“Why are you telling me this?”
She shrugged. “I thought you might like to know. And perhaps such information about your future husband will make it easier for you to do what you must do. The first time is never easy.”
She regarded her mother with understanding and a whisper of quiet gratitude.
“I appreciate what you are trying to do,” she said, “but I don’t think anything is going to make this less difficult. Let us just pray that it is over as quickly as possible.”
***
Angus leaned back in his chair when a servant came to refill his goblet. His attention was diverted, however, by the image of his future wife crossing the hall to join him at the table.
He marveled at his unexpected good luck—that the woman he’d claimed for a bride did not have the face of a turnip. Even in that ugly gray frock, she outshone every woman in the room, for there was something intangible and strangely ethereal about her beauty, something radiant that burned in those keen brown eyes. Her complexion was ivory-white, while her thick, sable hair was an exotic and striking contrast of darkness. To top it all off, those cherry-red lips were supple and full, and the effect of her presence as a whole was enough to make his head spin.
But as he watched her approach—and felt a carnal urge to rise up from the table and drag her by the hand to his bed—he began to wonder if he had been cursed, rather than blessed, for he had no interest in becoming infatuated with anyone, much less a wife.
He had seen what romantic obsessions did to men. He had watched his closest friend, Duncan MacLean, lay down his sword and give up his warrior life for the mad love of a woman.
An Englishwoman, at that. Angus had been so frustrated by the affair—and by his own inability to talk sense into Duncan—that he’d gone a little mad himself. Mad with rage and unthinkable treachery. Eventually mad with shame.
“You look lost in thought,” Lachlan said, sitting down beside him and tearing off a hunk of the warm, crusty bread. “Can’t blame you. She’s a prize, that one.”
Gwendolen stopped to speak to an older woman in the crowd.
Angus picked up his goblet and frowned. “Aye, she’s fetchin’, to be sure, and has the fire of a fighting Scot in her blood, but make no mistake about it. The real prize is Kinloch.”
Lachlan leaned back in his chair. “Aye, but what is Kinloch, if not for its people? Without them, it’s just stones and mortar.”
Angus regarded him irritably. “Stones and mortar, Lachlan? Were your brains addled during the battle this morning? Without these walls, there is no home. There is nothing.”
He could testify to that. He had been two years banished, living in the cold, damp outer reaches of the Western Isles in a thatched hut with Raonaid—another outcast like himself. A gifted devil of a woman who had been banished for her unearthly talents, and had no other place to go. The entire time, he’d felt like he was bobbing about in a frigid sea with no sign of land or even a mucky bottom to set his feet upon. He had never felt more lost or nonexistent. He had not known it was possible to feel like a living ghost.
He took another sip of wine and watched Gwendolen over the rim of the goblet. She and her mother—another dangerous beauty—were still chattering with the woman, who wiped a tear from her cheek. Gwendolen offered her a folded kerchief from inside her sleeve.
“Your future mother-in-law seems like a champion vixen,” Lachlan said in a low voice, leaning close. “You ought to keep a close eye on her. I learned today that she took her dead husband’s steward to bed on the day of the funeral, and has been pulling the man’s strings ever since.”
“Aye, but there’s more,” Angus replied. “She’s been having him in her bed for over a year, ruling Kinloch from behind closed doors the entire time. Her husband was a puppet, too.”
Lachlan sipped his wine. “I confess I am not surprised, having just met her. Does the daughter know?”
Angus studied Gwendolen from across the room. “I cannot be sure. It’s difficult to imagine she didn’t know what was going on. She’s clever and strong-willed. Yet she seems too virtuous to condone such a thing.”
He thought about the softness of her skin beneath his roaming hands, and how she had responded to his touch with such repressed desire. He wondered if she was like her mother, and it was all a clever act to make him believe he’d succeeded in conquering her—to give him a false sense of power and confidence—or if she had truly been aroused by his kiss and would prove malleable in the future.
“And what did you learn about the son today?” Angus asked, redirecting his thoughts to a different matter. “My future wife believes he will come home at any moment and seize back what he believes to be his.”
“That, I am afraid, is no lie. News was sent to him about his father’s death, but there has been no response, so he could arrive at the gates tomorrow for all we know. I also learned that his departure was not friendly. He and his father quarreled for weeks before. Some say it involved a woman he was not permitted to marry, which explains his absence at his father’s deathbed, for they were estranged.”
Again, Angus thought of his friend Duncan’s romantic obsession with a woman, and how such passions could distract a man from his purpose as a warrior and leader of men.
“Does Murdoch have the power to raise an army?” he asked.
“He has the support of King George. It’s why Kinloch was lost to the MacEwens in the first place.”
“Because of my father’s undying Jacobite passions.” Angus sipped his wine and remembered all the politics and campaigning for the Stuart Crown, and how it had ended in defeat on the battlefield at Sherrifmuir.
Lachlan tore off another hunk of bread. “Your father raised an army to dethrone a king, and reigning monarchs don’t take kindly to that sort of thing, Angus. King George will no doubt be watching you very closely in the coming months, for any secret maneuverings.”
“I have no such intentions,” Angus replied. “At least not presently. I want peace at Kinloch. I’ve seen enough bloodshed for a while.”
