Page 3 of Lady Len and the Mysterious Mac

“Ask again,” Si ordered his cousin, who glared at him, but rolled his head sullenly towards Mackintosh.

“Can we?”

Puffing up once more, the father said, “Well now, that all depends—”

“Jesus—”

“Silas,” his father warned, jerking his head towards the crucifix.

“Begging your pardon,” Si mumbled to the priest, the father, and God Himself, but mostly to the lady, for she stared intently at the floor, no doubt humiliated by all of it. “Mr. Mackintosh, the hour is late, the lasses are clearly exhausted, and my father should be out of the damp. Unless you mean to revoke your consent, might we have it and have done?”

It was an offer as well as a challenge. One final chance to save the girl from a fate of being tied to him, and she knew it, finally lifting her watery eyes to his, the unexpected sapphire shades of the North Sea. She was a Mackintosh, he should’ve known they’d be the purest blue, and he realized with absolute certainty that he’d do anything to protect her, even from himself.

“It is indeed an auspicious day for our two families,” her father blustered, but eventually he gave his consent once more, and everyone except the bride and groom sighed with relief.

She didn’t withdraw her gaze from his the entire time, and it made his mouth dry.

They were officially betrothed, before God and in the sight of his blessed mother, buried these twenty-eight years. Her death had cast a shadow over Si his whole life, one that he could never outrun, not even a lifetime away in Aberdeen. Would she rest easier now he was settled? Or would her spirit be overcome with fear for the Mackintosh lass?

Father Sinclair gripped Si’s elbow in a friendly way that would’ve been a shoulder clap on an average-sized man, and he bent to hear the whispered words. “Perhaps smelling salts in your waistcoat on the day. Will it be the boy standing up with you?”

Si cast his gaze to Bram, watching from the doorway as the Mackintoshes piled into a carriage for the short journey back to their inn. Young Bram had been the heir to all of this, until that fateful day.

“He’s not too young?” Si asked.

“He is very young, but needs must,” Father Sinclair said, turning away to tend other priestly matters.

Well, and maybe he was, but Si intended to make a man of him and restore him to his rightful place the moment he came of age.

* * *

Ellen’s father was fuming when they boarded the carriage.

He could never abide disrespect in any form, but worse was the appearance that he wasn’t in complete control. Bad enough she’d stepped out of line in the kirk—unthinkable—but then Silas MacKenzie had stepped in to stop his opprobrious hemming and hawing—unforgivable.

Only her cousin Jory had ever dared risk the fury of Rupert Mackintosh on Ellen’s behalf. Though she supposed standing up to bullies wasn’t such a great risk for a man so big and braw as this MacKenzie.

When the carriage lurched away from the kirk, Ellen gazed out at the sea of scattered headstones. Standing there trying to catch her breath, she had prayed for the ground to open and entomb her with its denizens below. But as usual, the answer was No. She remained steadfastly earthbound and betrothed.

“I’ve never been more insulted,” her father huffed.

“I’m sure he meant no offense,” her mother soothed, stroking his arm tentatively, like you might pet a temperamental cat. “A man like that can’t help being gruff. It’s just his way.”

A man like that. They didn’t even know him.

For years, her father had threatened her with the specter of a MacKenzie husband, with no particular man in mind. He only liked the idea of allying himself with the clan. None of them had ever imagined he’d actually produce a MacKenzie groom, let alone the son of a laird.

But then Old Kintail had returned from the continent and word began to spread that his son sought a bride, and the next thing Ellen knew she was standing in the kirk being stared at by her soon-to-be kin.

She didn’t know what to make of a man like that. It was all a bit too much.

“A man so big and fine, you mean?” Maggie asked, unhelpfully. “His cousin’s awfully forward.”

“Sure and all, he’s the manners of one who knows he’ll command the clan someday soon,” her father conceded. “And you, young miss, are lucky he’ll still take you off my hands after such a display.”

Young miss. When Ellen was three and twenty, and hadn’t he been telling her for years she was getting too old to make a desirable match? Too old, too quiet, too frail.

When he didn’t force her to wed Logan Mackintosh last year, she’d almost dared hope he was considering her request to go abroad and take holy orders at Abbaye Notre-Dame-des-Chelles in Paris. But then, on an otherwise ordinary sunny Wednesday, he gleefully announced the awful news: the MacKenzie heir was returning to the Highlands to wed, and even more remarkable, he was willing to settle for an old maid like Ellen.