And here the man had said he wouldn’t hurt her—neverhurt her! She felt sore, from her back pressed against his hard leather armor to her toes. Magdalene had stubbed them after losing her slippers in the woods when she’d so desperately tried to escape him.
He was a fiend, a monster! Just like the man who’d destroyed her beloved sister, Debora, by his callous and cruel abuse—though that one had met a just end when his servants had risen up against him and bludgeoned him to death.
Aye, there was a fine place in hell for men like Gabriel MacLachlan who married women against their will—and it made no good sense for him to have done so at all!
He didn’t want her.
He didn’t want this marriage.
She had decided that Seoras must hold something serious, indeed, over Gabriel’s head to make him acquiesce to wedding her, something that went far beyond obeying the orders of an overlord.
“Maggie, look up. I know you’re not sleeping. My people have come out tae greet you and welcome you tae your new home.”
Home? Magdalene stubbornly kept her eyes down and her head lowered, some satisfaction filling her when she heard him sigh heavily.
This place wasn’t her home! Aye, she had glimpsed MacLachlan Castle from afar when they had crested a hill, and it had looked as foreboding against the cloudy afternoon sky as she could have imagined it would be.
Dark gray stone. A massive keep with four square towers, two with what appeared to be scaffolding, and an attached building half as high that she imagined must be filled with emaciated prisoners hanging from shackles and pleading for water.
Gabriel was a warrior, wasn’t he? Always fighting. Always killing. Always brutal and unforgiving. How could he be any different with Seoras as his overlord?
Her memories of her only brother were of someone who’d scarcely given her any notice, and she’d learned to stay out of his way.
Ill-tempered, impatient, demanding, and unkind to servants and animals alike, many a time she’d heard a yelp from a poor dog that had strayed into his path or seen him whip a horse into a lather. She had no idea how Seoras had come to be that way, which wasn’t the character of her parents at all, and their home overall had been a happy one until what happened to Debora—
“Maggie, do you like wildflowers?”
Wildflowers? Her brute of a husband asking her about such a thing now when she felt as if she were being propelled toward no home at all, but a prison?
“Lift your head and you’ll see some lasses ahead with posies for you. Will you do that for me?”
Not for him, certainly not for him! Reluctantly, Magdalene looked up to see a trio of young girls hopping up and down with excitement alongside the road and clutching sprays of wildflowers.
A good-sized village lay to the east of the castle and it appeared, indeed, just as Gabriel had said, that many of the people had come out to greet them.
If she hadn’t felt so exhausted herself, she might have thrown a hysterical fit right then and there and given them all something to gossip about—but her heart went out to the three girls lifting up their offerings as Gabriel slowed his horse to a stop.
“Welcome, Lady MacLachlan!” they burst out in unison, the girls’ faces freshly scrubbed and their simple clothing appearing clean and like new.
“Och, she’s beautiful, dinna you think so?” breathed a sweet little sprite who stood on tiptoe to hand Magdalene a small bunch of bright yellow marsh marigold.
“Aye, like an angel, she is, with that golden hair,” piped up another girl who appeared the eldest, her somewhat bedraggled posy offered up with a beaming smile. “God bless you, Laird MacLachlan, and your lovely lady, too! Do you see the tunics our ma stitched for us with that bolt of cloth you gave us?”
“Aye, lass, she did a fine job,” came Gabriel’s answer, the gentleness in his deep voice making Magdalene stiffen against him.
Oh, aye, playing the benevolent laird to his people while her ribs pained her with every breath she took! She almost flung the posies in his face when a ruckus of squeals and feminine laughter made her glance ahead to where Conall and his horse were suddenly surrounded by comely young women.
She felt Gabriel stiffen now, too, and she wondered if it had bothered him that the Campbell brothers had skirted them while they were stopped, and ridden on ahead.
“Conall’s been gone only a few days and it’s like they havna seen him for weeks,” Alun said dryly, reining in his mount beside them. “What can one say? He loves women…and they love him right back.”
“I’ve asked Cameron tae counsel him about that very thing,” Gabriel said sternly, Magdalene looking at the older brother who appeared quite ill at ease when a saucy young woman sauntered up to his horse. “There’s men aplenty hoping tae take those lasses tae wife, yet they’re dreaming about Conall when he’ll never tie himself tae one woman. It’s not his nature, while Cameron…well, you’d never know he’s my greatest warrior from his shyness around women.”
“Och, it’s more than shyness, Gabriel, and you know it. I think Cameron would rather fight a hundred Englishmen than look a woman straight in the eye. He’s entirely confounded by them.”
“I know how he feels,” Gabriel muttered, which made Magdalene smile to herself in his arms and feel a resurgence of hope.
Aye, she well may have been brought to MacLachlan Castle, not what she’d wanted at all, but if he was confounded by her? Then the battle she’d waged to return to the convent wasn’t over, but only getting started.
