Beatrice knew too that Clan MacSween and its laird were rich and that Leo MacSween was considered handsome, although she only ever saw him from a distance and usually on horseback. Everyone knew of the emissaries and offers of arranged marriage that came frequently to this eligible man from clans across the Highlands, all of them summarily dismissed.
Other men lived and died to get heirs, but apparently not Leo MacSween. Years ago, Patrick Whitmore himself had considered bargaining his daughter’s hand against his debt to MacSween. Beatrice remembered overhearing him telling her mother how his initial approaches were rejected by the laird’s council. They had still hoped back then to persuade their laird into a politically or financially advantageous marriage.
As the Whitmores’ debt grew, the notion of exchanging it for marriage became impractical in any case. Even in the unlikely case that MacSween had agreed to accept Beatrice against his own debt, the other creditors would still have been clamoring at the family’s door. It was only now, with agreement among the creditors, that Beatrice’s marriage could wipe out everything her father owed at a stroke.
“Aye, Father, I ken well enough that our family’s debts must be paid,” Beatrice answered stiffly. “I swear I willnae bring shame upon our name. I have more pride in our honor than that. Still, I shall make me own way.”
As Beatrice made this unusually forceful assertion, she perceived Margo’s eyes dropping back into the gloom and vanishing from sight. Likely, the maid was among those shadowy figures now stealing out of the hallway, unable to eavesdrop any longer on the brewing row that could only have one ending, and not the one that the daughter of the house favored.
Beatrice felt no ill will towards servants fleeing the scene. If she could, she would have followed them away from her parents,from this table and from an atmosphere that felt hot, tight and thick with obligation.
“Make yer own way? What do ye mean by that?” Patrick demanded. “I’m in nay position to tell these lairds that ye’ll take one of them and nae another. Ye must accept their choice.”
There was anger in her father’s voice now, and perhaps more than a touch of fear. If Beatrice refused to cooperate, her parents would be utterly ruined and she knew it. But she was not refusing to cooperate.
The plan in her head was now fully formed and Beatrice got to her feet, a new resolve strengthening her tongue and sinews. To her surprise, her father took a step back when she looked at him, quailing at whatever he now saw in her eyes.
“I willnae sit waitin' here to be bound to a stranger from among yer creditors,” she stated boldly. “It seems I must be bound to one of these lairds, but I willnae marry a man I didnae choose.”
Shocked and frowning, Iola shook her head.
“They willnae accept that, Beatrice,” she warned her daughter. “These are powerful men and as yer father said, he cannae bargain with them. He is too indebted.”
“They will accept it if I marry the most fearsome among them,” Beatrice disagreed. “They wouldnae dare otherwise.”
“Ye cannae mean that,” objected Iola, coming now to Beatrice’s side with real maternal concern in her face as she grasped what the young woman had in mind. “Let some other laird come courting ye, when they’re agreed on it. Any other will make ye an easier husband thanhim. He admits himself that he is a strange and dangerous man, and he is set against marriage.”
“Beatrice, lassie,” said her father, swallowing, and seeming to shrink back into an old man again, as he had when he brought the decree out to her by the loch. “If ye marry that man, I cannae offer ye any protection. God willing, he’ll nae have ye anyway. All the others would, as yer mother tells ye.”
“Me mind is made up,” Beatrice declared. “I will only marry Laird Leo MacSween. If danger comes to me from any direction, I shall be ready for it.”
CHAPTER TWO
“We do sympathize with yer position, me Laird,” Allistair MacSween assured Leo.
Leo observed the long-fingered hands of his cousin and clan advisor drumming on the table and wondered whether Allistair was conscious of it or not. It was rare to see his cousin on edge. Yet, during this entire discussion, this trap and conspiracy, he had been jumpy and jittery. It was truly out of character.
“How can ye sympathize with me position?” Leo threw back. “None of ye have ever been in me position.”
Laird Leo MacSween did not appreciate having the entire council descend upon him without warning like this. He certainly did not appreciate their conspiring against him as they had, despite their universal insistence that they had done no such thing.
Conspire? Yes, Leo had used and meant that word, much to the chagrin of the council members. It so perfectly described their little ambush that it propelled him into a decision he had no intention of making.
“It’s just that we all understand how difficult it can be to make a choice like this,” Allistair returned. “Tyler, can ye nae make him see some sense?”
He gestured to Leo’s man-at-arms, standing at Leo’s right hand with an unsympathetic expression on his face. Tyler too knew this ambush for what it was and Leo watched with mild amusement as his loyal friend and supporter placed a hand over his own mouth with deliberate comic timing and shook his head briskly.
“Ye cannae think I am important enough to speak on such matters as these,” Tyler answered in muffled tones, clicking his heels together in a pantomime of Allistair’s own mannerisms. “Ye ken better than I, Allistair MacSween, that a lowly man-at-arms hasnae the brains for that.”
A guttural laugh escaped Leo’s lips, the tension in his jaw and shoulders relaxing at Tyler’s mocking playacting. He had seen Allistair disrespect his man-at-arms too many times to have any sympathy of his own for his cousin. Tyler was a good man who had stood at his laird’s side through time and tragedy and Leo gave him no reprimand despite the outrage on his cousin’s face.
Around the table, the other councilmen continued to regard Leo expectantly, and he looked back at them with a dark gaze of his own.
Had they really thought Tyler would change me mind?They ought to ken he isnae the type to bend to their whims.
Tyler’s loyalty was well-known and valued by Leo as much as the man’s sharp wits and humor, which Leo often joked were the main reason he kept him around.
Allistair had never been a fan of Tyler’s quips and had always been too thin-skinned to shrug off mockery, even in jest. In his cousin’s indignant expression, Leo perceived the same sniveling lad he had grown up with.
