CHAPTER 1
“Walk.”
The casualness of his tone frightened the hell out of Emma. Her slippers made no sound on the cold floor, and for some reason, that fact alone seemed to terrify her even more.
Perhaps it was the fact that she felt like she wasn’t moving, or the sheer silence that seemed to close in on her and her uncle.
“I said, walk,” her uncle repeated without looking down at her.
She did.
Each step felt like a kind of betrayal. Like she was struggling to come to terms with an inevitable fact.
He was waiting.
Yes,hewas waiting for her at the altar, and when her uncle opened the door to the Great Hall in MacLeod Castle,hewas the first thing she saw.
Before the candlelight or the crowd seated on either side of the aisle, she saw his silhouette first. The smell of thick wine and something she couldn’t place her finger on registered much later.
Her uncle yanked on her arm one more time as her eyes settled onhim. He didn’t look like a man to her. As far as she was concerned, he was a shadow of a man. He was tall and silent, and half his face was lost in the surrounding candlelight.
Good God.
He was even more terrifying in person, and she hadn’t fully seen him yet. She tried not to look at him as they drew closer, her uncle basically pulling her weight at this point. She tried to focus on the stone floor instead, but her eyes kept straying tohim. To the Laird she had been given to.
Tradedto.
“Uncle,” she whispered, her throat too dry. “I cannae do this. Please give me a moment.”
Her uncle did not break stride. “Ye’ll do it.”
Her breath caught. “Please?—”
“Emma!” he hissed between gritted teeth, giving her a brief once-over. “We cannae keep men like him waitin’.”
Emma glanced up at him. “Ye mean monsters that kill their wives? That’s who ye chose for me?”
His grip on her arm tightened. His jaw clenched. “That is enough.”
“How do ye expect me to?—”
“Ye’ll hold yer tongue.”
“He’s said to have?—”
“Heis yer husband now,” he snapped. “And if ye ken what is good for ye, ye will do as ye’re told.”
Emma looked ahead again. The Laird hadn’t moved. He stood rigid in front of the priest, and a dagger hung from his belt. The guests on either side of the aisle leaned forward with either anticipation or curiosity. She saw her twin sister Ava near the front, eyes wide and pleading.
But none of them would stop this. None of themcould.
Her feet kept moving, and her body obeyed even though her mind protested. Each step forward, for some reason, felt like the snapping of a thread.
The air in the chapel grew hotter as she tried to inhale deeply, but her breath came shallow, caught behind her ribs. Her palms, on the other hand, grew even more clammy with each passing second.
She was close enough that his face had come fully into view now. He was staring at her legs or the hem of her skirt—she couldn’t tell.
Then, his eyes met hers, and her legs immediately stopped moving.
