Martha drew in a short start of breath, like she wasn’t sure they should have so much as been approaching this matter.
But Ailsa supposed they had as much right as any to wonder. Not like there weren’t plenty who would have doubted her ability to be a wife to this new Laird, given that she was meant to be his brother’s bride at one point.
She let out a long breath, feeling another pang of grief at the memory of his loss.
“I loved him as a friend,” she replied, speaking carefully, determined not to be cruel about his memory.
She might not have felt any mad passion for him, but that did not mean that she didn’t care for him or appreciate the ways in which he cared for her too.
“Whose idea was it to marry?” Emma pressed.
"Our families decided,” she replied, with a slight laugh.
"And how did you react to the announcement of the betrothal then?" she asked, leaning forward with interest. She knitted her brows together, doing her best to cast her mind back to that day.
"I dinnae remember much about it," she admitted. "I-I suppose I thought it would be fine. We knew each other well, we agreed on most of the important things in life. I dinnae think that I could have asked for much more in a husband…"
"So it wasn’t a love match, then?”
She laughed at the thought.
"Not of passionate love, at least," she replied, shaking her head. "I loved him like… like a brother."
Emma and Martha exchange a glance. She got the sense that such a thing had been speculated over many times in this very kitchen, but it didn’t bother her. She had never claimed to be madly in love with Callum, nor he with her.
At least it would help them make more sense of her new marriage, they understood that her feelings for him had not come from a place of passion but duty.
“And what of Tavish, m’lady?” Emma asked.
Martha dug her elbow into the older woman’s side, but Emma paid her no attention. Ailsa got the feeling that this was far from the first time that she had addressed such thorny territory and that it did not scare her to approach the matters that other people might have done their best to avoid.
“What of him?”
“Do ye love him?”
She pressed her lips together for a moment, not sure how to respond, not sure what she was even expected to respond with. Because the truth was, she was not sure if she loved him, but there was certainly something that stirred in her at his presence that she had not felt when she was with Callum—or with any other man, for that matter.
But was attraction enough to build some kind of marriage on? Enough to make a life with? And if she admitted that all she felt for him was attraction, that the only thing she had for sure was a desire for more, then she was sure it would have been spread around the Keep in record time, and there would have been nothing she could do to stop it.
“He’s my husband,” she replied carefully. “He… has provided me with a place to live and taken his brother’s place, as any honorable man would.”
“That’s no’ an answer,” Emma chided her gently, but there was no malice in the way she spoke.
Ailsa smiled at her.
“I should… I should go. Thank ye for speaking wi’ me, Emma, I’m sure ye have better things to do with your day now.”
She turned and made her way from the kitchen. She could feel the eyes of the women burning into her back as she left, likely filled with a hundred more questions that they wanted to ask her.
But she had something to go on now, however small. There was something happening between this clan and the MacCairns. Malric might have been a friend of theirs in years past, but something had clearly shifted in their adulthood, something that had pulled them apart once and for all.
And if it had anything to do with what had happened to Callum, then she would do everything in her power to help. But first, she needed Tavish to come clean with her instead of leaving her cast into the dark as he had done all this time.
And she vowed to herself that, one way or another, she would get answers. Even if she had to drag them out of him herself to do it.
Chapter Twelve
When Ailsa heardfootsteps making their way up the stairs and towards the study, she sprang to her feet.
