It was a start. Maybe this something new she felt, he did, too. ‘Your family didn’t come to the wedding, Rory. They didn’t come knowing Paiden was on his deathbed. Do they hate you?’
‘Thus enters my blunt-tongued wife.’
‘I thought you liked my tongue.’
It almost looked as if Rory flushed. ‘I’m baring myself to you and washing the dirt of the day away, Ailsa. Don’t put images in my head unless you’re prepared for the consequences.’
‘I like...consequences, just not now,’ she said.
He tossed the linen aside. ‘This is important to you? We have enough with your family. Your sisters are rather devious and your father works harder than twenty men.’
‘Hamish will die soon from illness or from poison and my clan is severely divided,’ she said. ‘But I still want to know about you.’
He glanced to his clean clothing, and then strode to the bed. She shifted so he could come between her legs. The dark of his eyes darkened further and she knew it matched her own. ‘Ailsa,’ he growled leaning forward. ‘You can’t look at me the way you do and think I won’t respond.’He was going to kiss her and she wanted him to. But just before their lips touched, he suddenly pulled away.
‘There’s something I need to show you,’ he said, opening the trunk at the base of the bed and pulling out a rectangular flat box. Eyeing it, and her, he held it aloft.
‘You want to show me that now?’ she asked, knowing she sounded disappointed.
Rory’s lips curved. ‘My family sent it when we married, but with everything happening, I forgot.’
‘I gather it’s important?’
‘It could be.’ Rory eyed the box which had been in the large trunk that Duff had brought over from Lochmore land. It was different than he remembered it, but it had been years since he saw it last. If his father honoured his marriage, the box would contain Lochmore brooches. One for each of them indicating their position in the clan, and the unity with each other. With an almost giddy eagerness, he couldn’t wait to pin the brooch to her gown.
‘I’m happy then.’
She meant it. All this time, he’d raged against his life. He came to McCrieff land wanting to secure his own future, only to realise with the McCrieff clan’s division that future was wrenchedaway from him. Positioned by Lochmores, manipulated by McCrieffs.
But this woman, what had she done? Only offered to save her clan, Paiden’s life...his own. By marrying Ailsa, he had gained something important for his future, a family he had always wanted.
His own family hadn’t come to his wedding, but she offered him the possibilities of a future where he could be happy, have children. Where the strife around them would be something they would face together. And at night, they could privately find peace. With the contents of this box, however, the Lochmore familial brooches, no one would question what she meant to him, what they meant to each other.
With a snap, he opened the lid, only to see...
‘What is it?’ Ailsa asked.
A white roaring filled Rory’s head and his vision narrowed as he focused on the contents. The box...the box wasn’t the one that he remembered.
Ailsa huffed as if greatly wounded. It wasn’t a sound she ever made so he glanced to her. A teasing light was in her eye. He couldn’t reciprocate it. Shock, anger and now this gut-wrenching emptiness wrested away his hope. If someonehad taken a sword to his gut, he’d feel no different.
‘If you think I’m disappointed with that necklace and ring you’re mistaken,’ Ailsa said, peering into the box, her tone as light as her eyes, ‘I would have preferred something more practical. Still, I could make do if—’
Rory slammed the lid and tossed the box on to the trunk. Division here, division in his family. And one he obviously created by marrying a McCrieff. There were no brooches in the box. It was clear his family did not recognise their marriage. He’d done everything he could to please his father. Even marrying this woman, in part, had been done for the clan. Why did he even try?
A gentle tug on his bare arm and he fell into green eyes and a gentle expression.
‘Where did you go?’ she asked.
If he explained, he’d sound like a bitter mad man. He’d worked tirelessly with the intrigue here, he’d braced himself for poison to hit him, or a sword to come slashing down in the middle of the night. He was on McCrieff land and he had expected betrayal here.
Never, not once, from his own family. Yet that is what they had done. They hadn’t come to his wedding and they didn’t offer the brooches that would acknowledge his marriage. Maybehis suspicions were true. Maybe he wasn’t his father’s son, and this, now, was how they told him.
Another tug, this time behind his neck as Ailsa pulled him closer. ‘Rory, you’re mostly naked.’
Her hand was warm, her words finally registering. Hiswife. Deceit from the McCrieffs. Betrayal from Lochmores. Caring...a chance at love, with Ailsa.
That thought, that certain bone-deep knowledge pulled the sword in his gut free and he felt a sudden dizzying freedom. This blunt-tongued woman whom he wanted more than anything or anyone just told him she wanted him. He’d take her.
