There was a lengthy silence before Colen mumbled, “Well enough.”
“Then tell my wife, if you will, the colors they wore,” Jamie commanded.
Her eyes pleaded with Colen, but he could not lie. “I’m sorry, lass, but the colors were indeed your father’s. I wish I could tell you different.”
She looked at the two of them, Colen doleful, Jamie holding on to his emotions tightly.
“Your kinsman was mistaken!” she raged at them. “And you’re detestable, both of you, to think otherwise!”
“Leave us and ready my horse!” Jamie ordered Colen.
“You canna do this, Jamie. You canna ride against my clan!” she shouted at him.
“You are presuming to know my intention,” he replied harshly, turning to dress.
“I suppose you feel your father was justified?” he asked her after a silence.
“I didna say that. But put yourself in his place. If my father hadna given you justice where it was deserving, would you have sought justice on your own?” He glared at her, and she added bitterly, “Youwould have, and you know it. But my father canna afford to, and you know that, too. He wanted no more of this feud. He did everything he could to protect himself against it.”
“You forget the alliances he’s made through your sisters. They were all wed soon after you were banished, I was told. Your father may feel he now has the strength to continue the feud against me.”
“Then why did he give me to you as wife?”
“I forced him to it!”
“Did you?” she shouted. “Then what of the strength you say he has now? If he is so powerful that he can fight you now, Jamie, then he would have fought you then. Instead, he agreed. And he argued till he was blue in the face to get me to agree. I wish to God I had defied him!”
“I’m beginning to wish you had, too!” Jamie retorted furiously, before storming out of the room.
Chapter 32
Sheena woke the next morning to find herself alone. She pulled herself up to a sitting position, but she didn’t have the will to do any more than that. She just sat there. Her eyes hurt, for she had cried herself to sleep. Her whole body seemed to hurt from the terrible sobs that had racked her.
A pointless thing, crying. It didn’t change anything. And it certainly didn’t make her feel better.
She stared out the window at the dismal sky, dark with clouds. Morning, and Jamie not returned. So he had gone to Angusshire. It was daylight now. The MacKinnion always struck in daylight. Was he attacking Tower Esk at that very moment?
A horrible image of a bloody battle came to mind, and she shook her head against it. But the image would not go away, and she began to hear screams and cries as well. Her father’s. Niall’s.
Her hands covered her ears, and she leaped offthe bed and paced furiously to drive the image away. She couldn’t stand not knowing what was happening at home. And if the agony of wondering was not terrible enough, she would have to be waiting when Jamie returned, his hands bloody. She would have to face him, knowing what he’d done to her family.
She wouldn’t! She would leave while he was gone. No one would dare stop her this time. She was The MacKinnion’s wife. She would take a horse and be well away before he returned.
But where would she go? She couldn’t ride straight for home and risk coming upon Jamie. She would go to Aberdeen and her Aunt Erminia. That was better. Together they would find out if she still had a home to return to, and a family.
She opened the door but stopped short, finding the servant Gertie there, about to knock.
“I’ve brought yer things, lass,” Gertie explained as she entered. “I thought yer might like to be changing ’afore yer come down to greet the guests.”
“Guests?”
“Aye, they’ve been arriving all morning,” Gertie said as she laid the gowns on the still-rumpled bed, tsk, tsking as she did so. “Did yer only just awake, lass? ’Tis late, you know.”
Sheena frowned. “How late?”
“Och, nearly noon it is. We were beginning to wonder if yer’d be coming down or no’. Doris was saying as how yer might be ’afeared to, after what happened. But I told her yer’ve more spunk than that. It wasna yer doing, what happened.”
Wasn’t it? Sheena thought ruefully. If Jamie hadn’t wanted her so badly, would he have kept her at Castle Kinnion? Would he have wed her? There would have been no wedding, and no “accident,” as Jamie called it. Her father would be safe at Tower Esk, and she would have been returned to Aberdeen. Perhaps she might not have been whisked away by Colen in the first place. It was all her fault, the fault of her looks. Her beauty had always been a curse—would it always be so?
