Her heart dropped to her stomach with dreadful comprehension. Unknowingly, she’d allowed herself to be wooed by his jailer. No wonder he had seemed so upset to see her with Dougal. Meg thought back to the scene he’d witnessed. Dougal MacDonald had touched her. Yet another misfire in her inexperienced attempts to play the games of court.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Their eyes held a little longer, before he dropped his gaze. He nodded, apparently satisfied with her apology but indicating his unwillingness to discuss the subject further.
Despite his obvious aversion to talking about himself, Meg wasn’t quite done yet. The knowledge that he’d fought for his clan only bolstered her belief that he was not what he claimed. She had to find out.
“Alex, what are you really doing at court?”
His eyes flashed with annoyance. “Didn’t we already have that conversation?”
“I don’t believe you.”
His jaw clenched. “Leave it be, Meg.”
But Meg could not heed the warning. “I’ve seen the way you watch everyone around you, and what does it have to do with being in that corridor last night at the masque?”
He moved his rook. “Has anyone ever told you that you have an active imagination?”
Meg countered his move by putting pressure on his remaining bishop. “No,” she said, refusing to be deterred. “Now, answer my question.”
“I came to court to find work, I went to the hall to get away from Dougal—as you now know, I despise the man.”
“I don’t believe that is all of it.”
“Believe what you want, but it’s the truth.” He shrugged with such indifference that Meg knew she was on to something.
She shook her head. “No, it’s not.” Her eyes raked his face, searching for a crack in the mask. “But I’ll discover the truth, don’t you doubt it.”
But her threat didn’t seem to concern him. The corner of his mouth lifted in a wry smile. “Meg?”
“What?” She looked down at the board, and her mouth fell open.Impossible.
“Checkmate.”
“I can’t believe I missed it,” her mother lamented an hour later. Elizabeth had just finished filling her in about Alex’s unexpected coup.
Meg looked at her mother and shook her head. She was taking far too much pleasure in Meg’s defeat. “It’s just a game, Mother.”
“Just a game!” her mother exclaimed with mock incredulity. “How many times have I heard you and your father go on about the game of kings? The great arbiter of intellect. ‘You can tell much about a person by how they play chess,’” she mimicked. “Now will you admit it?”
“Admit what?”
“Don’t be obtuse, Margaret. Why, admit that Alex MacLeod is the perfect match for you, of course.”
“Simply because he beat me at chess? I’m not perfect, Mother, I do lose occasionally.”
Though Meg spoke in jest, her mother sobered. “There is nothing wrong with not being perfect, Meg.”
But there is,Meg thought automatically, thinking of her beloved brother. “Of course there isn’t,” she agreed.
Rosalind’s perpetually smiling countenance slipped, becoming unusually grave. “You strive so hard not to fail, to always do the right thing. Only recently have I realized why. But you do not need to put so much pressure on yourself, Meg. I love both of my children, and so does your father—even if he doesn’t always know how to show it.”
Meg hoped so, for Ian’s sake. But why did her father’s love always have to be filtered by disappointment and conditions?
Meg walked into the small solar, seeing Ian seated at her father’s desk, a quill in his hand, and his fair head bent over a piece of parchment. Dread crept over her as she realized that another lesson was taking place.
“No, Ian. Not like that,” her father said, trying to be patient. “You’ve added wrong again. One merk is thirteen shillings, four pence. So the rent on twenty-four merks of land is…”
