“Isa would not like to have me tell you so, but it’s because of her mother that his lairdship wanted nothing to do with her when she was little. Please dinna be angry with her. It’s no her fault.” Though his chin quivered, he met Robert’s eyes with an oddly familiar piercing blue stare, his shoulders back like those of a little soldier.
“I’m no angry with Isa. Dinna you worry yerself about that, lad.” Robert forced a smile for Jamie’s sake, relieved to see the boy visibly relax. “How do you come to know about these things you say?”
Jamie shrugged. “My grandmother used to tell me stories about when Mistress Isa was a girl at the castle. She said his lairdship hated her mum because she’d up and left Master Thomas with a broken heart and that Isa was the very image of her mum.”
Robert nodded as he stood, ruffling Jamie’s hair with one hand. The backstairs grapevine always had been the best place to learn what went on in a keep.
“Come along with you, Jamie. Let’s get mounted and ready to go.” He lifted the boy up onto the back of the old horse he’d ridden from the castle before climbing into his own saddle. “Thank you for telling me about Isa and her grandfather. It helps me to know. I guess I can see how a father might resent the woman he thought had hurt his son. And if, as yer grandmother says, Isa looks so much like her mother, I suppose it would stir old feelings.”
The door to the cottage slammed again and Robert turned, watching as the Isa he’d come to know over the past few days made her way toward them.
“Aye,” Jamie agreed. “Between the way she looks and the terrible magic she inherited from her mum, she and his lairdship have had a hard time of it.”
“The what?” Robert swiveled his gaze back to the boy.
“Magic,” he answered innocently, waving as Isa approached. “Isa’s mum was a Faerie.”
Chapter 13
“The laird’s solar is just down this way.” With an emphatic nod, Jamie loped off ahead of them down the gloomy hallway at Castle MacGahan.
“As if I dinna remember where my own grandfather’s solar is located,” Isa muttered irritably, pushing in front of Robert to follow the boy.
The whole of their trip from the cottage she’d been quietly irritable. On the rare occasion where she seemed to feel the necessity to add her comments, they’d been snippy, as now. That her temper was on display was a given.
Robert had quickly decided that if this was her convoluted female logic trying to teach him a lesson by not talking to him, she had sorely misjudged his need for conversation.
So she was angry with him, that much he understood and accepted. Fine. She could be as angry as she liked. It didn’t change for one moment what was right and proper. He might have missed his opportunity to guide Thomas’s child, but he wouldn’t allow the adult she had become to dishonor her father.
He also wouldn’t allow her to continue to dishonor herself. She was a beautiful, intelligent woman who deserved the respect of her clan, not their pity and derision.
She’d have it, too. He’d do whatever was necessary to see to that. And if her being angry and refusing to talk to him was the price he’d have to pay, so be it.
Besides, he and Jamie had passed the time pleasantly enough discussing their fence and making vague plans for future projects, so her lack of participation was of no concern to him.
Jamie’s claim that Isa’s mother had been Faerie was another matter altogether. It had to be a flight of imagination, a story told by an old woman to a small boy to bring on sleep.
Though he knew better than most the reality of the Fae, stories of the Faerie were rife in the legends of the Scots. And while he suspected that some of those legends might be based in fact, this particular story was difficult to accept without some proof. That his whole life could be so intertwined with the Fae seemed simply too much of a coincidence. And yet, this could certainly explain Thomas’s contention that Isa, like her mother, was “different.”
Whatever the truth, he planned to learn more about this story, though the opportunity to follow up hadn’t appeared yet. He was especially interested in learning whether or not Isa knew anything of it.
“Here we are,” the boy whispered loudly before pushing open the heavy door to announce their arrival.
“They’ve come, yer lairdship. I’ve brought them directly to you, just as you commanded of me.”
Jamie bowed his head and moved to the side of the old laird’s chair while Robert followed Isa into the room, stopping two steps behind her.
Randulf MacGahan stared at his granddaughter, the thoughts behind his piercing blue gaze impenetrable. At length, he rose from his chair.
“Apologies for my delay in welcoming you, Isabella. When you first entered, it was as if Elesyria herself were standing in the room.”
“I canna help the way I look,” Isa muttered, her hands tightening into fists at her sides. She stepped back a pace, casting a dark scowl over her shoulder in Robert’s direction before returning her attention to her grandfather. “I’ve come as you ordered, for yer wedding to... to that Agneys. Though I canna for the life of me ken yer decision to tie yerself to that woman.”
The anger in her words surprised Robert, giving him pause to consider that Isa’s behavior this day might actually have less to do with him than he’d originally suspected.
“It was no an order, Isabella. Only the request of an old man to have his granddaughter at his side on this day.”
Though Robert could not see her expression, the rigid line of her back gave clue aplenty as to her mood.
