Page 55 of Lady Len and the Mysterious Mac

There was yelling outside, but the chapel window was still boarded up, so she followed the noise out to the grounds behind the garden, where two dozen burly MacKenzies and Bram chased a ball around. They were playing shirts and skins, and Si was easy to spot, standing a head above the rest, his broad, glistening back sculpted like a drawing in one of Jory’s anatomy books.

A bigger boy slammed sideways into Bram, and Ellen started forward, but Si whirled around with a look of warning in his eyes. She froze in place, as if physically pinned down like a moth to a board by the stern expression in his eye. Or was it the defined shape of his chest? The dark, curly hair trailing like an arrow down into his kilt, muscles rippling under his skin as he reached a hand down to help Bram to his feet.

Ellen shook herself and backed away. Shinty was a bloodthirsty game with a lot of running and falling down into the mud and altogether too many crunches of wood connecting with bone, or bone connecting with bone for her liking.

Si seemed to shadow Blair, preventing his every scoring opportunity, frustrating him, and knocking the smaller man brutally to the ground every chance he got. He seemed to have it in for the fairer man. In fact, she couldn’t see that Silas actually tried to score even once. He would simply toss the ball to another player and slam Blair to the ground for the fun of it.

When at last the match was over, Bram limped back inside with Greer’s help, and Silas pranced around the field gloating like a victor as though personally responsible for every point scored. The rest of the MacKenzies hollered and cheered and passed dram after dram, so perhaps his bravado was working, but Ellen had seen enough. She slipped off towards the stable, then kept on going into the forest beyond.

The glade Mac had described was easily found, verdant and carpeted in bluebells. Sunlight filtered through the trees to make a shadowy faerie den, and Ellen sat down on a rock to wait, to reconsider all the reasons why she ought not have come. Chief among them: it was disloyal to Silas, even though her own feelings were nothing more than friendship. How could they be anything else, when she was married? And as frustrating as Silas was proving to be, he was also gentle and kind, and devilishly handsome.

Soft footsteps at last alerted her to someone’s approach, and Ellen jumped up to see—none other than Blair MacKenzie? Her breath caught. He was a bit worse for wear after the shinty.

When considering the options, she’d been unable to believe it could be him. He seemed too boastful, too proud, and there was a hardness underneath his jocular demeanor that she hadn’t discerned on paper.

A bruise was already setting in around one eye, lending it a dark, dangerous edge that made her shiver.

“Saw you sneaking off,” he said.

She swallowed, meaning to reply that she certainly was not sneaking, that it was merely a lovely spot, but the words couldn’t find their way past her throat. Could she pretend the letters had been intercepted and weren’t written by her? A fresh wave of panic hit her lungs.

“Ye must be lonely out here,” he said, a wolfish hunger creeping into his eyes and lacing his voice with danger.

Ellen shook her head.

He stepped closer. “No one at Leod but that bloody great oaf to tend ye?” He laughed and shook his head. “There was a time, not so long ago, when I thought he hung the moon. But then I grew up and realized size isnae all that matters. You and I both know that’s true, don’t we?”

Ellen could only shake her head.

“You don’t have to pretend. I know what it is to be lonely. Silas left, and the Kintail left, and my father left, but I stayed. I know all the castle’s secrets, all the best hiding places where no one would ever find us. And I could teach you so many things. Things I’ll bet Silas, with all his book learning, doesn’t know.”

Unable to reconcile his manner of speaking with the correspondence she had treasured, Ellen swallowed once, twice, and tried to conjure the right words to send him away.

“I could’ve gone to school like Silas. Or traveled the world with my father: India, Africa, Japan. But I was content right here. That counts for something, doesn’t it?”

Unsure what he meant, she nodded her agreement, always the safest course of action for a woman. Men liked to be agreed with.

Blair reached for her face and she stepped quickly back, tripping over the rock she’d been sitting on, and scrambling to keep her balance. He took hold of her elbow to steady her, but then he didn’t let go, and she all but stopped breathing.

“Come, now,” he said, eyeing her lips and then dropping his gaze to her bosom peeking above the stays. “Is it even consummated, or does he still hide from girls like he did at the age of eleven? I can show you how a lady ought to be treated. Silas never needs to know.”

“Please leave,” Ellen whispered, trying to yank her arm from his grasp, but he held on tighter.

“Please, is it?” He smirked, pretending not to hear the rejection in her reply.

“Please,” she whimpered once more.

“Ye don’t have to beg.”

Ellen struggled harder against his hold, but it only made him grasp her more tightly.

Then he grinned a sick, wolfish grin. “Unless you like that sort of thing.”

Ellen froze, unable to move or even breathe. How, after so many years of keeping her guard up, how had she put herself in this situation? And how could she have been so wrong about the Mac? She’d assumed she would know instantly when she met him, believed him good and kind and noble, a worthy friend to Si. Not this, not a snake luring her to an empty forest glade.

“If anyone should be next in line, it’s my father. Everything he did was for the good of clan, while Alex hid like a coward in France. And d’ye know what that makes me? The proper heir.” Blair sidled closer, his face inches from hers, and she shut her eyes tight and twisted away.

And then there came an almighty roar and a crunching thud, and Ellen was flung backwards against a willow tree, as her eyes flew open to see Silas landing punch after punch on Blair MacKenzie’s once pretty face.