“Aye,” he whispered, going down her check.
“I love ye.” There she said it. She told him.
He went still, setting her heart to ruin. He said nothing, making her want to run and never stop.
“Ye dinna have to reciprocate telling me,” she told him, wanting to crawl away. “I understand.”
He moved and came to sit before her, affording her a view of the face she never wanted to forget. “Ismay,” he said, taking her hands in his and staring into her eyes. “Understand this. I love ye more than I ever dreamed. My heart was dead and dried up, but ye came and ye rescued me, lass. I canna bear to be away from ye andwhen ye’re near, I feel at peace. ’Tis somethin’ I havena felt in a verra long time.” He smiled when a tear fell down her cheek. “Do ye want me to tell ye every day?”
She nodded. “Aye, promise me ye will.”
“I promise to tell ye that I love ye every day. And I promise to show ye.”
She didn’t doubt him. She never had so far—and he hadn’t let her down.
He cooked her breakfast of fish stew with mushrooms and turnips, seasoned to perfection with the spices in glass jars on a shelf in the kitchen.
“Ye’re fierce and fearless,” Ismay told him while she considered him sitting across from her. “Ye’re handsome and ye kiss quite well. On top of all that ye can cook!”
He gave her a surprised look with a smoldering smile. “Ye think I kiss quite well?”
She laughed with him across the table. “Is that all ye heard?”
“What is more important than that?”
She thought about telling him that they could live without kissing each other. They couldn’t live without food. But she wasn’t convinced she could live with not kissing him.
“Nothing, my darling,” she said and rose from the table to step around it and go to him. “There is nothing more important.”
Chapter Twenty
Lady Marjorie MacPhersonsat at the long, polished table in her dining hall, clicking her fingernails on the wood. Seated across from her, beaten and broken, was Chief Alistar MacRae. Good-for-nothing sot that he was. Why, he hadn’t even seen Ismay in the month he’d been gone! Marjorie found it difficult to believe that Ismay was so clever to continue to elude her betrothed.
“How do you know the Lochiel of Lochaber has her?”
“I already told ye,” MacRae said with frustration tainting his tone.
“Tell me again.” Majorie knew MacRae would do as she demanded. Their agreement provided her immediate monetary aid, while providing him Ismay’s inheritance when she died. And seeing the chief’s temper, Marjorie doubted Ismay would live much longer after the pig wed her. Marjorie didn’t care. She’d often wished the wee waif her husband had brought home with him sixteen years ago had died before John had found her.
“The basthard ambushed me. He broke my jaw and knocked out eleven of my teeth.”
Aye, Marjorie did all she could to hide her amusement at the way he spoke without his teeth and his jaw held by a tightly wound bandage. He could not pronouncesat all, trading the consonant toth. It was positively hilarious. She’d wanted to hear it again.
“He told me never to go near her again or he would kill me.
Marjorie sighed in boredom. Some of his words sounded more amusing than others.
“You must defy him. She is yours,” she snapped at him. “Do ye know how much she is worth? My husband left everything to her. But ’tis mine. Remember our agreement, Chief. You pay me a dowry and when she dies, her inheritance will go to you. You agreed to pay me eighty percent, keeping twenty for yourself. ’Tis a binding agreement, Chief. If ye try to break it and take the full inheritance fer yerself, ye will be hunted down and killed.”
“The gel ith too much trouble,” MacRae remarked.
“Aye, she has been trouble fer me since the day she stepped foot in this house. ’Tis time fer her to go so I can get what is rightfully mine. If ye have changed yer mind, I will find someone else.”
“I have nae doubt he will kill me,” MacRae tried to explain.
She shook her head. “I know something. Something that will make the Lochiel throw her out of Tor. Mayhap, he will kill her himself. The best part, Chief, is that ye dinna have to show yerself at all. All ye have to do is go to the Chattan chief and tell him what I am about to tell ye. Simple, hmm?”
The MacRae chief nodded. “What ith it that will make the Lochiel throw her out?”
