“I can’t remember the last time I was on a picnic.” Alison leaned against David and smiled up at him. “’Twas kind of ye to remember your promise to Beatrix.”
“As if the wee devil would let me forget it,” he said, squeezing her shoulders.
Alison snuggled closer as she watched the girls and Will, who were throwing rocks in the burn and arguing over who had thrown their stone the farthest or made it skip the most times. After years of suffering Blackadder’s constant criticism and mistreatment, her spirit felt light.
A bond was surely growing between her and David, and hope blossomed in her heart that he was coming to truly care for her.
“I’d like to make love to ye in this bonny spot,” he said in her ear, “with the birds singing and the sunlight on your bare skin.”
“Can we can return without the children and the guards?” she asked.
“Those rain clouds are headed this way,” he said, frowning at the horizon. Then he turned back to her and winked. “We’ll have to make do with our bed. But if we leave soon, we’ll have time before supper.”
“I’ll fetch the children,” she said, and grinned at him.
As she got to her feet, Margaret emerged from the brush that grew along the burn.
“Where are Beatrix and Will?” Alison asked.
“That way,” Margaret said, pointing upstream.
Alison lifted her skirts and made her way through the scrub brush. She heard the two children before she saw them.
“I don’t like being told what to do,” Beatrix said.
Alison chuckled to herself. That was certainly true. Curious, she took a few steps closer until she could see them through the branches.
“I’d let ye do whatever ye want. I wouldn’t care,” Will said, and tossed a stick into the burn. “But I expect you and Robbie will have rows that shake the roof.”
“I don’t want to marry him,” Beatrix said. “I don’t want to marry at all.”
Unease tightened Alison’s stomach. What had the children overheard that inspired this talk of marriage?
“I like Margaret nearly as much as I like Jasper,” Will said, and patted the pup’s head, “but I don’t want to marry her either.”
“Then we won’t do it,” Beatrix said, crossing her arms.
“David told Robbie that we must do it for the good of the clan,” Will said. “And when David says something must be done for the clan, ’tis a waste of breath to argue.”
Alison was so upset she was shaking. She told herself not to panic, that she must give David a chance to explain. Surely he would not plan her daughters’ marriages without consulting her. Whatever the children had heard, they must have misunderstood.
***
David felt a rare contentment as he lay back and watched the passing clouds while wee Margaret sat beside him playing with the wooden pig he’d carved for her. He could not recall ever whiling away the afternoon like this. His mother would have beat him for it.A laird’s heir has too much to learn to waste time on frivolity.His stepmother often took his brothers on outings like this, but he was too old by then to be included.
His breath caught as Alison appeared through the trees, looking as beguiling as a wood nymph. Would he ever become accustomed to the effect she had on him? While he had enjoyed spending time with Will and the girls, all he wanted now was to have his wife alone and naked in their bedchamber.
With his mind on that, he did not notice at first that Alison was unusually quiet on the short ride back. He took a closer look. Her back was stiff, and she was clutching the reins.
“What’s wrong?”
“It can keep until we’re alone,” she said, then she spurred her horse and trotted ahead.
He let her go and fell back to ride beside Will. “Do ye know what this is about?”
“I think she overheard me and Bea talking about the betrothals.”
“By the saints, Will, why could ye not keep it a secret?”
