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News had come of Aidan Grant’s marriage. It was all done and final, he was wed to a wealthy girl from his own clan. Jealousy cut through her like a knife along with an awful, tearing sense of loss. He would not be returning to make her child legitimate and wipe out the stain of her sinfulness. She was alone in carrying this burden, with no hope of escape from it now. Having received no word from him in so long she had expected this pain, but still, it cut deeply to be so rejected. Aidan hadn’t even said goodbye, surely he could have done that?
Sometimes Ilene let herself think that he had been forced to wed by his father, for political motives but she knew she was deluding herself. Had she been faced with such a thing, a forced marriage, she would never have given in to it, no matter if they beat her and dragged her down the aisle by her hair. She would have screamed and kicked and raged against it until they gave up. She would have died before giving up someone she loved.
What a fool he must think her, lying with him like that. Perhaps she had not pleased him or tried hard enough to make her virginity worth the taking, so he had easily let her go and forgotten about her. Perhaps she was a failure in that way and could not please a man.
There had been no design to Aidan’s cruelty, he had merely ridden along with the circumstances and his father’s command. His love had been as malleable and weak as molten steel, it had not hardened and become something you could depend upon, and it never would have. And she had brought about her own destruction, giving in to him and to that one, sordid coupling in the grass. She should have held fast to her virtue and not acted the whore, throwing away her innocence on one so undeserving of it. Now, some other woman was wed to the man she had wanted, and so she despised love and resolved never to trust in it again.
The snap of a twig nearby made her swirl in alarm. Murray stood behind her.
‘I always managed to creep up on you when we were children.’
‘Yes,’ she replied in an anguished voice.
‘Are you unwell Ilene? You look pale. I can go if you wish it.’
‘No, stay.’ She smiled at him shyly. ‘Why are you sneaking up on me now?’
‘I would speak to you, but it can wait.’
‘No, tell me.’
He took a deep breath and his face was like stone. ‘You can’t be ignorant of what I am about to say. I go north in a few days to claim the land your father has gifted me.’
Ilene held her breath for a moment as dread hit her. ‘Have you come to say goodbye again Murray?’
‘I hope not.’ He looked away at the gathering mist. ‘Ilene, I do not have pretty words or a fine name, so you must forgive my rough soldier’s way. What I mean to say is that, when I go north, I want you to come with me. You wanted to see the world beyond Cailleach and I can give you that.’
She could sense that the words would come tumbling out now, and it hit her like a slap in the face. Was he really going to offer himself to her? So her scheme had come to fruition, he was really going to say it and, if so, why was she dreading it. There was no feeling of triumph. Ilene felt numb like a terrible coldness had settled into her heart as if she was looking down on herself, a stranger who was acting out a part.
His face was stern and somewhat frightening in its intensity as he blurted out the rest of his proposal. ‘To leave together we must marry. There, I have said it. I would have you as my wife Ilene.’
‘Murray I…’
‘Hear me out. I have wealth and land now and an urge to settle. I need you by my side and, in choosing you above others, I am repaying the debt I owe to your parents. They educated me and saved me from my poverty. I know I am a bastard, without a family or a name of my own, but I want to protect you and this clan from all things, unto death if needs be. So I throw myself on your mercy, I lay my admiration and affection at your feet, in the hopes that you may look beyond my lack of parentage and my bastardy.’
‘You may not be a bastard Murray, so why say it? You are an orphan, that is all.’
‘I have nonameIlene,’ he said bitterly. ‘I don’t really know who I am and I doubt I ever shall. So for most people, it’s as good as being a bastard. There is shame in marrying a bastard.’
‘I have never thought of you like that.’
‘No, you were always been kind in that respect, and that is one of the reasons I have held you in such affection these years past.’
Silence fell between them. Ilene looked at his stern face and realised, with a sinking heart, that he had not said he loved her. Affection was something you felt for a pet. Perhaps no man would ever really love her and she could not inspire love, only lust. For her awful plan to work, love was not a requirement, but she felt irrationality slighted that he had not said the word. Aidan had made her feel so worthless that she wanted the comfort of being loved. She knew she should not say it, but she did.
‘What of love Murray. Do you feel that for me?
‘Of course, I feel it,’ he said, almost angrily. ‘Are you going to ask me to beg for your hand Ilene, because I will not do so?
‘Should I not expect love within marriage then?’
‘Look you either want me or you don’t. If you don’t, then I will be gone in a few days and we need never see each other again, and as for love, I know very little about it. I only know that I want you, like a hunger that cannot be sated. Thoughts of you go around and around in my head and I cannot banish them. In a crowded hall, yours in the only face I see. My every waking hour since coming back to Cailleach has been a torment of wanting you. Standing here now, trying not to put my hands on you, is like the worst torture a man could suffer.’
‘That is not love, Murray, that is something else entirely,’ she said bitterly.
‘Well, it is the nearest I have ever come to love in my life, Ilene. Don’t make me stand here, like a fool, spouting pretty words, for I am no poet.’
‘No, you are not’, she said, smiling gently. His gaze, which had been tense, softened a little and he smiled back at her, that warm smile which made his face so devastating, so beautiful, in spite of the mark upon it. She wondered how she could ever have thought Aidan handsome next to this man. He had softer, boyish good looks. Murray was hard, strong and almost overpoweringly male and his eyes were fixed on her now, his voice tense and demanding.
