Margaret’s stomach dropped with dread as her small skiff drew closer to shore, and she made out the familiar form of the man waiting for her. After lowering the sail, she let the current take her safely into the dock, but she wished she could turn around.
While a couple of lads helped her with the moorings, Fin stood at the foot of the rocky path that led up to the castle watching. She couldn’t avoid him, and her heart beat with not a small amount of trepidation as she walked toward him.
She had no reason to be frightened of him, and yet she couldn’t deny that for the first time in her life a man made her uncomfortable, and yes, a little scared. She’d tried—truly she had—but in the five months since Eoin had abandoned her on this miserable rock, she could not force herself to like Fin MacFinnon.
He’d done nothing specific she could point to—maybe it would be easier if he had—but there was something in his eyes when he looked at her that made her skin crawl. Something that made her feel that he was just biding his time... waiting. For what she didn’t know. She couldn’t tell whether he hated her or lusted for her—maybe both.
He seemed to be always there, lurking in the shadows of the corridors, dark corners of the stables or outbuildings, and now, it seemed, by rocky cliff sides. She knew it was no accident that he stood in the perfect place to block her path, where she could not get around him without risking a fall down the rocks.
“Where were you?” he demanded.
Despite the trepidation thumping in her chest, she refused to let him intimidate her. He wouldn’t dare to hurt her physically. She hoped. “It’s none of your business.”
He took her by the arm and drew her toward him. To anyone watching it would look like he was preparing to guide her up the path by the rocks. But his fingers gripped her just a little too hard, and he pulled her in just a little too close.
“I’m making it my business. Do you expect me to believe you really help thenunsat the convent?”
His gaze fell to her breasts as if their size somehow explained his reasoning.
Her heart was thumping in her throat now. “I don’t care what you believe, it’s the truth.” Mostly. It was actually the nuns who were helping her. “How dare you touch me. Let go of me or...”
She looked to the men at the dock, but they were busy with the boat and turned in the other direction. As she was sure Fin knew. He wouldn’t have touched her otherwise. Not that the men would come to her rescue. The entire isle seemed to look on her with suspicion and distrust.
She didn’t belong here. She would never belong here. It was nothing like home. Everything she did was met with censure. She couldn’t ride, sail, or walk anywhere without someone wondering where she was going or why she wasn’t accompanied. There were no more challenges, no more whisky (apparently a man’s drink), and no more bawdy jests with her brothers. What she wore, how she ate, even how she prayed—or rather how often she prayed—were all up for scrutiny.
God, how she hated it.
“Or what?” Fin sneered, but at least he dropped her arm. “Who are you going to run to? Lady Rignach? The laird? I think they’ll be more interested in where you went after the convent, and what is in the purse at your waist.”
She gaped at him in shock. “You were spying on me!”
He smiled. “I’m only doing my duty. You are my responsibility. Eoin left you to me.”
Margaret suspected the wording was intentional, and it made her heart beat even faster.
Of all the grievances she had with her husband—and there were many—perhaps that was the worst. He’d made Fin swear to watch over her and protect her with his life. In other words, he’d put Fin in the position to torment her.
“I wonder what he’d make of his wife gallivanting all over town with another man, and then disappearing for hours together into a building.”
Margaret’s teeth were gritted together so hard with outrage she could barely get the words out. “With a man of the cloth into the rectory!”
The young priest had been kind enough to let her use his paints.
Fin gave a harsh laugh. “It would hardly be the first time a priest didn’t hold to his vows.”
Margaret had had enough. “I owe you no explanation. If my husband has questions when he returns he can ask me himself.”
“After five months, I think it’s safe to say your husband has found more important things to keep him busy.”
The words were cruel and hurtful—especially because they were true—but something in Fin’s voice told her that she wasn’t the only one feeling the sting. Fin, too, was in the dark about Eoin’s activities, and on that one point maybe they could commiserate.
Five months. How could Eoin have left her for five months with barely a word? The two short notes she’d received from him, which the nuns had been kind enough to read to her, had offered no explanation or excuse, only vague words of regret for how “soon they’d had to part,” and even more vague promises that he would return to her “as soon as he could.” Until then he hoped she would “make an effort” to “fit in” around Gylen with his mother’s help.
Obviously Lady Rignach had been voicing her complaints.
Maybe if Margaret could have done so on her own, she would have responded. Maybe she would have poured out her misery, her anger, and her broken heart in dark blotches of ink all over that wretched piece of parchment.
But she would not ask the nuns to write about how much she hated it here. How she would never “fit in.” How everyone treated her like a pariah so she had to escape to Oban to find someone to help her. How she had hoped to keep busy as she had at Garthland by helping with the household, but how his mother had made it very clear that her help was not needed or wanted.
