“Maybe nae.” Finley could hear the smile in her mother’s voice. It was no secret that Finley didn’t share Ina’s talent for embroidery. “I doona mind. And sure, you’ll drive yourself mad going on like that. He’ll be back when he’s back.”
“I should have been allowed,” Finley grumbled. “It’s me they’re talking about.”
“Full of yourself, are ye nae?” Ina smirked. “They’ve been at it all night—’tis the treaty they’re discussing. They’ve been to the Town Blair twice in as many days. That’s two times more than they’ve been in ten years.”
“If it’s only the treaty, why wouldn’t Da take me?”
“Perhaps because you’re nae longer six, riding his shoulders in your plaits?” Ina suggested. Then she, too, sighed and dropped her stitchery to her lap. “Finley—”
“I don’t care who they choose,” she interrupted. “I willna have him. I don’t need a man coming in to our home and behaving as if it all belongs to him.”
“But it will belong to him.”
“Nay,” Finley shot back. “And I am not a head of stock to be negotiated away with it.”
“That’s not how it is, and well you know it,” her mother chastised. “You had your choice of any of the men in the town.”
“Aye, all three and a half of them,” Finley muttered.
“Cheek.Your choice. Any one of them would make a fine husband and father.” She paused. “Save perhaps for Eachann Todde, but I’d hoped that’d scare some sense into you, to be threatened with one so aged.”
“Well, it didn’t work,” Finley mumbled.
“Apparently,” her mother said in an exasperated tone. “The town needs bairns if we are to survive; there arena enough young folk the way it is, as you so cleverly pointed out. You’ll just have to trust your da and the fine to choose the best match for you, and do your best to be a good wife.” She was quiet for a beat of time while Finley stewed at the injustice of it all. “I didna choose my first husband.”
Finley looked out the corner of her eye at her mother but didn’t say anything. It was rare that Ina spoke of the time before Finley was born, and she didn’t want to interrupt.
“And I didna want to marry Andrew either,” Ina said in a low, careful voice, her gaze going to the fabric in her lap. “He was too bold, too hot-tempered for the likes of me. Made me nervous,” she said with a smile in her voice.
“Did you love him?” Finley asked, fascinated by the change in her mother’s face, how the lines around her eyes and mouth softened as if only speaking of that time, so long ago, caused the years to melt away. She had been young once, too.
Ina nodded slowly. “Oh, sure I would have. I couldna’ve helped it. He made me jump whenever he walked into a room. Always had some grand idea he was thinking on. His eye on the old house. Only we called it the grand house then.”
Finley felt her brows raise as the image of the blackened ruin behind the town came to her mind. “He wanted to be chief?”
“Would have,” Ina said. “It was in his blood.”
A movement from the corner of her eye drew Finley’s attention to the doorway, shoving aside all thoughts of dead young men and ruined old houses. “Da!” She lunged from her chair and dashed through the doorway, her bare feet skimming over the cool dirt of the path.
Rory caught her beneath one arm and Finley turned to walk once more toward the house with him.
“Did you talk of the treaty?” she asked straightaway, her nerves making her breathless.
“Good day to you, too, Finley.”
She grinned and reached up at the top of her next stride to kiss Rory’s whiskery cheek. “Hello, Da. I’ve kept the cakes warm for you.” He squeezed her hand. She couldn’t help herself, though. “Didyou talk of the treaty?”
“Aye. We did.”
Finley sighed to herself in relief. “Nothing about me, then.”
“Aye. We did.”
Finley’s feet dragged to a halt. “Da?”
“It’s been decided, Fin,” he said, and it was only then she noticed her father’s haggard expression, beyond fatigue from being kept at council all night, the hardness in his normally gentle eyes. “You may well be pleased. I am pleased.”
“You don’t look pleased,” Finley argued as fear bloomed in her stomach. “Who is it?”
