“Aye,” he said at last. “I did.”
And that, he suspected grimly, was the most unsettling truth of all.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Domhnall kept his gaze forward, but his thoughts had turned inward.
“Ye never told me why,” he said at last.
Margaret did not shift this time. “Why all that trouble?”
“Aye.”
He felt the slight hesitation in her breath before she spoke again. “Me sister Eleonor was meant tae be offered at the Masquerade,” she explained quietly. “Me faither had decided it long before the invitation arrived. She was tae be the price for his safety.”
Domhnall’s jaw tightened, but he did not interrupt.
“But she was already in love,” Margaret continued. “With a man he would never approve of. If she had gone tae the Masquerade,she would have been claimed, bound, and broken of it. Me faither didnae care a wit about her feelings.”
Her voice did not waver, though he could feel the tension in her back where she leaned against him.
“So I offered to take her place,” she said as if such sacrifice were the most natural thing in the world. “We exchanged clothes and she fled that night with the man she loves. I stayed.”
“Ye risked yer own life,” he said.
“Aye,” she said and looked at him. “I ken me duty as a daughter, me laird. I would have ended up married tae a man I dinnae love anyway. Why nae grant me sister happiness while daein’ it?”
He absorbed that in silence, weighing the truth of it against what he knew of power and fathers and daughters shaped into tools. It explained the composure, the resolve and finally, her refusal to bend.
“Ye did it kenning ye might be claimed,” he clarified what did not need any clarification.
“I did,” she nodded. “Only I didnae expect it tae be ye.”
He didn’t know whether to take it as an insult or a compliment. But the words nestled inside of him, regardless.
“And yer sister?” he asked.
“Free,” Margaret said with a smile he did not see, but which he still heard. “For now. She has a head start. I intend tae see her safe before anything else.”
Domhnall nodded once. He did not tell her what that would cost. She already knew.
After a moment, she tilted her head again, not playful now, but intent. “Laird MacGregor.”
The name landed between them like a blade laid carefully on stone.
“There is history,” she pressed. “Between ye. Is there nae?”
“Aye.”
She waited. He felt the quiet patience of a woman who had learned when to hold silence and when to demand truth. He did not give it to her.
“That is nae a tale fer the road,” he simply told her.
Nor fer today. Nor, perhaps, fer ye… yet.
Margaret studied him for a moment, then inclined her head in acceptance. “Very well.”
He respected her for that more than he ought to have.
