“I will show Dubhán out,” Mam piped up brightly as her chair legs squeaked on the floor. “Good night, Tav.” She gave Glenna a rueful smile. “I’ll look in on your da before I retire, milady.”
“Thank you, Harriet,” Glenna Douglas whispered, but her hateful gaze remained trained on Tavish, as if she dismissed a servant worthy of not even a glance.
Tavish looked up at her benignly, stretching out one leg and folding his hands atop his stomach. “Why does the close of the first dry day in a fortnight find you yet in my house?”
“Roscraig isn’t yours. Besides, even if it were, I have nowhere to go, and well you know it.”
“That’s not true at all—I gave you your choice of any of the cottages in the village.”
“If you think to so easily be rid of me upon naught more than a questionable scrap of parchment, you are as dense as you appear,” she said. “It will take no less than the king’s command for me to be moved.”
“He will be here within the month,” Tavish rejoined easily, pleased at the flash in her eyes. “Not long to bide one’s time in the village.”
“Then you shouldn’t mind waiting there,” she offered.
Tavish couldn’t help but laugh. He glanced up, indicating the portrait once more hanging over the great hearth. “I have a court-witnessed decree from my father—an English lord—that Tower Roscraig and its title belong to me. What proof have you?”
She stormed toward him at last, her skirts swinging against his legs as she stood over him. Her arm pointed behind her toward the doorway. “My proof is my father: the laird of Roscraig who lies above your head, dying! You are a naught but a bastard interloper who doesn’t have the decency to so much as pay his respects to the man whose home you think to steal!”
Tavish gained his feet, noticing that Glenna initially flinched at his movement but continued to stand her ground.
He leaned down close to her face. “Insult me once more in my hall, princess, and I shall give you the back of my hand. Test me and know. I have been most generous in giving you this past fortnight. I owe you—and your da—naught. Your time is come. Be gone.”
“If you would have a dying man moved,” she said to him steadily, “thenyougo above and do it yourself, so that his death can be only on your hands.Youremove him from your mother’s kindness and care.Youexplain his death to the king when he comes to entertain your common groveling.Youdo it, and be damned.”
“You didn’t come down here only to curse me,” Tavish said aloud as he realized it. He let his gaze flit over her face, her hair pointedly. “You want something. You want to deal.”
Her eyes widened so slightly that, had anyone else been watching her, they likely would have never have known. But Tavish was alert to every pore and curve of her face, and Glenna seemed to recognize that as she blinked then took a step away from him. “The king could deny you,” she said.
“Nonsense,” Tavish scoffed.
“Your father was English,” she insisted. “And so that makes you half. Posture all you like, but you know as well as I that James hates the murdering bastards. He would be well within his rights to toss you out on your swollen head, and then where would you go, hmm? I’m of the impression that you’d not receive a warm welcome upon your return to Edinburgh.”
“I can give James all the coin Roscraig owes—every last shilling. The amount of income I can glean here is limitless, and the king will recognize that.”
“If all the king wished for was wealth, many flags would fly across Scotland. When he chooses to fight, you would make a fine trumpet.”
Tavish stilled. This woman was no imbecile. As much as he wanted to deny it to Mam and even to himself, the points Glenna Douglas made were valid and entirely plausible. But if she realized their likelihood, she also knew that there was an equal if not better chance that King James would award Roscraig to Tavish rather than an impoverished, ineffective corpse or the corpse’s even more impoverished daughter.
What intrigued Tavish most in that moment, though, was Glenna Douglas’s heretofore secret agenda with him in the hall.
“I’ve been in the business of commerce long enough to know when I’m being sold a cargo of questionable worth. So I’ll ask you once more: What is it you came down here tonight for? And say it right out—no more dodging. What do you want?”
“Very well.” She lifted her chin. “I want to marry you.”
Chapter 7
There, she’d said it. It was out in the open now, and all Glenna had to do was withstand this terrible, awkward silence while Tavish Cameron stared at her. She steeled herself not to squirm, not to look away from him for even an instant. He took a quick step back, letting in a rush of fresh, cool air, and Glenna drew a deep silent breath through her nose.
“You want to…marry me?” His brows were drawn together between his eyes like the folds of a drapery.
Glenna lifted her chin the slightest bit. “That’s right.”
His frown was suspicious now. “But…you hate me.”
“I do.”
“And I hate you,” he added.
