“Nay, I –” she breathed out, but Reade closed his ears to her protests.
“I dinna know who ye are or what ye know,” he growled in a low, echoing voice, his face close to hers, “but bear in mind that as long as ye have Campbell connections, any connection, ye will be considered as naught less than a spy. One that must be guarded at all times. Because the Campbells and those who are aligned with them are naught but lying, scheming cowards of the land. The Highlands would benefit to be rid of the entire stinking lot of them.”
She kept her gaze lowered, hiding her face in her burnished locks as he spoke.
“I have no’ Campbell connections,” she countered, defending her claim. “And the Gordons sold me off, much like I’m being sold off now.”
Reade slammed his hand against the stones next to her head, the flat of his palm a mere inch from her head.
“And why should we trust ye? Ye’ve given us naught to convince us otherwise.”
Blair finally lifted her eyes to him, and they glittered with her suppressed rage. Had he not been blinded by his own rage, her intrepid tenacity might have impressed him.
“I have naught to give, because I have naught to hide,” she spat out, leaning into him. She had her small fists balled, and he would have laughed at the fierce image she projected if he wasn’t so irritated and irate.
“Ye are a fool if ye think I or my father believes that.”
To his surprise, she didn’t react with anger or send one of those small fists flying. She straightened and narrowed her eyes. Her lips thinned into a line that resembled a smile. Reade pulled his face back at this change in her stance.
“Och, I’m the fool?” She barked out a harsh laugh and poked a finger into his chest. “Nay, MacDonald, ye are. Ye and your father are the fools. Ask yourself this? Why would your father betroth ye to a woman who had been married before yet has no children? What does that say to ye?”
Reade’s mouth popped open, and he snapped it closed again so hard his teeth cracked together.
No babes? No’ a one?The realization of what she was saying hit him like a punch to the face, and he stepped away.
“Who’s the fool now, MacDonald?” she taunted with a humorless scowl before she slipped past him and entered her chambers, securing the door behind her.
Reade didn’t move fromhis place in the hall. From the corner of his eye, he watched the beautiful, spying witch retreat to her chambers and slam the door in his face.
He couldn’t collect his thoughts — they scattered like leaves before a storm. The only sensation he understood was the burning, bile-entrenched flame that unfurled in his chest and took over his body. His skin was hot, and his arms moved without his bidding. He struck the stone wall in rapid succession with his right fist, breaking his skin and smearing his blood on the stones, his own blood full of hate and fury, a crimson reminder of the cost of this arrangement that his father committed him to for God, country, and clan.
And now, not only was he beholden to a marriage to a traitorous shrew – an enticing, stunning shrew, but still a shrew – he was to be robbed of a legacy? Unable to pass down his bloodline, carry on his seed of the Glenachulish MacDonald clan?
His chest felt hollow, like Blair had gouged out his heart and flung it to the ground. Curling his hands in fists, his right one still throbbing and scraped, he panted out hot breaths, figuring out what to do next.
Reade knew what hewantedto do next – he wanted to break down Blair’s door and take his fists to her, force her to speak the truth. Never had such a fury surged in him to drive him to seek violence against a woman, but this one . . .
He puffed out a few more breaths, dispelling that ravaging anger out into the cool hallway air. He wasn’t going to do any of those things. Rash though he might be, he was not violent toward women. Only cowards and lily-livered men lifted a hand to a woman.
Yet, he now had an out. His father would never risk his bloodline by committing his eldest son to wed a woman unable to bear children. Surely that reasoning was enough to convince his father, and his grandfather, and Glengarry — any of them — to change their minds.
Spinning on his toe, Reade struck off toward the stairs, his plaid flapping as he raced back down to his father’s study.
The door was partwayopen, and Reade shoved it so that it bounced against the study wall. His mother was poised by the desk, setting a platter within Seamus’s reach. Both his mother and father raised their heads calmly. They were accustomed to Reade’s outbursts. At least he hadn’t broken anything this time.
“What ails ye, my son?” his mother, Sorcha, asked in a level tone. She twisted her broad shoulders toward him directly and brushed wisps of blonde hair off her forehead. Her patient, green-blue eyes studied him as she awaited his response.
Reade recognized that look – it was one he had seen too many times in the past, the look his mother bore as she prepared to talk him down from his furious precipice. He grimaced at her and strode up to his father’s table.
“Father, I’ve just received disturbing news. Information that will change your mind about this asinine arrangement with the Gordon lass.” Reade spoke with authority, hoping his tone conveyed his deep frustration regarding this marriage contract. He wouldn’t raise his voice to his parents – he respected them too much for that – but he had reached his breaking point. This washisfuture, and the future of the clan! How would they toss that idly into the hands of a potential spy and traitor?
And a barren one at that?
Seamus straightened and shared a raised eyebrow glance with his wife, then focused his gaze upon Reade, who stood tall and unflappable under his father’s gaze. Reade was not a man to cower before anyone, not even his own father.
“What have ye heard, lad?” Seamus asked, his voice as level as his wife’s. Sorcha perched on the edge of the table, her red tartan skirts draping like a multi-chromatic table cloth, a compliment of color in his father’s rugged study.
Reade released his fists, his fury abating. “I escorted her back to her chambers –”
