“Because I want to hear what excuse the daft lad gives for his part in this.”
She tilted her head. “Ye think he encouraged me?”
“I think me braither has a talent for planting foolish ideas,” he said.
Her expression softened. “He did say somethin’. Nae outright. But enough.”
Maxwell cursed under his breath. He would deal with Hunter. Thoroughly.
Then Ariella said, quiet but firm, “But I choose differently now. I choose what is needed. Ye need nae worry I will run again.”
His gaze lingered on her longer than it should have. “Good.”
Silence passed between them then, and he broke it first. “Get inside before ye catch a chill.”
But when she brushed past him, her shoulder grazing his arm, heat shot through him like a blade fresh from the forge.
She paused at the door and looked back, hazel eyes bright, expression unreadable.
“Good night, Maxwell.”
He did not say good night. He only stood there, watching her until she disappeared into the keep.
Long after the door closed, he remained still as stone, hands curled at his sides, heart beating entirely too fast for a woman he had known less than an hour.
3
The great hall felt wrong.
It was dressed for a celebration, rushes newly strewn, candles lit in iron sconces, trestle tables lined along the walls for the feast to come. The priest waited near the front with his worn book, his expression politely blank. Clan folk crowded the benches and stood shoulder to shoulder, a murmur of voices swelling, then dipping, then swelling again.
Yet the space at the center of it all, the space where the groom should have stood, remained empty.
“Where has he gone?” Frederick hissed, adjusting his plaids impatiently.
Ariella heard the whispers in the crowd before anyone dared to say them aloud.
“Late, is he.”
“Bad fortune, that.”
She stood near the dais between her mother and Frederick, hands clasped so tightly in front of her that her fingers ached. Her best gown, the pale blue one carefully mended at the seams, felt too tight across her ribs. The veil weighted her hair and the little circlet of silver that Frederick had given her seemed to press directly into her skull.
Her heart did not pound the way she had expected on her wedding day. It trudged.
Maxwell Murdoch stood a few paces away, a dark and silent wall beside Frederick. He wore his full plaid, the deep green and dark blue of McNeill thrown over one shoulder, sword at his hip. The scars on his face were more visible in the wash of daylight that slanted through the high windows.
For some unknown reason to her, she was keenly aware that he had not even glanced in her direction. Not once.
Her mother fidgeted with the edge of Ariella’s veil. “He will come,” Her mother murmured, more to herself than to anyone else. “Men are ever late. He will come.”
Frederick’s jaw tightened. “He should have been here at dawn.”
The priest cleared his throat quietly and shifted his weight. The murmur of the crowd grew louder.
Ariella swallowed. Part of her had expected this, after Hunter’s words in the solar, his half jest about escape, his careless invitation to choose something else. Still, she had risen at dawn, allowed Elodie to braid and pin and smooth, had walked into the hall with her knees weak, ready to speak the vows that would bind her future.
Ready to do her duty.
