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“Do you not think my father should sign it?” She asked. As The McKendrick and her father; the usual way of doing these things.
“He will.” The growl came naturally from the troglodyte. “After you marry, I will present him with a fait-accompli.” Even gelid, his voice coursed through her spine as warm honey.
Aileen lowered her head to the document and started reading it. The contract chained her to the marriage more than a serf to the land in the Middle Ages. Indignation erupted stronger than the sea waves in a storm.
“This is not a contract.” She exclaimed, shooting enraged bullets to the blasted McDougal. “This is a prison conviction!”
“I requested a clear agreement from Mr Fleming.” He replied as if one signed such death-sentences every day.
“And this here?” She read aloud. “’Any children resulting from this union remain with the father, in case the afore mentioned bride decides to leave the McDougal’s lands.’”
The pig-headed giant stared at her with a fixed attention which made her feel fidgety. “The children always stay with the father.”
It lay in the civil law of the time, she understood it. “I would never leave my children behind, contract or no contract.” Her vehemence made the solicitor uneasy as he adjusted his English style suit.
Something crossed Taran’s expression. One second there and then gone. A singular mixture of admiration and strangeness she found herself incapable of explaining.
This was much more than Aileen could take. Standing from her chair, she approached the damned man. Mahogany eyes glared him fiercely in his magnificent eyes, she extended her hands with the paper almost to his hawkish manly nose. “I am not your dead wife.” She hissed for his ears only.
And tore the document. Once. The solicitor’s eyes bulged at the defiance of the great McDougal. She tore the paper twice. In the corner of her eye, Sam lowered his head with a secret smile. She tore it the third time. His green gaze hurled spears of outrage at her. She did not stop until she reduced it to nothing. Her attention fixed on him, obdurate. The tiny pieces fell at his feet.
She smiled. Triumphant. At his squinted stare.
But there emerged a whole inferno of infuriation in her.
To Sam. “I wonder how the Bromeliaceae is faring.” A friendly grin to the adolescent, despite everything.
The boy promptly stood and accompanied her. “It has grown a lot since you saw it.”
“Let us check it.” They left the study chatting as if they had been in the room just for tea.
~.~.~
I am not your dead wife. Her perturbing statement kept playing in his mind as a chorus of ancient epic songs. He did not wish to dwell on her statement. He did not wish to revisit that time of his life, or ponder on the effects the period produced on him. Taran buried those events in the abyss of the past and never returned to them. Ever. They remained not in the past, though, did they? It he drew up a document where said events reflected in every line. This woman entered his life to revolve, subvert, unearth old skeletons. The fact put him on edge. She put him on edge. For infinitely thorny reasons.
Taran paced his empty study like a wolf in search of its prey. His authority alone should make the maddening witch sign the accursed contract. His long fingers raked his sable hair. But, no, of course not. Not her! She had to defy him in every way she might find.
So, he must have… convinced her—coerce so ugly a word—bargained a chip she would not have refused. He played this wrong, he saw now. Because she had been thwarting him from day one! Clearly, she was going to do it today. The woman possessed not a sense of self-preservation. The will to seize her elegant hand and make her sign the damned thing strong enough to force him to lock his muscles and stay immovable.
It came mixed with amazement at her dare. Even more at the way she undisguisedly protected Sam from his father’s wrath by taking him away with her so smartly. Then he did not wish to seize her hand. He wanted to seize her, take her somewhere quiet and show her how much that meant to him. Confounding buidseach! Had he known she would oppose this fierce resistance, he would have planned something more incisive. Possibly by abducting her and taking her directly to the priest and be done with it. But his son deserved to get used to the idea before his life changed, he had reckoned. The plan backfired spectacularly because the both became allies against him.
That was all he needed, he breathed a self-derogatory smirk. A headstrong shrew giving a bad example to Sam. He even felt a certain commiseration for the McKendricks if they experienced half the trouble to marry her!
His piled desk demanded he do long overdue work. Concentration in shortage, he tried to go through it.
~.~.~
“You were superb up there, Aileen.” Sam started as they left the hothouse.
They spent agreeable hours in the premise while he measured and made notes of the botanical specimens he kept track of closely. The world would lose a first-class scientist. The boy already combined weak species with stronger ones to create a resistant breed of grain that survived much easier in difficult weather like the Highland’s. Had his father allowed him to go to Oxford, he would definitely do his country a high service.
He received a smile from her. “I must, Sam. Or we both would be in for a life sentence of unhappiness.”
An inward sigh surfaced in her. She did not belong to this clan and she would not interfere with the boy’s future or the man might drag her to church by the hair, she suspected.
“I agree, but my father can be a tad… narrow-minded in these matters.” Arms behind him, his expression showed scepticism at those methods.
“A tad?” Her mouth breathed an incredulous laugh.
