But it was she who jumped a short while later at the sound of a familiar voice. “You shouldn’t be out here alone, although you did save me from trying to figure out how to sneak into the castle tonight.”
Niall!
Telling her foolish heart to get back into her chest and stop beating so desperately, she looked to her left in the direction she’d heard his voice but didn’t see him.
“Don’t turn around,” he said. “It’s better if no one knows I’m here.”
Recalling the hurt of his sudden abandonment, she said stiffly, “Why are you here? I thought you’d gone.”
She heard a sound of movement and, despite his warning, turned. She gasped as she saw him step out from behind a tree. He looked horrible—as if he hadn’t bathed or slept in days. His face was streaked with dirt and grime, his jaw was covered in a grizzled, week-old beard, his eyes were bloodshot, and his plaid and leather cotun were splattered and caked with mud as if he’d been riding hard for hours.
He frowned at her question—and her tone. “I’m here for you. I’m sorry I had to leave so suddenly, but it couldn’t be avoided.”
That was all the explanation she got for his disheveled appearance after eight horrid days of believing he’d deserted her? All those conflicted feelings she’d been wrestling with sharpened into one: anger.
“Where did you go that was so important?” she demanded.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Obviously it did for you to leave like that and return looking as if you’d just been dragged through the mud for days.”
“I’ll explain later, but I don’t have much time. I’m here for you. I want you to come with me to Ireland.”
She looked at him as if he’d just said he wanted to take her to the moon.
“Ireland? What are you talking about?”
“I can’t stay here. Suffice it to say that as an outlaw my prospects are slim. And a fresh start could be just what you need as well.”
What had brought about this sudden urge to flee? She didn’t care what other people thought, but did it bother Niall? The suspicion niggled at her. “Is this about what happened at the feast?”
It took him a moment to realize she meant the men who’d interrupted them in the infirmary. “No, of course not. But surely you can see the benefit of a fresh start? Of going to a place where our pasts will not follow us.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You mean where people don’t know I was raped.”
He appeared taken aback by her bluntness. But she wasn’t going to ignore it, and neither was he. Not if there was any hope for them. Was there any hope for them? Not if he couldn’t find a way to deal with the gossip and the unkind things that were said about her. Running away wasn’t any more of a solution than acting as her personal avenger.
“It might make things easier for you.”
And he wouldn’t have to hear the unpleasant things people said of her. God, after all this time, nothing had changed, had it? First, he didn’t want to marry her because she was a MacGregor, and now he didn’t want to marry her unless they moved to a different country.
You don’t think I’m good enough for you.
Annie felt a fresh slap of hurt as her previously spoken words echoed in her head. Dunvegan might have been two years ago, but the wound he’d inflicted had not yet fully healed.
“And easier for you,” she said quietly. “You won’t have to listen to the unpleasant things people say about me.”
He frowned. “That has nothing to do with it. I don’t care what people say. But I can’t stay here, and I want you to go with me. I want you to marry me.”
“And live in Ireland,” she finished. “Where we don’t know anyone.”
And no one knows I was raped.
She wanted to quiet the voice, but the timing was hard to ignore. First the gossip that had sparked the fight in the hall, then those men discovering them alone, and now this?
Maybe she shouldn’t be so suspicious of his motives. Part of her wanted to believe him—the determined man before her was no longer the feckless youth who didn’t know what he wanted—but the other part couldn’t forget standing in that sunnybarmkinof Dunvegan and being told that he couldn’t marry her because she wasn’t good enough. Or his shame when she’d challenged him with the truth.
“I do have some connections. Ireland is where I went after the raid. There is some land in Ulster in the district of Glenconkeyne that was once held by the Lamonts. Years ago, during the time of the Bruce, the two lines of Lamonts ended up on different sides of the war. My ancestor, Ewen Lamont, Chief of the Lamonts of Ascog, sided with the Bruce, but the Toward chief sided with the Comyns, and eventually that branch of the clan was driven out of Scotland. They settled in our ancient homeland of Ireland.” Annie knew that the Lamonts claimed descent from an O’Neill prince of Ulster. “The Toward chief reconciled with the crown later, and the clan returned to Scotland, but some of my kinsmen stayed on in Ireland as vassals of our kinsman the O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone.”
