“My lord!”
The prince held up a hand, warning her to silence.
Adair, having been raised in a royal court, responded as she had been taught in the face of authority.Jesu,she thought,I am little better than Bessie.
“As your male relation I have moved to become your guardian,” the prince continued. “The legalities were approved in Jedburgh several days ago.”
“I am too old to have a guardian,” Adair protested,“and you too young to be he.”
“No woman is too old to have a guardian,” the prince chided her, “especially when she is given to stubborn-ness, cousin. The laird of Cleit has made you an honorable offer of marriage, which you refuse to entertain even though now you carry his bairn. I cannot allow you in a fit of female pique to deliberately smear this infant with the stain of bastardy. You will marry Conal Bruce.
The contract is drawn and signed. There but remains a visit to the priest, which we will make tomorrow. I will remain to witness these nuptials, as will my lord Hepburn.”
Adair was speechless with both surprise and shock.
She had never considered that her life could be turned upside down in such a fashion with no care to her feelings. But then, from the moment she had been carried over the border more than a year ago, nothing had gone as she had anticipated. “I cannot wed a man who doesn’t love me,” she protested weakly.
“He does love you, but he is, it seems, incapable of saying the words aloud,” the prince responded gently.
He might be young, but James Stewart knew a woman’s heart much better than men twice his age, like Conal Bruce.
Adair looked up at Conal Bruce. “You would do this?
You would force me?”
“You leave me no choice, my honey love,” he replied.
Adair shook her head wearily. “Three words, my lord, and I would have wed you willingly. Gladly! But nowshould you say them I could never be certain that you really meant them. You no longer need my consent, and I will never forgive you for that.”
“You accuse me of being coldhearted, Adair, and yet while I have never said those words to you, neither have you said them to me,” the laird answered her. “Do you love me, my honey love? Do you?”
She looked into his eyes. Her own were filled with tears. “Aye,” she said to him. “I love you, Conal. For the first time in my life I love a man wholeheartedly and without reservation. It is to my sorrow that you cannot love me in return.” Then she turned, and, her head held high, Adair left the five very surprised men standing in the hall.
Finally the laird swore softly. “Jesu, I cannot force her to this,” he said.
“If you do not take her to the priest tomorrow it will but convince her that you really do not love her,” Duncan said, and the others nodded in agreement. “It will take time and a great deal of patience on your part, but she will forgive you this.”
“I hope so,” Conal Bruce, the laird of Cleit, said, “because I do love the difficult wench with every bit of my own heart.”
“You’re a damned fool, brother,” Duncan Armstrong said, and his companions nodded in agreement.
Chapter 14
She couldn’t stop crying despite Elsbeth’s soothing voice, which pleaded with her.
“You will harm the child if you do not cease your greeting,” Elsbeth said. “Your bairn will have a name.
Be glad, my chick.”
“He does not love me,” Adair sobbed, pummeling the pillows of her bed.
Elsbeth gritted her teeth. “Of course he loves you, and you know it to be so!” she snapped at the young woman. “It is regrettable that that big border brute cannot manage to look you in the eye and then get those three tiny words out. But he cannot, it appears. Men can make a great to-do over nothing, it would seem. Still, it does not change how he feels about you, my chick. Why else would he have gone to such trouble to wed you?”
“What trouble?” Adair sniveled.
“Going to Prince Jamie and patching together a blood tie.” She chortled. “I see the fine hand of Duncan Armstrong in that. Your man has not the wisdom to have figured that connection out, but his elder brother does. Yet once he had a bit of hope in his hand the laird hotfooted it to find the prince and make that hope a reality. If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is,” Elsbeth said.
“He just wants his child born legitimate,” Adair said, sniffing.
