“It’s not your revenge to take. It’s mine, and mine alone,” Dair insisted.
“When? We have an opportunity now,” Padraig said.
WhenI’mstrong again.He thought of the cairn, growing with painful slowness. Was he healing? Could he? He could not explain that to his father, who wanted a miracle. He changed the subject instead. “What will folk think if I must give an order? They won’t obey a madman. Would you?”
Padraig’s mouth set in a stubborn line. “You’re not mad. I saw the virgin heal you. I was there.”
Dair folded his arms over his chest. “Fia MacLeod is no more magic than John or Ina or Angus. She’s just a lass. I’m not cured.”
“You haven’t had another nightmare. Not in three days. Coll tells me you were out with the goshawk. You’ve not had a drink since—”
“Ah yes, your spies. Will they line up to report when you return from Edinburgh or send their messages to you there? Will they follow me around every day to make sure I don’t harm myself—or anyone else for that matter? Did you not fear for her, poor wee Fia MacLeod? I punched Angus while trapped in a nightmare, broke his ribs. I blackened John’s eye when he got too close. Think of what I could do to a woman, especially one as fragile as Fia.”
“Then I will find another healer, another virgin,” his father said, without a shred of compassion on his face. “Donal MacLeod has twelve daughters. He doesn’t expect Fia to wed. She’s a burden to him. I have no doubt he was thinking exactly that when he sent Meggie along with her sister. I’ve no doubt that he has hopesshe’llmarry you, become the next Lady Sinclair . . .”
Dair felt a shudder pass over him. “Did the MacLeod say such a thing? Her own father?”
Padraig Sinclair had the grace to blush. “Not in so many words—but he let her come, sent her to tend a mad—” He paused. “To tend you. While I’m gone, you will be chief in my stead. From what I’ve seen, sweet Meggie MacLeod likes men of power and wealth. I’ve no doubt she’d be happy to stay on here at Carraig Brigh as your wife. Take the opportunity while I’m gone to spend time with her, as a good host—a chief—should. Charm her, woo her, seduce her. A wedding is what’s needed here. The clan will love you well enough with a pretty wife on your arm. They’ll forget all about Jeannie—you’llforget her.”
Dair grinned coldly. “What makes you think I’m capable of winning a pretty wife? Come now, even you must wonder if I’m still man enough for it.”
Padraig Sinclair looked up at the portrait above Dair’s head, and Dair knew he was comparing the scarred, broken madman before him to the son he’d once been. Padraig swallowed and got to his feet.
“You know what’s required of you,” he said, and left the room.
Dair waited for a moment. Then he rose to his feet and turned toward the window seat. “You can come out now, Mistress MacLeod.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Fia hadn’t heard Padraig and Dair enter the room and shut the door—not until they began to argue. She should have excused herself and left the library at once, but she had been afraid to interrupt.
She was curled in the corner of the window seat, hidden behind the curtains, with a book on her lap. She was lost in the wonderful love poems, verses filled with lush, sensual imagery—kisses stolen in leafy bowers by day and under starry skies by night, tales of lovers who lived for the rapture, beauty, joy, and yearning of being in love. The poems were written in Italian, which she didn’t speak, but someone had begun to translate them into English. The handwritten pages were tucked in between the book’s gold-edged pages. Fia had never read anything so marvelous, so romantic. It took her breath away.
By the time Fia realized she wasn’t alone, Padraig Sinclair’s voice had risen as he spoke of revenge and pirates. She’d heard the tales. The clan called Alasdair Og analmost-pirate, the canny Laird o’ the Seas, who could outwit or outrun the fastest English ships. They hunted him for his rich cargoes and his arrogance. Dair had always been lucky—until he wasn’t.
There really was no easy way to slip out of the room—she’d have had to walk right past them—so Fia decided it would be better to stay where she was and wait in silence until the conversation ended. She heard the Sinclair command his son to take charge, heard Dair’s refusal.
When the Sinclair told Dair what a wonderful wife Meggie would make, Fia’s heart had dropped to her knees. She wasn’t jealous of her sisters when the lads courted them and ignored her—the daughters of Fearsome MacLeod were winsome, charming women. If men were smitten in the company of one, they were dazzled out of their heads by five or six of them. But Dair and Meggie? She felt something hot in the pit of her stomach, a hard, bitter knot. Is that what had been intended all along?
She imagined Papa arriving at Carraig Brigh with her sisters for the wedding. They would leave for home after the nuptials, only to realize halfway back that they’d forgotten Fia yet again. She’d told herself all her life that it didn’t matter. But this time it did. This time, she wanted Dair Sinclair to noticeher,not her sister, to desire her company, not Meggie’s, and to—well,admireher. And not marrying her sister would be nice too, while she was making impossible wishes.
It wasn’t that she loved him. It was just that Dair Sinclair made her feel things that no one else ever had. Perhaps it was just that he’d flirted with her, talked of the sea, was kind when she’d burned herself after he’d been so monstrous the day they met. Oh, she was so confused!
The conversation ended abruptly, and she heard clipped footsteps leave the room—Padraig, then, since the steps were sure and quick, not limping.
“You can come out now, Mistress MacLeod,” Dair said.
Mortified, she wished she could slide through the floor. She forced herself to peer around the curtain. “I wasn’t eavesdropping. I—I was asleep,” she said. She wasn’t good at falsehoods, and he raised one eyebrow and sent her a level look of disbelief. She felt her face burn with shame. Her heart drummed against her ribs. Perhaps she did love him—a little.
“I saw your plaid on the chair,” he said, and pointed to it.
“Oh.” It was quite warm in the sun—or perhaps it was the nature of the poems. She’d taken it off, tossed it aside. She got to her feet to retrieve it now, and the book fell to the floor. He bent to pick it up.
He looked at the gold-embossed title on the spine. “Italian poetry. Do you read Italian?”
She thought of the sensual images in the poems and felt her cheeks flame all over again. “No, but someone has translated some of them. I was reading those.”
“Let me guess—the poem about a beautiful lady who lives in a tower in a forest, and the prince who was mad with love for her unreachable, incomparable beauty.”
