He laughed without humor. “Yedid? Nae Jacob?”
“I...approached him—I made it happen. I wanted to—”
“I dinna care what ye wanted, lass,” he said wearily, more aggrieved than angry it seemed. Folding his arms across his chest, he glanced at his wife, as if to seek her thoughts on the matter. What he saw gave him pause, and roused something closer to disbelieving rage. “Isabel,” he seethed, “what, by all the devils, are ye smiling about? There is naught—and I meannaught—in this entire situation worthy of that look.”
Isabel ignored him entirely. She stepped closer to Elena, lifting a hand to brush a thumb gently along her daughter’s cheek. “Ye have your father’s eyes,” she murmured, “but at this moment, lass, I see my own past more clearly than I’ve seen it in years.”
“What in hell’s name does that mean?” Liam growled.
Isabel turned to him, calm as a lake in midsummer. “It means,” she said softly, “that I recognize that look in her eyes. I had it myself once.”
Liam scowled. “What look?”
“That dazed, rattled, utterly undone expression,” Isabel said warmly, reaching to take her husband’s rough hand in hers. “It’s the look I likely wore the first timeyekissed me, more than twenty years ago—
Liam’s breath left him in a strangled sound that didn’t know if it wanted to be protest nor acknowledgment. For a moment, he simply stared at his wife, then at his daughter, then back at Isabel, his usually unshakable confidence slipping.
“Elena,” he said slowly, voice dropping to something softer, something wary, “are ye telling me...” His throat worked. “Do ye have feelings for the lad?”
Elena opened her mouth, but the words stuck. She nodded swiftly.
“This is nae simply a symptom of being rescued by Jacob?” He asked, his posture dropping a bit. When Elena shook herhead, he pressed both hands over his face, exhaled through them, then let them drop.
“Elena has been enamored of Jacob almost since the first moment he stepped foot at Wolvesly,” Isabel informed him. “Haven’t ye, love?”
Elena nodded again.
“Son of a...” he muttered at last, the words puncturing the thick silence with blunt resignation.
Isabel patted his shoulder. “There he is,” she said affectionately. “That’s the man I married.”
Liam shot her a wounded glare. “Nae the time, Isabel.” He faced Elena again. “Did ye do this? Truly? He said he was to blame.”
“I wanted—” she paused and clarified, “I needed to know, before I committed to betrothing myself to Thomas, if there was...any hope at all... even the tiniest scrap.”
Isabel raised her fingers to cover her mouth, covering her irreverent smile. “By all accounts, it seems the question was answered sufficiently.”
Liam turned another glare onto his wife.
“Oh, stop. Ye said yerself just last night ye’d given her leave to make her own decision—”
“Aye, but nae in this manner,” Liam argued hotly. “She might have only said I dinna wish to wed him—she needn’t have gone out and perpetrated her own...seduction.”
Mother and daughter protested his choice of words at once.
“Father!”
“Liam!”
He waved a dismissive hand and resettled himself with a weary sigh before adding, “As it stands—and regardless of what Hamilton ultimately decides, though he begged time to consider the betrothal—I would nae allow you to wed his son.”
The words landed like a dropped plate. Elena stared at him, stunned, and from the sharp intake of breath beside her, it was clear Isabel had not anticipated this turn either.
Liam continued without pause. “He displayed behavior today that I would never deem acceptable in a man meant to stand beside my daughter.”
Isabel’s brows drew together. “Meaning what, precisely?”
“His anger,” Liam said flatly. “It rose too quickly, too fiercely, and with a lack of control I dinna expect. Another moment and I would nae have been surprised to see him frothing like a baited dog.”
