Silence hung there in the air between them. Her father was staring at the man beside her with utter incredulity. She herself didn’t understand why he was making such an effort to defend her. He had seemed to be glad to be rid of her when they had arrived here.
Her father puffed his chest up, and shoved his face close to Arran’s, not letting go of her for an instant.
“I think you’ll find that this is between my daughter and me,” he snarled to him. His face was deepening in color, a sure sign that his anger was getting the better of him.
Arran grabbed her father’s hand, and moved it away from hers. She let out a gasp of breath she hardly realized she had been holding. Beyond her father, she could see her sisters cowering around a table, their mother beside them, and the foul beast she was due to marry glaring over at her with disgust in his eyes.
“I think ye’ll find,” Arran countered, eyes flashing with anger. “That I am the landowner here. And anything that happens on my land ismybusiness. Including whatever it is you intend to do to yer daughter.”
Why was he doing this?She couldn’t make heads or tails of it, but having someone on her side, someone who seemed willing to argue for her, felt like a gift in that moment. She shifted slightly, standing behind him, shielding herself from the wrath of her father as best she could.
“A landowner?” her father snorted, gesturing to him with amusement. “Who looks like that? You’re a wildling, boy. Now, step away from my daughter, or I’ll?—"
“Or ye’llwhat?”
Those words hung in the air between them for a long moment. A smile curled up the corners of Arran’s lips, though it did not reach his eyes. It was a threat, pure and simple, and though her father might have been foolish about some of the ways of the Scots, he knew a warning when he heard it.
Suddenly, a man appeared at her father’s side. She recognized him at once as one of his advisors, a squirrelly, small man with a patchy beard who did his best to help her father navigate the social mores of being in Scotland.
“Perhaps it would be a good idea to apologize to Laird Aitken,” the advisor suggested. Arran crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back on his heels as he waited for the apology to manifest. Amelia glanced at him out of the corner of her eye.Laird Aitken?Though she would scarcely have taken him for a Laird at first glance, it seemed to suit him. There was something about him which demanded respect, even if she wasn’t quite sure what it was.
“Apologize?” her father exclaimed. “After he arrived back here with my daughter, wearing another man’s cloak?—”
“Aye, I think you’d do well to listen to your advisor here,” Arran replied, voice measured.
“Not until he apologizes to me for the state of my daughter!”
Amelia felt her heart sink at the sound of those words. The way he spoke them, it was as though she was little more thanproperty to him; he wasn’t worried about her, wasn’t fearful that something terrible had happened to her or that she had been hurt in her time away from the inn. No, all he cared about was whether or not he would be able to demand a high price for her and pay off the debts he owed this man she was due to marry. She bit back a lump in her throat, not wanting to allow him to see how much his words had stung her.
“You owe me compensation for the state of her,” he continued, jabbing his finger into Arran’s chest. Arran didn’t move, not even to brush him off, though she could sense that he was angered by the tone her father had taken with him.
“Aye, do I, now?” he remarked, amusement in his tone. The sound of it sent dread creeping up Amelia’s spine. She got the feeling that what he found amusing might differ from the rest of the people in this room, and she felt little urge to find out if she was right.
“And what exactly do you think I owe ye?”
He glared down at her father, and Amelia found that she was holding her breath again. When he had seen her in the woods, her heart had sunk. She had thought that her attempt to find freedom was over, but maybe, just maybe…
“I think you owe me my daughter’s honor!” he exclaimed. “She was… she was due to be married to another man, and here you turn up, with her in a mess, her clothes hanging off her?—”
“Due to be married, aye?”
Arran cut him off casually, as though pondering the fact. He glanced over at her, and, as their eyes locked, she could tell he understood, at least on some level, that was what she had been running from.
“Yes, she was, until you found her and did God knows what to her.”
She wanted to protest, but the words withered on her tongue. This man had done nothing to her, nothing but help her—more than her own father had done, at least recently.
“You think I’ve laid a hand on that lass?”
Her father stared back at him, a grim expression on his face.
“I know what men likeyoudo to women you find alone. Look at her. It’s obvious she’s been?—"
“Then I’ll marry her.”
Everything stopped for a moment. A stillness hung in the air as they tried to make sense of what Arran had just said. He didn’t break her father’s gaze for a moment. She waited for him to laugh, to slap his leg and howl with amusement at the mere thought of what was being proposed, but he didn’t.
“What on earth are you talking about?” her father blustered. “That’s not what I—that’s not how I?—"
