Page 85 of When the Laird Conquers

“Goodnight, lass,” he murmured.

Her eyes snapped open, her ire flaring. “Goodnight? It is barely sunset.”

“I thought ye might be tired after such a busy day.”

She frowned. “Well, are you staying?”

“I can if ye want me to,” he replied flatly. “If ye’re nae tired, we can play cards or… walk in the gardens. Whatever ye prefer.”

She huffed out a breath. “So, am I to understand that we will not be consummating our marriage tonight?”

Her voice was colder than she had intended, iced by her disappointment.

True, he had already told her what she could and could not expect of him, but after last night, she had thought that something had shifted. That his rules might be more bendable than he had first suggested.

“Nae just tonight,” he said gently. “I told ye this, Sunshine. I cannae afford to⁠—”

“To what?” she cut in sharply. “Gordon, believe me when I say that I respect your wishes to honor the memory of your child, but I have seen what happens when someone buries themselves in their grief. I have seen what happens when the living stop living because someone is gone. My father was the same way when my mother died.”

He tilted his head, his eyes soft as he stared at her. But he didn’t speak, leaving room for her to continue.

“He locked himself away and closed all the drapes,” she went on. “He saw no one, including my sister and me. He withheld all affection until we felt, for a time, that he had died too. He lost friends, and everyone around him lost their patience. He almost ruined his life because he could not overcome his grief. And just the other day, he agreed that my mother would be furious with him and the way he acted if she were here now. The dead do not want to punish us for still being alive!”

Gordon sighed. “I daenae doubt that ye’re right, lass.”

“Then why are you so determined to be unhappy, to deny yourself a future with me?” she shot back, her eyes stinging with confused tears.

He met her gaze, his expression unreadable. “Because I daenae deserve it, Sunshine. Aye, we might be bound in marriage now, but I willnae bind ye to me by blood. I am the monster ye willnae believe I am. Ye daenae want to have children with me, and I wouldnae foist them on ye.”

“But… But you are not a monster!” she rasped, grabbing his hands. “Nothing about you is monstrous, and I cannot fathom why you are being so stubborn about that!”

He laughed dryly. “Have ye nae wondered why they wrote those things about me in yer almanac?”

“They were lies,” she insisted. “The man I have come to know is none of those things.”

He shook his head. “They werenae lies, lass.” He squeezed her hands gently. “Would ye like to ken why they call me the Mad Laird?”

“Well, I assume it is because you also locked yourself away after the death of your son, shunning everyone,” she said, feeling rather certain she had figured it out. “I haven’t forgotten how gloomy this place was when I first arrived. It was like a tomb.”

A sad smile graced his lips. “I didnae shun everyone, lass. They shunned me, as they had every right to.” He looked deeply into her eyes. “That is what ye do when a man kills his own faither and the entirety of his faither’s personal guard.”

“What?” She recoiled involuntarily, her mind bursting with visions of those men in the marketplace, how swiftly Gordon had dispatched them.

“I didnae tell ye everythin’ about Katherine and me son,” he admitted, his voice heavy with fatigue. “Five years ago, I happened to hear me faither talkin’ with his man-at-arms. He said—and I’ll never forget it—‘that whore healer was a fool to think I’d ever let her or her bastard anywhere near me son. He’ll wed a suitable lass, a bride from a powerful clan, nae some worthless shrew. She killed herself, as far as I’m concerned. If she’d stayed quiet, she and her bastard would still be alive.’

“That’s how I learned where she was and that he was the one who sent her there. And when I confronted him, that’s how I learned that he had sent a carriage under the ruse of bringing her and me son here, and had arranged for brigands to murder them on the road. I loved Katherine as me dearest friend, and she died because she trusted me. Me son died because I was his faither, nothin’ more.”

Tears beaded on Agnes’s lashes as she listened to his terrible tale, her heart aching, not just for him but also for Katherine and their son.

“I became a wild beast,” he said in a faraway voice. “I couldnae be stopped. I killed them all. I killed me faither and every man close to him who kent the truth and did nothin’. And I killed the brigands too, although that came afterward. There was more blood than I’ve ever seen in me life, and when I emerged from his study, I was drenched in it. A few people fled then, and everyone else was quick to follow. Only the soldiers stayed, and Iona and Marcus. I liked it that way, shuttin’ out the rest of the world.”

Agnes took a deep breath. “You were mad with grief. You had just learned something atrocious. Who would not lash out?”

Even now, she refused to believe that there was an evil bone in his body.

“I didnae ‘lash out,’ lass. I massacred them,” he emphasized. “Daenae make excuses for me. I am what I told ye I was, and I willnae have any bairns because no bairn should have a monster for a faither. And though ye’ve found yerself with a monster for a husband, I willnae consummate our marriage, in case a day comes when ye see the beast beneath and wish to leave.”

“Would a beast let me leave?” she countered, struggling to figure out how she could make him see sense.