As soon as she was gone, Ailean lifted a hand, raking it through his hair.Shite. It was a tangled web he was weaving; he needed to extract himself before he got them both into serious trouble.
“Ailean.” Fiona’s voice reached him then. Alarmingly loud, with a brittle edge that made him tense. What was the lass up to? She’d wake the castle. “Ye’d better come out here.”
Pulse lurching, he moved forward, pulling the door open and stepping outside into the shadowed barmkin.
Fiona stood just a couple of feet in front of him, her shoulders hunched, spine stiff.
And when his gaze slid past her, he realized why.
Arms folded across his chest, legs apart, his father faced her.
Frozen to the spot, Fiona stared at the Chieftain of Dounarwyse. Lord help her. He was the last person she’d expected to see upon slipping outdoors.
Just a few moments earlier, she’d felt loose, languid with pleasure and the thrill of an illicit coupling. Despite the night’s tumultuous events, a feeling of contentment and peace had sunk deep into her bones.
But all of it fled now.
Rae Maclean stood alone in the barmkin. Smoke drifted around him, wreathing like mist and turning the night eerie.
Fiona’s heart started to pound.How did he know we were in there?
And then she spied movement to the left. A few yards behind the chieftain, another figure stepped out of the smoke. Tall. Lean. A scar bisecting one eyebrow.
Rowan.
Ice washed over her, followed by fire. The glint in his eye told her that he had seen them, that he had gone straight to Maclean. He’d betrayed his friend—and he’d betrayed her.
Queasiness churned through her.
She shouldn’t have been surprised, for if Rowan had seen Ailean disappear into the dye-house, it likely meant that he too had been loitering in the barmkin, perhaps waiting for an opportunity to get her alone, to talk to her—and instead, he’d seen his rival get there first.
A lover spurned was a dangerous thing.
Moments stretched out, and all Fiona could hear was the thundering of her own heart.
But Maclean’s attention wasn’t on Fiona. It was on his son, who’d just stepped up to her shoulder.
Fiona swallowed, glancing for the first time at Ailean.
He wasn’t looking her way. His profile was harsh in the light of the torch hanging nearby. His jaw was set, his shoulders tense as he braced himself to do battle with his father.
“I didn’t want to believe ye’d do something so foolish,” the laird spoke up finally, his voice low and rough. “Have ye forgotten that in a few days we’re due to set sail for the Isle of Lismore … that ye are about to choose a wife?”
Fiona’s pulse jolted.What?
However, oblivious to her reaction, Maclean plowed on. “I wanted to make an honest man of ye. Sorcha MacDougall could have saved ye, could have made ye into someone worthy of ruling these lands and this castle.” Rae’s lip curled. “But ye are intent on blackening our family name.”
Fiona must have made a distressed sound, for Maclean glanced her way then. “Ye didn’t know, did ye, lass?” His gaze shadowed with pity, although his expression made things worse. “I’ve arranged for Ailean to meet the MacDougall chieftain’s daughter with a view to marriage.”
Nausea bit at the back of Fiona’s throat. She wanted to think he was lying, yet Maclean didn’t appear a man to do so. She’d heard from the other servants that he was a man with a strong moral compass, someone with high expectations of others.
“I hadn’t agreed to it,” Ailean shot back, speaking for the first time.
His voice was flat and cold, quite unlike him. She was used to his warmth, the flirtatious edge in his tone. Not this brittle anger.
“No, yer attention has been elsewhere … I see that now,” the laird shot back, anger sparking in his gaze.
He was disappointed, bitterly so. And his son wasn’t making things any easier now by his lack of contrition.
