Page 53 of Lady Len and the Mysterious Mac

He stepped back, offering his hand to help her up from the table, glaring at Blair who smirked up at him and then winked at the lass, a gauntlet if one had ever been thrown.

Len nodded to her friends and then took Si’s hand, allowing him to sweep her away, not speaking the questions in her eyes.

But she could speak, damn it. For hadn’t she repeatedly told him not to stop as he buried his face between her legs?

A jolt shot straight to his groin at the memory.

“Would you be willing to address the clan for me?” he whispered. “To show a united front and get them on my side?”

She stared up at him with such abject horror, he immediately regretted the petty request. But he pressed on. “They’ll like you, milady. And what’s more, they’ll expect it.”

Shaking her head ever so slightly, the lass looked around at the assembly, opening and closing her mouth, unable to even object. Si should leave it alone, of course he should, but his own roving gaze landed on Blair laughing with Rabbie Stewart over some shared joke and he added, “You must speak, lass, or after that display they’ll expect you to cuckold me with Blair MacKenzie.” The words sounded much more cruel and pathetic to his ears than they had in his head.

When he looked down at her, all color had drained from her face and her eyes darted around the room like a trapped animal. She surveyed the Hall, filled with dozens of rowdy MacKenzies who may recognize her from the wedding but many of whom were essentially strangers to them both. He shouldn’t have asked even if she did seem to possess a voice just begging to be set free.

“A quick welcome would suffice,” he offered, squeezing her cold hands and searching the depths of her stormy eyes, knowing it was mean, but hadn’t she told the Mac she couldn’t be what he needed? And didn’t he owe it to her to prove such notions incorrect?

“They don’t understand me,” he tried to explain. “I’ve been away too long. They think I abandoned them. But you came here. You’re the reason I returned. They’ll love you. They already do.”

Her eyes widened and a flash of anger replaced the fear. “I’m to be your pawn too?” she whispered. “Clean up your own mess, Silas MacKenzie.”

Then she yanked her hands away and marched off towards the stairs, and Si just watched her go, grinning like a fool. He couldn’t explain it, but he liked the way his name spilled from her lips even when she was angry. There was fire buried inside her, a willingness to stand up to him in a way that almost no one ever did. It delighted him, and it made him rock hard for more.

He was tempted to follow her right up to her chamber, except who knew what the clan might get up to in his absence?

Instead, he waited until the last reveler went to bed, and then returned to the solitude of his library determined to tell her the truth about the letters. She might be angry, but, he smirked to himself, maybe a tongue lashing from her wouldn’t be the worst thing. Regardless, he couldn’t have her supposing the Mac was Sam MacPherson, or worse—Blair MacKenzie.

And he couldn’t be with her in any way with such a huge lie standing between them. Len and Mac must finally meet. But not tonight. He needed a few more hours to prepare for, and worry himself sick about, her reaction. Tomorrow would be soon enough.

He barely slept all night. Between the ripples of anxiety that made his blood boil and sing, and an urgent desire to lie beside his wife to ease those same emotions, Si tossed and turned and paced the floor rehearsing all the different speeches he needed to make in the coming days, not only to his wife, but to his father, to Bram, and to the clan. It was almost a mercy when dawn finally showed its face.

During the morning hours, Si walked among the people, listening but not trying to change any minds about new farming techniques. He’d learned that lesson the night before. He was simply out there because he needed to remain in constant motion or he might explode. It was a relief when Cedrick and some others started organizing a shinty match, so Si went in search of Bram to join in.

Wee Dorrie’s voice alerted him to activity in the chapel. “W, X, Y, Z,” the little girl recited, to a small round of applause and murmured praise from Len.

When he crept close enough to peer inside, he found letters being painted on the dingy walls in whitewash. The blacksmith’s daughter was copying out her own row above Dorrie’s, and in the near corner, Ellen stood with Bram, who wasn’t drawing letters but simply covering the wall in perfect, even stripes of white.

“Reading’s all right,” Bram told her in a low voice. “It’s just the numbers that seem to play tricks. I dinnae ken how, but they… move around. Don’t tell Si or Himself. They already think me worthless.”

Stung by his cousin’s words, Si took a step back. Bram was young and unprepared, but Si hadn’t really given him much thought beyond that. Certainly not that the boy was worthless, except perhaps in unguarded, frustrated moments.

“The very opposite,” Len assured Bram. “He wants you to be laird, like your father. He wouldn’t ask that of someone he found worthless, would he?”

Again Si was stunned—first to hear her voice, soft yet strong and unwavering—but also because she raised that lovely voice in his defense, even after he tried to pressure her into speaking last night. And how was she so keenly attuned to his own intentions, when he’d never expressed them outright to her?

“My father’s dead,” Bram said forcefully.

“Still your birthright.”

Why was it that she could speak so freely to the boy, loud enough for Si to hear from his hiding place, and then have so few whispered words left over for him?

“I don’t want to be laird,” Bram yelled, his voice echoing Si’s own words every day for the last twelve years, though it had never occurred to him his cousin might have the same reticence.

“What do you want?” Len asked the lad.

And how different would their lives be if anyone had ever asked her that? Or Si?

A long silence passed before Bram answered, “To paint.”