She jumped when she felt his hand resting gently on the small of her back. He seemed to sense her doubt, and she glanced up at him, hoping that her emotions were not written too obviously over her face.
“Ye’ll be safe here, lass,” he promised her, his voice dropping slightly. “I’ll make sure o’ that.”
But the way he said it, it was almost as though he intended it as some kind of threat. Like he was making sure she understood that this was where she belonged, and this was where she would stay. She managed a smile, but, at the back of her mind, doubts began to nag with a discomforting force.
She yawned, trying her best to stifle it. Truth be told, she couldn’t stop thinking about what they might be expected to dotogether, now that they were here. It was, after all, their wedding night, and she supposed that consummation was on the cards.
But then, he moved his hand from her back, breaking the connection between them. He turned to one of the guards, speaking sharply.
“Call down the lady’s maids, have them attend to my new bride here.”
A wave of shock ran through the room. Of everything they’d expected him to say, she suspected, that had been the very last. Had he not sent word back to his people that he would be returning with a woman at his side? Or perhaps they had not believed him, thinking it would be far too soon for something so enormous to have actually taken place.
But she barely had time to take it in before the guard had left, and returned with two younger women, both of whom curtsied to her as though she were some kind of royalty. She bit down hard on her lip, fighting the urge to assure them that they had to take no such niceties around her, but, she supposed, she had married the Laird of this place. She needed to get used to people treating her as their Lady.
“This way, my lady,” one of the girls told her, gesturing for the door, and the other took her arm to steer her out of the room and towards what would soon be her bedchamber. She cast one last look over her shoulder, at her newfound husband, but he was already stalking off down an opposing corridor, to what end, she didn’t know.
But she got the feeling she would soon find out, one way or another, the truth of what lay beneath the surface of her husband’s veneer.
9
“You were sent toexposethe Aitkens, no’ to marry one of them!”
Richard, one of Kiernan’s advisors, slammed his hand down on the large table that sat in the center of his study, sending a crash resonating off the tall stone walls of the room. The rest of his visitors that night were one-time Lairds of their own provinces who had chosen to ally with Kiernan’s father rather than stand against him. Though their alliance had initially been uneasy, after Kiernan’s father had passed away, they had stood by him, perhaps hoping that he would be less harsh on them and willing to take in some of their suggestions, at least.
But now, as Kiernan delivered the news of what had happened at the Aitken keep, none of them seemed willing to even entertain the idea that he knew what he was doing. He had married the girl for good reason; this would give him more access than he’d ever had before, to the inner workings of the Aitken clan, everything that went on behind those doors when they were shut to the rest of the world.
And, as long as he could, he had to keep believing that was the only reason. In truth, there was a part of him, like an open wound, that felt more for her than he’d have cared to admit. Herbrightness, her warmth, it was like the softest sunshine stirring him from a slumber after a long day, and being bathed in it felt better than anything he could remember in a long time.
“I cannae believe what I’m hearing,” Jacob muttered, running a hand through his thinning hair as he slumped further into one of the large chairs that sat around the table.
They had once belonged to Kiernan’s father, Euan, and were ornately carved with knots and crosses along the sides. A signal of his wealth and power, for anyone who stepped into his office, that Kiernan had now inherited as his own.
“It’s a disaster,” Jacob continued, his voice rising again, as though he had found a new depth to his anger. Jacob had always been prone to outbursts of anger like this, especially when he felt things weren’t going the way he expected. His father had raised him as a pampered child, and it showed in everything he did now he was a man. He had been barely more than a boy when his father had agreed to ally with Kiernan’s father, and Kiernan often found himself with the feeling that Jacob detested not having the rule of his own roost.
“It doesn’t have to be yet,” Derrick cut in. Derrick was closer to Kiernan’s age than that of the older men who shared this space with them, and he was canny and sharp. He’d come into power when his father had passed when he’d been barely more than eighteen, and he had clashed with Euan a few times, trying to establish himself with a little more certainty. It had taken years for him to grow out of it, and, even now, Kiernan found himself wondering how much fight he would have put up if he thought he could get away with it. Kiernan locked eyes with him, daring him to follow up his statement with something that would challenge him.
“What do you mean, lad?” Jacob demanded. “He’s married her! One of the Aitkens! And an English woman, at that!”
“But you’ve no’ had time to… consummate the marriage yet, have ye?”
The words hung in the air there, sitting in the empty quiet of the room. The only sound was that of the stable boys outside, wrangling some new horses who’d just been brought to the Keep, floating up through the small arrow slit windows that ran around the walls.
Kiernan’s jaw tightened. No, he had not made such a move on his new wife yet, though it had taken almost every bit of restraint he’d had not to do so in the carriage as they rode home. There was something so innocent and unspoiled about her, something that he longed to get his hands on and ruin, to show her a side of the world and herself she had never seen before. Even the kiss they had shared in the stables had lit a fire inside of him. It hadn’t been part of his plan to allow their encounter to go further than just being caught together so he could justify proposing to her to protect her honor, but when she had gazed at him with those sweet, innocent eyes, he knew he could wait no longer to take a bite of her ripe fruit.
“And if you’ve no’ consummated your union, there’s still time to call it off,” Derrick urged him. “Send her back from whence she came. Get her far from this place.”
“I’ll be doing nothing of the sort,” Kiernan replied sharply, silencing him. Everyone in the room quieted. They knew better than to try and fight Kiernan when he’d an idea in his mind. They knew the values his father had instilled into him, the stubbornness and certainty that would make it nigh-on impossible to beat him, whether it was a war of wits or of swords.
“She’s no good to us!” Jacob protested. “She’s…”
“She’s my wife,” Kiernan told him, rising to his feet. “And I’ll hear no more on the matter. Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I have… matters to attend to.”
“You owe us an explanation, lad!” Derrick exclaimed, springing to his feet to step out in front of Kiernan. The other men in the room, the dozen or so of them who knew better than to step in his way like that, seemed to suck in a simultaneous sharp breath, as though they could barely believe what they were seeing. Kiernan paused for a long moment, staring Derrick down, giving him ample opportunity to change his mind and put some distance between them.
After a long pause, he did. He took a step back, towards the large bookcase that was pressed against the wall just next to the door. His head dropped to his chest for a moment, and the other men in the room let out a collective sigh of relief.
“I’ll thank ye not to go asking about what happens in the confines of my bedroom between me and my wife,” Kiernan growled at him pointedly, and he shot a look over his shoulder, making certain that the rest of the men in the room had understood the same point. His father had worked too hard and done too much for him to allow such disrespect to take place in his own Keep, and he hoped they understood that well by now.
