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When they returned to the hall, the men were still deep in discussion. Osborn now occupied Astrid’s chair, a plate before him, utensils untouched as he used his fingers to pick at stringy meat swimming in thick gravy. Licking his fingers, he looked up as they entered the dining hall, his eyes skipping over Petra to crudely assess Astrid, his gaze crawling over her br**sts and hips.
Griffin watched her intently, his pale blue eyes shrewd, leaving her little doubt that he could see the truth. Perhaps not _what _ troubled her, but that she was troubled, greatly so.
He began to rise to his feet, but Astrid waved him back down. Turning, she opened her mouth to bid good evening to Petra when MacFadden’s voice stopped her.
“Ah, there you are, Petra. Excellent timing. We’ve settled your future.”
Both intrigued and alarmed at how they could have reached a decision in so short a time, Astrid closed her mouth and waited.
Osborn leveled hard eyes on his daughter, plucking a bread roll from the platter before him and waving it at her. “You will marry. With all haste.”
“Aye,” MacFadden exclaimed. “Can’t have you shaming yourself or this family.”
Astrid glanced at Petra, her nails digging into her palms as the young woman’s lips thinned in martyr-like resolve. Unable to hold her tongue a moment longer, she announced, “I think something needs to be understood—”
Petra grasped her arm, her face pale. “Please, no—”
Astrid held up a hand, determined to say what Petra would not. “Petra did not willingly bring about her…condition.”
“Condition?” Gallagher echoed.
“What do you mean?” Griffin asked, dark brows drawing together.
“Bertram raped her.”
A momentary hush fell over the hall before Petra’s father spoke. “A moot point. It does not alter the fact that a bastard grows in her belly. She _needs _ a husband.”
MacFadden shook his head gravely, sending an almost regretful look at Petra. “Aye. He’s right.”
“It should at least alter your perception enough to concede that Petra deserves some say in choosing a husband.”
Osborn flung a hunk of bread into his bowl, producing a splatter of gravy on the table. “Who is this female to give her opinions as if they are welcome?”
“Someone with more scruples than you, a man that would do nothing over his daughter’s rape save demand she marry her violator,” Astrid cried.
Ugly red mottled Osborn’s face. “Hold your tongue, wench, lest I remove it from behind your teeth.”
Griffin surged to his feet and settled one hand on the back of Osborn’s chair. “Have a care,” he warned, leaning over him.
Osborn glared up at him, taking a long moment to reply. “Is that the way of it then? You’ve appointed yourself her champion?”
Griffin did not respond, merely moved around the table to stand beside Astrid, crossing his arms over his broad chest, letting that serve as answer.
Astrid suppressed a small thrill at his display of protectiveness.
With a grunt, Osborn returned his attention to MacFadden, ignoring both Astrid and Griffin, doing his best to behave as though he had not been cowed. “The crux of the matter is that no man in his rightful mind will have Petra if he has to stomach raising another man’s whelp.”
MacFadden sighed and nodded in agreement. “Aye, we will have to look to our own, then. A loyal kinsman…” The old man’s eyes swung to Griffin, narrowing.
Astrid’s stomach clenched, suspicion slipping into a heart grown suddenly cold.
Osborn followed his cousin’s gaze. “What? Him?”
“Aye,” MacFadden drawled, a slow smile spreading across handsome, craggy features. “Him.”
Him, indeed. Who better than the long-lost son and heir to marry Petra? What better way for Griffin to claim his position, to prove his loyalty?
_A sound solution all around. For Petra. For Griffin. _ Both would have what they lacked, what they needed, wanted even—though perhaps they did not know it.
Petra would marry a good, decent man, even if not of her own choosing, even if not the love of her heart.
And Griffin would marry a good, decent woman, and have gained his family’s acceptance and esteem in the process. The very thing he craved, whether he admitted it or not. The very thing lost to him in Texas.
Astrid swallowed and blinked against the unwelcome burn at the backs of her eyes. Cursing her sudden urge to weep, she reminded herself that her preferences bore no significance. Griffin was not hers. No matter how her heart may have pretended otherwise.
It was time to let go. To move on.
She did not deserve Griffin. Not as Petra did. The most decent thing she could ever do would be to encourage a union between Griffin and Petra. Perhaps this was it. Her chance to redeem herself.
Why should such a gesture hurt so much, then?
Chapter 23
Griffin stared in amazement as spirited conversation erupted around him—conversation concerning him, his life, and most astounding, with whom he would live it.
Were they serious? Did they think he would permit others to decide his fate? That he ascribed to some medieval notion of arranged marriages? A man forged his own path in life. A man chose the woman with whom he wanted to share that life.
His grandfathers and cousin talked, droning on without pause, without consideration that he—or Petra, for that matter—might wish to choose their own fates. Both his grandfathers, bitter rivals only earlier, now nodded in perfect accord.
“’Tis right,” MacFadden announced.
“Aye, and she is a proven breeder,” Gallagher reminded.
“My Petra has the h*ps of a breeder,” Osborn quickly agreed, nodding eagerly.
