d be a handful as a wife, for certain. Peigi would make a more agreeable woman, and she was clearly a cultivated beauty who would do her duty. But James’s eyes remained trained on Aileana.
“I’d never make either of ye marry a man who ye didnae wish to wed,” Seamus said, trying to placate Aileana, though Peigi, to her credit, looked just as mortified.
“Come, sisters, let’s leave the Devil to his meal for a moment—”
Ah. “Devil.” They use the ugly moniker, dubbed me by my enemies, right in front of me.
“I’d like to speak with ye privately. Wife? Will ye see to the laird’s companionship whilst I’m away?”
Grant’s eyes flitted to the man, Sir Donegal, at his back, more the intended companion than his wife, James assumed. He shifted in his seat to keep an eye on the guardsman’s blades.
Lady Elizabeth frowned but nodded once in acquiescence, and Seamus led his sisters down the servant hallway that led to the kitchens. James sipped from his goblet, glancing at the pregnant lady who took measured bites and did nothing to engage him, rather, sat stiffly like a statue. He scooped up a spoon of the watery broth, letting it dribble pathetically back into the bowl. Was this honestly all that the Grants had to offer a guest? True, they liked him about as much as they liked cattle dung cached to their boots, but customs of hospitality were never shirked, and the best meal a laird could provide was always offered.
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