What did this man do to her? He knocked her senseless merely by looking at her.
“Is everything all right, Meg?” Jamie asked, concerned. “You look as white as a sheet.”
She took a long gulp of her claret, allowing the sweet liquid to calm her racing pulse. “I’m fine. Perhaps a little hungry, that’s all.”
Jamie offered her his arm. “Will you allow me to see you to the dining room?”
Meg fought the urge to look around for Alex.Let it go, Meg. He’s not for you. You need a man like…
Jamie.
Jamie was the answer. He was where she should concentrate her efforts. Then why was she vacillating? It wasn’t like her to procrastinate. But there was so much at stake if she chose wrong. It was too important a decision to rush to judgment. She needed proper time for deliberation and analysis; but time was the one thing she didn’t have.
She’d always thought of her father as invincible, but his recent illness had shown her just how fragile life could be. How everything could change in an instant.
She should have known better. A vivid memory flashed before her eyes of one hot spring day when the course of her life had changed just as quickly.
Meg ran to the library with her hand over her mouth, trying to contain the laughter bubbling inside. She’d just been swimming with the village children in the loch, and Ian had made himself a crown of butter cups and dubbed himself King of the May. Ian was always doing funny things to make them laugh. She was eager to tell her mother. She’d been so sad lately; surely this would bring a smile to her face. The door was open, and the sound of her mother’s tears brought her to a dead halt.
“She’s sure?” her father asked.
Meg heard the muffled sounds of her mother’s sobs.
“No more children,” her father echoed. “No more sons.” Meg could hear the crush of disappointment resonate in his voice. “Who will be chief when I’m gone?” he asked, almost as if to himself.
That is strange, Meg thought. Ian, who else?
“Ian will never be able to manage on his own,” he said.
And with his words, Meg was forced to acknowledge what she’d fought so long to ignore. Something inside her knew that fifteen-year-old boys shouldn’t be making crowns of buttercups and dancing around a tree.
“I’m sorry,” her mother choked.
“Shush, my love. There’ll be no more of that. We’ll think of something. But men are hard to find in our family. If I had a brother, uncle, cousin, anything…No, Ian is the only possibility. But even if I name Iantanaiste,his succession as chief will be challenged. If not from within the clan, then from outside when I am gone.” She heard her father sigh, the sound ripe with disappointed resignation. “If only Meggie were a lad, she’d make a fine chief.”
Meg could still feel her heart breaking for Ian. Her big, strong, handsome older brother who was kind and sweetly innocent. Who cared that he didn’t read or do his sums as well as she did? Or that he was sometimes awkward around strangers? Meg loved him the way any girl would love her older brother. Perhaps she even loved him a little bit more, because he needed her so badly. She was his buffer from a cruel world. But she could not protect him from everything. He understood so much more than people realized. He knew when he was doing something wrong or lacking. The hardest part was watching his growing frustration as he tried to please her father.
If only Meggie were a lad, she’d make a fine chief.It was that offhand comment that had sparked the beginnings of a plan. She would help Ian. For the last ten years, she’d dedicated herself to the clan, to learning the business of managing the lands and handling the financial concerns of Clan Mackinnon.
But she needed to find a man who would stand beside her brother where she could not in his dealings with the king’s men and who would fight beside him if need be. A clan was only as strong as its chief. When her brother inherited, their land would be at grave risk from attack by more powerful clans—clans that constantly sought more land to provide for their ever increasing numbers. Her father’s guardsmen were no longer young, they might not be able to protect Ian’s position, so Meg’s choice of husband was crucial.
With her help and her husband’s support, Ian would make a fine chief. Ian was her father’stanaiste,his designated successor. That position was his by right of birth, but vestiges of tanistry from the old Brehon Laws made some think it could be challenged. On Skye, he was derisively known as “Ian Balbhan.” Ian the Dumb. She despised the epithet and had done her best to shield her brother from others’ cruelty.
And from her father’s disappointment.
Her chest tightened with the pressure of expectation. She’d worked so hard to prove to her father that it could be done. She had to do the right thing. There wasn’t room for mistakes. Really, there was only one choice.
And it was up to her to make it.
So much for fairy tales. No one was going to ride in on a white horse and make her decision easy for her.
Alex MacLeod was not for her. She was attracted to him in a way that she never had been attracted to a man before. But it did not matter. She would not let it interfere with her decision. He was a mercenary. A warrior. A man of the past. Men like Alex harkened to a bygone era. A time of feuds and forays and the unfettered authority of the chief. The role of the Highland chief was changing. No longer just a warlord, he must also be prepared to deal with the king and his men.
She needed a man to put the king’s men at ease. Alex was a threatening presence the moment he walked into the room. Every inch a Highland warrior, he was exactly the type of powerful man these Lowlanders feared.
She took a long look at Jamie, who stood patiently beside her, not allowing her thoughts to slide back to the forbidding man who’d just exited the hall. The man who threw her emotions into a tumult.
Taking a deep breath, she placed her hand on the crook of Jamie’s arm. This time, there was no shock. The lean muscle beneath her fingers did not elicit wild, uncontrollable emotions.