Griffin shot a quick glance to Petra. Her head was lowered, eyes downcast, making it impossible to read her thoughts, to see if she felt as outraged as he over the discussion. He attempted to speak over the voices. “I’d like to say something—”
Osborn spread his hands wide in front of him in a generous gesture. “I must admit that I can now see the family resemblance to Conall.”
Griffin snorted, crossing his arms.
Osborn continued, “It relieves me greatly to know that my only child will marry the future Laird MacFadden.”
Griffin felt his lip curl with disgust. “Convenient,” he muttered beneath his breath. _Now _ Osborn solidly believed in his paternity.
Astrid cleared her throat portentously. “It makes a good deal of sense,” she announced in that clipped way of hers.
Something dark and dangerous brewed deep in his chest.
Sense?
“A most practical solution,” she went on.
Practical solution? This was his life. And Petra’s. Not some damned equation. And yet even Astrid discussed him marrying Petra as if it were a business merger to be negotiated with cool calculation. Damned English. And Scots, for that matter.
Anger seethed through him like a prowling beast. He raked his gaze over the woman who had occupied far too much of his thoughts lately. So much so that he had begun to harbor doubts over returning home. That the woman to inspire such feelings should now inform him so matter-of-factly that he should marry another—that doing so was a most practical solution—went down in a bitter wash of betrayal.
Apparently his fascination for her was one-sided.
Apparently Astrid suffered no softer sentiments for him.
Not if she failed to blink at the prospect of him marrying another, but in fact encouraged it.
MacFadden’s voice penetrated slowly, worming its way through the anger clouding his head.
“...we’ll need the reverend.”
They had begun making arrangements, and all without a word from him. Or Petra. And they thought he would go along? He could have laughed at the absurdity of it all—if the maddening female beside him did not choose that moment to say, “It seems most sensible if the reverend were brought here. In her condition, Petra should not travel. Nor in such weather.”
The men nodded, murmuring their assent. Astrid, though unusually pale, nodded, too.
Their words vanished in a searing flash of rage. He’d had enough. With a curse, he snatched hold of Astrid’s wrist. Indifferent to the shocked stares, he dragged her from the hall.
“Griffin,” she hissed as she hurried to keep up. “What’s wrong with you?”
_What’s wrong with _ him? _What’s wrong with _ her? With all of them?
He ground his teeth, saying nothing until he reached the privacy of their room. Spinning her before him, he uncoiled his fingers from her wrist and slammed the door shut, the thick wood reverberating loudly, echoing in the stone-walled chamber, sealing them in, prisoners in a tomb.
She hurried to the center of the room, watching him with wide, wary eyes. Her fingers curled around one of the thick bedposts. Her chin went up in that infuriatingly indignant lift he knew so well.
“Why did you drag me out of there? What must Petra think?” she demanded, her fingertips turning white and bloodless where they dug into the wood.
He advanced on her, stalking her as a predator would. “I don’t give a damn what anyone thinks.
Never have. Where I come from men live their lives according to their own rules. They certainly don’t allow someone else to pick their spouse.”
“How terribly convenient,” she spat, her thin nostrils quivering, “to live your life so recklessly, free of responsibility.”
“I didn’t say that.” He took a steadying breath, fighting for calm, and the overwhelming urge to shake her until her teeth rattled. “Look, I realize you’re a product of an archaic society—”
“Archaic?” Her entire body quivered with indignation. She pressed a palm to her chest. “_I _ belong to an _archaic _ society?”
Unable to stop himself, his gaze dropped to the curve of her br**sts trembling beneath her hand.
His palms prickled, remembering the shape and feel of those br**sts, the soft undersides so sensitive to his touch. His mouth dried as hunger swept over him.
Shoving the distracting thoughts from his head, he smiled grimly. “If you would pull your head from the sand, you would see that the world’s changing.”
“Indeed?” she sneered. “Is it changing here, then?” She waved a hand wildly behind her to the thick oak door. “Your own cousin sits below with another man’s blood on his hands. But all is forgiven based on an _archaic _ system of beliefs.”
“That aside, the world _is _ changing, Astrid,” he maintained, refusing to let her distract him from what he wanted to say, what _needed _ to be said. “It’s actually a place where you might find happiness, freedom…if you would only take it.” His eyes drilled into her, and suddenly he knew he was talking about more than her arrogant presumptions regarding whom he should wed. He was talking about them. About what might happen between them if they would only let it. If she would let it…
“No,” she muttered, shaking her head and averting her gaze.
He made a sound of disgust. “Very well. Be stubborn. Only know that I’m in Scotland because I want to be, and I’ll leave when _I _ want to.” He pointed to the door. “They don’t decide my fate.
Nor do you.”
He inhaled, ignoring the odd tightness in his chest at the prospect of leaving and returning to Texas. He felt a connection, an attachment to this land and people. It felt like home. Even more, there was Astrid now.
Ever since the first moment he had seen her, an angel on a muddy roadside, he felt bound to her.
His father’s disappointed gaze was fading, becoming a dim memory, paling altogether when he stared into her face.
“When I do marry,” he continued, “it will be because I decide to, because I can’t imagine living my life without a particular woman…” He angled his head, studying her. “You’re a fool if you don’t already know that much about me. And you’re an even greater fool if you don’t want the same thing for yourself.”
