Clearly he wasn’t the only one whose world had been turned upside down so ruthlessly by Seoras, but Gabriel blamed his brother, too. Malcolm had inherited MacLachlan Castle and the surrounding lands upon their father’s death—and then nearly pitched the place into financial ruin with his exorbitant spending.
Aye, Gabriel had loved him, his untimely death came as a shock, but it had been Malcolm’s reckless ways that had cast Gabriel into his current predicament.
Indebted by marriage to Seoras, whose growing lust to attain the throne of Scotland for himself had become so plain to see, all of which secretly sickened Gabriel.
And now a bride whose very life would be threatened the moment she crossed the threshold of her new home—
“She’s ready, Laird. Will you carry her or shall she walk on her own?”
Gabriel barely acknowledged Sister Agnes’s hushed query for the tears that had begun to trickle down Magdalene’s pale cheeks, which made him curse under his breath.
Damn Malcolm and damn Seoras MacDougall, too! He was no brute or terrorizer of women!
In truth, Magdalene looked so beautiful at that moment in her childlike despair that he felt his breath snag in his throat.
Her waist-length hair dry now and brushed to a glistening sheen.
Her clothing accentuating the curves of her body, the bodice clinging to the pert outline of her breasts.
A costly, fur-trimmed cloak draped across her delicate shoulders.
That left him to don his breacan once again since she no longer needed it, Gabriel winding the plaid garment like a mantle around him and then tying it at his waist. She stood so much shorter than him that she’d nearly been smothered to her knees by the thing, while the breacan covered his broad shoulders and hung to his hips, and no further.
With everything clearly in readiness, he reached out his hand to her, not surprised at all when she flinched and took a step away from him.
“I told you, Magdalene, I’ll not hurt you. Never hurt you, I vow it. Take my hand and walk with me tae greet my men as their new lady, will you?”
Again, he wasn’t surprised when she simply stood there and didn’t answer him, though this time she lifted her head and stared at him with a tear-filled gaze that made his heart lurch in his chest.
Her eyes a stunning green fringed by damp brown lashes, Gabriel inwardly cursing again the inexorable forces that bound him to a bride who was clearly more a child in her mind and ways than a grown woman of eighteen years. A lump growing in his throat, he didn’t ask again but gently took her hand, which lay limply in his, though her touch was warm.
Aye, life could be so cruel, he had seen it time and time again in battle.
In the pinched faces of the people in his care who might have starved if not for the bargain he’d struck with Seoras.
In the trusting eyes of Keira and Rhona, who looked to him now as their father—his young nieces so excited to meet their new mother.
Little did the children know that Magdalene’s infirmity would make her more of a playmate…if her changeable temperament would even allow that much interaction between them.
“Come, Magdalene.”
To his relief, she didn’t resist him, though the sorrowful look she cast at Sister Agnes as they walked past her and the two other nuns standing silently in the hall cut Gabriel deeply.
Yet in the next instant he hardened his heart, knowing there was no help for it—foranyof it.
The thing was done. For better and worse, he and Magdalene were husband and wife.
If he was fortunate, she’d remain as docile for the entire journey back to MacLachlan Castle, though his gut told him from the sudden tension in her slim fingers that he wasn’t going to be so lucky.
* * *
Magdalene hadall she could do to walk calmly toward the open convent gate, though she wanted nothing more than to bolt back to the sleeping quarters.
Nothing more than to free her fingers from the man who held them so firmly as if Gabriel sensed the tempest brewing inside her.
Sister Agnes had already bid her goodbye with a kiss to her cheek, while Sister Tabitha and Sister Hestia had gone to join the rest of the nuns clustered in an anxious-looking group near the fountain. If Magdalene had said, “Boo!” to them, she was certain they would have all jumped out of their skins, but instead she walked silently alongside Gabriel—deliberating about what she intended to do next.
How would she ever be able to return to the convent if she didn’t frustrate him at every turn? Together they walked through the gate to where two dozen or so men awaited them—Magdalene drawing in her breath at the forbidding line of armed warriors.
