“I see ye’ve still no’ disciplined yer birde, Camron,” he remarked. “Yer father would never have stood for a woman talking fer him in such a way.”
“Good thing his father is not the one I’m married to,” Isla shot back.
She glanced at Camron again, imploring him to say something—anything—to undercut the words that this man had said to her, but he just stared at his ale, clearly not interested in getting involved.
“Aye, he would never have allowed ye at a meeting for men such as this,” Robert replied, his lip curling up into a sneer.
If Isla thought she could have gotten away with it, she would have landed a slap on his face right then and there. But, instead, she rose to her feet.
“I ken where I’m no’ wanted,” she snapped at him, and she lifted her skirts and swept towards the door, putting as much distance between herself and that man as she could. She hated that she had given Robert what he wanted, but if Camron was not going to leap in to defend her, she had no intention of staying any longer than she needed to.
But she had hardly caught her breath out in the hall before she heard footsteps behind her. She turned, expecting to see Camron closing the distance towards her, but instead, his cousin was approaching, a worried furrow in his brow, a look of genuine concern on his face.
“Isla,” he murmured, as he laid a hand on her arm. “Are ye alright?”
She drew her gaze away from him, stepping back. She was too furious to have a conversation at that moment, let alone with Archie.
“I’m sorry ye had to hear such a thing fae Robert,” he remarked, lowering his voice.
Her fury was still flickering inside of her, so intense she was sure she could feel steam pouring from her ears, no matter how much she tried to contain it.
“But it’s better that ye ken now the kind of person my uncle was,” Archie went on, without waiting for a reply. “His manner of thinking about women, about what they were good for and what they should be involved in… I cannae believe for a moment that Camron is free from it.”
She flicked her gaze to his, not speaking, but indicating that he could go on. Archie had offered her friendship in this place when nobody else had, after all. Perhaps it was worth listening to him, at least to find out what kind of man she had truly taken as a husband.
“His silence speaks volumes, I’m sure ye’ll agree,” he continued, his voice lowering as he glanced back over his shoulder to make sure that they were not interrupted. “His father raised him to see women as little more than chattel, good fer what he can use them for and nothing else. I…”
He hesitated. Her instincts were telling her there was something rather practiced in his voice, as though he knew how he sounded and what she wanted to hear from him, but she was not sure if she should trust her intuition on this one.
“I didnae want to say anything when ye first took him as a husband,” he admitted. “I had hoped that whatever his father had left in him, it would not cause you trouble. But I cannae stand by and let him treat ye as his father treated his mother, as nothing more than a thing he could shape into whatever he wants. That darkness… it’s in him, in his blood, and I cannae promise that he will not turn it on you one day.”
Her heart pounded in her chest at the sound of those words. A few weeks ago, she would have believed them outright, given the way that he had treated her, snatching her from her life andbringing her to his with no warning. His sudden taking to her had seemed rather abrupt and yet intense.
But now… now, after everything they had shared, it was hard for her to believe that there were no depths to him that she had not yet seen, even if they might have been hard for her to make sense of. When he held her, when he kissed her, she felt something real there, something he wouldn’t have been able to invent if he truly saw her as nothing more than a piece on the board.
“I’ll do what I can to protect ye,” Archie promised her, closing the distance between them. “Whatever I can, Isla, ye have my word.”
And all at once, he was in front of her, standing so near she could almost feel the heat from his body. But she did not respond to it, she was not sure if she even could. No matter what Archie told her, she could not entirely believe that his cousin would have been capable of harming her in such a way; of treating her as nothing more than a trinket to be set on a shelf and forgotten about.
Camron laid hands on her like she was the most precious person in the world. Even when they were alone together, and she could not imagine him finding some way to fake it, nor could she see a reason to, when?—
And then, a shadow crossed the light emerging from the sconce behind them. She looked past Archie to see Camron standing there, his fists clenched at his sides, his eyes so dark they looked like burned-out coals.
And, in an instant, the flint of his fury sparked into life, and he strode towards them.
Chapter Fifteen
Camron grabbedArchie by the shoulder and wrenched him aside, nearly sending him sprawling on the flagstone floor below.
“Say another word to her and I’ll stain these floors with yer blood,” he warned him, but Archie met him with a grin that told Camron he had walked right into his trap. Isla glared at him.
“Now, ye find yer voice?” she exclaimed. “When back there?—”
“I will not have this conversation with ye here,” he snarled, and she crossed her arms over her chest.
“Then where?” she replied. “Because if ye think for a moment that I?—”
Ignoring her words, Camron caught her arm and tugged her towards the stairs, and she stumbled to catch up with him. His mind was reeling. He could only imagine what poison Archie had been dripping into her ear about him, about the kind of man he truly was. He should have said more when Robert had argued with her, but he knew that Robert would be all too quick to turn on the farmers who had caused this problem in the first place if he felt like he had been undercut, let alone by a woman. If Isla had just given him a little more time to straighten things out,they would have been able to stop this before it took root, but instead, the weight of it hung over his head.
