Dismayed by his rejection, Fenella obeyed.
The priest’s sonorous voice echoed in the nearly empty kirk. The clan gathered for a wedding now clustered on the steps to observe the priest’s ritual. She’d been moments away from becoming Keenan’s wife, and now she was relegated to remaining outside while the family went in. Her heart had broken for the laird’s family, but it broke yet again for her dashed hopes and dreams while Keenan turned away from her and walked slowly up the center aisle past benches on either side. He joined his brothers in standing over their father’s body until the priest finished.
As one, his brothers turned to Keenan and knelt. One-by-one, they swore fealty to the new laird MacNabb. Gavan went first. He was paler than she'd ever seen him, and his jaw clenched again and again as he spoke the ritual words. Anyone who didn’t know him might think he objected to the oath he gave, but she knew better. Keenan’s brothers idolized him and expected him to be a worthy successor to their da. Gregor went next, and Donal last. Pale and shaking, Donal knelt on one knee beside his father’s still warm body and kept glancing atit as he spoke. He'd returned to MacNabb from his new home at Clan Lathan to celebrate his eldest brother’s wedding. Their sister Groa remained there, wed to a Lathan and unable to travel due to her first pregnancy. Their two youngest brothers were fostered away and had not been summoned to attend today. Fenella had been sad Groa would miss her wedding. Now, she could only be relieved that her friend would not have to endure witnessing this tragedy unfold.
Keenan stood, silent and stoic while he accepted his brothers’ oaths, then clasped each one on the shoulder and thanked them for their faith in him.
Fenella sank onto a bench at the back of the kirk. Watching Keenan set the tone for the clan in the midst of such tragedy, the pieces of her heart shattered yet again for him.
Oath-taking done, he folded his mother in his arms and held her, letting her tears soak his leine until she pulled out of his grasp and dropped to her knees by her husband.
She took his hand. “My laird,” she said. “My love,” she added, more softly. “How cruel the way ye chose to leave us.” She kissed his hand, then stood with Keenan’s help and turned to regard him and the priest. “We came for a wedding. Ye must complete that. My son needs a strong woman at his side, especially now.”
Fenella stood, expecting the priest to invite her to stand by her betrothed or to move Keenan to her rather than marry them over his father’s body. But Keenan hesitated, and she held her breath.
Would Keenan still want her? His father had allowed their marriage within MacNabb since his heir had wed once before, to Aimil, to cement an alliance with McKinnon. Would Keenan's sudden duty as laird convince him that alliances were more important than their feelings for each other, especially if alliances had not been made or refreshed with powerful neighbors in a long time?
“Nay, Mother,” Keenan said, holding up a hand when the priest opened his mouth to agree to proceed. He squared his shoulders. “Our allies must be advised. We will bury our laird first. The wedding will wait for a more auspicious day.” He turned his head and looked toward Fenella, his gaze remote, as if he didn’t really see her.
She had her answer. Keenan might always associate the idea of their wedding with his father’s death. If so, the future she’d dreamed of and aspired to was doomed. That auspicious day might never come, not for her. Everyone knew alerting the clan’s allies would bring a flood of condolences—and offers to renew alliances through marriage.
She felt eyes boring into her back and glanced around. The people outside the kirk clogged the doorway, the crowd ebbing and flowing as each person shifted for a view of the people inside, including her. Were their eyes filled with pity? Or satisfaction? She dared not look at them for long or they would focus on her instead of their new laird. He was important to the clan. She was not.
Silently, she cursed the old laird for his timing. Yet in her heart, she knew he would not have chosen this manner of death, nor this time.
Two days later,after the sun rose above the nearby hills, they laid the old laird in the ground. The clan gathered for the ceremony and to observe the ritual. The priest officiated. The widow and the new MacNabb laird and his brothers threw the first earth on the casket. Fenella hung back as the rest of the clan stepped forward to do the same, no longer feeling a part of the family. She’d come so close. Moments only from being, at least,hand fasted, and minutes from being married in the kirk and acclaimed by the clan.
Keenan had not spoken to her since his father collapsed.
It wasn’t fair. She held his daughter, even now, little more regarded than a wet nurse, the recipient of sorrowful, sympathetic glances from some of the women, and snide, haughty smirks from others.
It didn’t take long after the burial for word of the change of leadership at MacNabb to bring messengers with offers of alliance and of marriage to eligible daughters. The first arrived two days later, but after a week, they still arrived. Each time she heard hoofbeats approaching MacNabb’s gates, Fenella’s heart clenched. Keenan would be closeted for hours with each messenger, and then with his advisors. She dreaded the news to come, but she fully expected she’d soon hear that he’d chosen a mate from among those being offered.
She still cared for Máirín. How could she not? She was the only mother the lass had ever known. Máirín seemed most to enjoy being outside, Fenella strolling the glen and the trees near the keep’s walls with the bairn in her arms. Máirín would laugh as leaf shadows slipped over Fenella’s face, and reach for the tears that slid down her cheeks when, away from other people, she gave in to her misery.
Returning to the keep after a walk outside, Fenella took Máirín back to the nursery.
“Have ye heard?” Kyla asked as Fenella turned away. She seemed bursting to tell her something.
Fenella looked over her shoulder. “Heard what?”
“The Cameron offered a fabulous dowry for the laird to marry his youngest daughter. MacNabb will be wealthy! ’Tis said the lass is only nine years old, so ’twould be years before the laird could get an heir on her, but ’twould be worth the wait. Hismother could remain chatelaine and train up the lass until she bled.”
Fenella’s stomach lurched. She managed to say, “I hadna heard,” before she fled the nursery for her own chamber. There, she was sick again and again until there was nothing left in her belly save sour tears. Her fears were coming true. Keenan would never be hers. And she couldn’t bear to see him wed to anyone else, to watch their love bloom and their bairns born.
She would have to leave MacNabb. But where? The only alternative she could think of was that perhaps Marsali’s Murray clan would welcome her.
Fenella dreaded that night’s supper, expecting to hear that Keenan was going to accept the Cameron offer. But she couldn’t tolerate being ignored any longer, so when she happened upon him in the hallway, she stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Can ye nay look at me, Keenan? I’m the woman ye claimed to love and were going to marry. Is it more than ye can manage to speak to me? To tell me what ye are planning? For yer daughter’s sake at least?”
He squeezed his eyes shut, giving her hope that he’d realize how badly he’d hurt her, and give her something to cling to. But he only shook his head, removed her hand from his arm with his free hand, and went on his way.
Shocked, Fenella stood, barely breathing. She hadn’t expected he would continue to ignore her if she confronted him. Worse, the warmth of his hand on hers had sent hot shivers up her arm, reminding her how she loved his touch. He paused a dozen steps away and for a heart-rending moment, she believed he would turn back to her, but he continued on.
He made no announcement during the meal.
She picked at her food, and left as soon as others began to leave the hall. After their encounter, Keenan’s disregard for her during the meal had been the last arrow her heart could absorb.
She sought out Marsali. “I need yer help,” she told her when they adjourned to Fenella’s chamber. “Ye must have seen that Keenan refuses to notice me, even when I care for his daughter. And ye must have heard the rumors of great wealth being offered MacNabb in dowries.”
