Page 24 of Twelfth Knight’s Bride

She froze. A month? Then they truly didn’t know she’d be gone in a fortnight—the moment Epiphany was upon them on Twelfth Night? And yet emotions swirled like an eddy, confusion and guilt chief among them. Guilt, that she was about to partake of a meal so hearty as this, when poor Peigi and Elizabeth had nothing, and further confusion at the thought of never returning home.

Why has James nay told them about Twelfth Night?

His pride? Mayhap hope that she would choose to stay? Why would she want to when her cold reception with Anag, whose husband had been slain by Grant men, was surely not the only frosty reception she would receive today? Besides, she’d been clear about her intent to go home. She’d promised her family and her people that she would.

And yet I refused his offer to return home when I had the chance.

She quelled her conscience. It mattered not that James was turning out to be much more complicated. The maids departed, and Maudie, feeling more at ease around her now that the maids weren’t so wary, waved discreetly as she slipped through the door.

Aileana smiled, returning the wave with a wiggle of her fingers, then turned to her tray as they secured the door shut behind them. A hearty stew awaited her beneath the lid, savory smells of salt and saffron wafting to her nostrils. Her mouth watered and her appetite, patchy as of late, surged quickly with desire to taste the rich meal. She took up the accompanying knife and swirled a piece of venison around the trencher, plump and oily. It wasn’t the watery broth and pathetic floating bits that they’d treated James to at Urquhart. Nor was the bread beside it flat and bland. It was a soft, thick cut, with an artfully whipped blossom of butter. She touched it. And still warm! And there was cheese… She hadn’t had cheese in so long, for to have cheese one needed cows. And dried apples. Apples!

She placed the morsel on her knife between her teeth, indulging in the venison’s hearty taste, the urge to stuff it down her throat overpowering. Bite after bite, she devoured the stew, then the pieces of apples, having forgotten what it felt like to be so sated. Slow down, Aileana, her conscience admonished her. ’Twill do no good to overload an empty stomach and make yerself ill—

Guilt jarred her again so suddenly, she froze.

Her family ate watery broth, not soft breads and cheeses, and Elizabeth, of all people, was carrying a child and needed sustenance far more than anyone else. What they would do for a meal like this… She set the knife aside and slid the trencher away as emotion pricked her eyes. Unable to go on eating, she lifted the white kerchief to her eyes and dabbed them. Standing, she walked to the hearth. Why must she find pleasure here? Why was it no longer so simple as hating an enemy but, perchance, empathizing with them, too? For it was becoming clear, her people might be suffering, but one look at Anag and it was obvious that this clan had suffered as well. Clan Grant wasn’t as innocent as she’d always thought them to be.

And perhaps that was the hardest revelation to swallow.

Chapter Six

“Is it true, my laird, that the lady was given to ye as restitution?” James’s cousin and first-in-command, Angus, asked discreetly as they led the traveling party.

James glanced at his cousin’s guarded expression while Devil plodded beneath him. The morning was fresh, and the sunlight winked upon the snow, so much so that it nearly burned the eyes. His soldiers and the wives accompanying their men on this hunt for the Yule log made merry, startling a flock of ptarmigans from their roost into flight with a beating of black-tipped wings as they passed around a flask of drink and broke out spontaneously into song.

“I saw a sweet, a seemly sight; A blissful burd, a blossom bright…”

“Why would Clan Grant give ye a noble sister?” Angus continued. “They hate us. Surely Laird Grant would prefer war over such.”

In spite of his shocking marriage announcement the day before, his people remained cheerful for the advent of festive activities, for his bakers were making stacks of bean cakes as they spoke to usher in the season tonight with the traditional game of seeking the bean in the bread, and soon the ladies would begin binding ashen twigs with evergreen twines to place as blessings in the Christmastide fire each night until Twelfth Night, when his twenty-fourth year would run out.

“I was surprised, too, that Grant acquiesced to my demand,” James replied.

He squinted back at Lady Aileana, riding at the end of the procession and thankfully well again. His chest clenched. Christ’s bones, he could barely stop looking at her. A bonny sight if he’d ever seen one. His maids had transformed her. She’d gone from nearly feral, with her hair unmanaged, to a cultivated lady, with the simple employment of a couple maids and a wardrobe. The starkness of the snow and brilliance of her sapphire gown set her auburn locks—held back in a net—on fire in the morning sunlight, and her skin, so porcelain, was like cream with sunbursts of pink upon her cheeks from the chill. Her lips were a kissable shade of rouge, and upon her ears hung a pair of amber bobbles. Not her pearls. Interesting.

Angus chuckled. “Still. Grant woman or nay, she’s a bonny prize to be won in a bartering. Is she mute? She’s too quiet for a woman.”

Nay. Quite a tongue she has when she wants to lash someone with it. James chuckled to himself.

“Though I dare say our womenfolk are repaying her the cold shoulder the Grants so deserve,” Angus continued.

They are what? James cast a look over his shoulder once more. She rode alone, ignored by the other women, who clustered together on their horses.

“I suppose a quiet wife is better than an unruly one,” Angus added. “Mayhap having subdued a Grant in such a way as ye have will keep them from meddling in skirmishes in which they have no business involving themselves.”

James swallowed the sour dislike that Angus’s remark put on his tongue. Aileana wasn’t soft-spoken. He’d come to expect her forthright tongue lashings and, strangely, felt deprived of them since their arrival in Tioram the day before. Here, among his people and his wealth, he sensed her nervousness, and much of her confidence was now stripped. If his women were treating her unkindly, it was no wonder that she rode by herself.

“That’s it, is it nay? Ye think to bed the Grants into submission since nothing else has worked?” Angus asked. “A surprising tactic, laird, considering ye’re careful about yer womenfolk. But aye, brilliant. Something a MacLeod would do.”

Be damned! James hated mention of the MacLeods and thoughts of Marjorie in their grips. Being compared to one? Revolting.

“We all see what ye’ve done, which is why we tolerate her presence—”

“That’s enough,” James grumbled. He’d foisted a petty punishment upon the Grants and risked Aileana’s health, no matter how unknowingly, with a much bigger reason at heart: his inheritance, which none of his clan knew about, apart from his sisters, and one of them had taken the secret to the grave. He hadn’t been trying to conquer the Grants by warming his bed with one… Had he? And if warming his bed was the intention, it was a chilly bed to be sure.

“I didnae force her to wife so that ye could all gloat about conquering the Grants. Our fight has never been with her, and I would expect better of my people. If ye’d give her a chance, ye’d see she has much to offer.”

Angus cleared his throat, surprised by the admonishment. “Ye cannae expect our people to open their arms to her so easily as ye apparently did. Her brother raided upon us. Evicted ye, and declared ye an outlaw. Some of our fine men died that day, leaving behind widows and orphans.”