Kendrick got to his feet with a snort. “I would ne’er do aught to harm her.”
“Then, Uncle, why send her awa’ to a man she does no’ want?”
Kendrick fixed Adair with a hard stare. “She has no’ told me she does not want the match.”
“She feels she owes ye far too much.”
“In fact,” Kendrick continued angrily, “she was fine wi’ it before ye showed up. Ha’ ye used pretty words on her, trying to charm her awa’?”
“I have not.” Words had not been necessary.
“I ken fine Mican and his son seem a rough lot. But they are sound allies and will mak’ good protectors for the lass. I would not send her otherwise.”
“What I can offer ye, freedom from my father’s demands—”
“Wha’ good to me if they are lands I cannot hold? I need Mican as an ally, no’ an enemy. Nay”—he waved his hand again—“the marriage alliance maun stand. And I believe it best that ye do no’ see my daughter again.”
Adair’s heart sank beneath the weight of dismay so great he could scarcely breathe. He had failed. He had failed Bradana. He had made things worse.
“Pray, Uncle,” he said, getting to his feet also, “talk to Bradana. Dismiss me if ye will, but ask her of her true feelings about this match.”
“Unfortunately, her feelings no longer matter. It is too late and things ha’ moved too far. A refusal now would be a slap in Mican’s face, an insult from which he might no’ recover. There is naught to be done.”
“So ye will send her against her will? Sell her for an alliance?”
“’Tis the way o’ the world, is it not?”
Angry now, and crushed beyond expressing, Adair turned to the door. How could he ever tell Bradana, after asking her to trust him, that he had failed?
“Nephew, if I were ye, I would head at once back to Erin. In fact, I would board that boat now, this very morning, and begone before ye come to Earrach MacGillean’s attention.”
“Uncle, is that a threat?”
Kendrick gave him a long look. “I should hope it does no’ ha’ to be.”
*
Bradana waited farup the shore, in the place where she and Adair had so often sat together with the sea at their feet. Here could she watch for him, and here would he find her after winning his case with Kendrick. If he could.
Another murky sort of day. The early sun shone upon the water, but far off, in the direction of Erin, a bank of clouds gathered.
Bradana, who had lived here all her life, girl and woman, knew that meant they would have rain before long. Here on this coast, rain came and went swiftly, as frequent as a grieving woman’s tears.
Wen sat beside her, his great tail sweeping the shingle each time she so much as glanced at him. He watched her get up repeatedly to pace. Wet her toes in the foam.
Today would be busy. She was supposed to take Earrach on a walking tour of the settlement—a chance, as her mother suggested, for them to grow better acquainted. After, Toren and Kerr would take him out hunting. It was to be hoped they would not treat him as shabbily as they had their cousin.
Adair. Where was he, by all the gods?
Later there would be a grand feast. And tomorrow…
Tomorrow she would be bathed and brushed and dressed in her remaining new gown, the blue one, and would wed Earrach MacGillean.
Unless Adair came to her with a miracle in his hands. A reprieve.
She gazed out to sea once again, peering past the clouds to the distance where lay Erin. Could she imagine that place, from whence her ancestors had come? Could she imagine a life lived there? A life with Adair.
Despite the feelings she harbored for him, her heart rebelled at it. Alba was her blood and her bone. It had a grip upon her soul.
