Evelyn blinked. Was MacKerrick saying she was attractive or homely?
The highlander grimaced. “I would be hard-pressed to convince him that naught improper had occurred betwixt us. And Duncan is prone to gossip, as it is.”
“Is he?” Evelyn’s eyes widened.
“A terrible habit o’ his.” MacKerrick frowned and shook his head regretfully. “And the Buchanans…”
Evelyn thought this was going much, much better than she had ever expected. ’Twas almost as if MacKerrick was helping her convince him. “My honor would be in tatters,” she said.
“As would me own,” the highlander insisted.
Evelyn hesitated, trying to ignore the fluttering of her stomach. She was unsure how to broach the next obstacle. “But you are recently widowed. Would your people accept—”
“They expect me to one day take another wife, Eve. And that I would find a fine Scots lass would please them.”
Evelyn cringed inwardly. “’Twould be of no consequence if your wife was not…a full-blooded Scot?”
MacKerrick seemed to ponder this and Evelyn held her breath.
“I am the MacKerrick. They would accept whoever I took as a wife.”
Tentative relief flooded her.
“But the Buchanans mayna be so accommodating,” MacKerrick warned. “They may take offense that you would marry without your clan chief’s permission.”
“Oh, I don’t think that will be a problem,” Evelyn offered quickly and then cursed herself when MacKerrick’s eyebrows rose.Imbecile…
“You’ve saved my life, after all,” she scrambled, eager to make some excuse for her rash words. “And my virtue, by marrying me. I think ’twould be considered quite a coup, having married the MacKerrick and uniting both villages.”
“Towns.”
“Towns,” Evelyn amended.
“A coup, indeed,” MacKerrick agreed quietly, still staring at Evelyn with his glowing amber eyes. “But you’d be a MacKerrick then, lass. You’d nae live at the Buchanan town.”
“I can accept that,” Evelyn said, striving for the proper martyrish air.
“And there is one more thing.” MacKerrick hesitated. “Because I am the clan chief, my wife…”
Evelyn leaned forward “Yea, MacKerrick?”
“I’m expected to have a family, Eve,” he finished, a wicked gleam in his eyes.
So there it was, at last out in the open. The biggest hurdle between them.
“I would be willing to…discuss it,” Eve said stiffly, returning to her upright posture as her ears tingled with heat.
“Discussit? You doona get bairns by talkin’.” MacKerrick grinned mischievously. “Or do you nae know—”
“Of course I do!” Evelyn snapped.
“Then you would withhold yourself from your husband?”
“Is that something that must be decided immediately?” Evelyn noticed her voice sounded high and panicked to her own ears.
“I’m nae different from any other man, Eve,” MacKerrick said mildly. “I’d know if I’d have a wife true, or a woman who would not yield to her husband.”
“I don’t evenknowyou, sir!”
