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His grip on her face was increasing. His jaw was clenched so tightly, his breathing was coming so hard, she felt he might explode like a cannonball and destroy both of them. Ilene looked in his eyes, and what she saw there, frightened her and turned her legs to jelly. It was literally the coldest look of disgust she had ever seen on any face, and she was the object of it. She could not pull away from that look but suddenly he released her. He turned from her and sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands, every taut muscle on his back screaming tension and barely controlled anger. There was a long, awful silence before he spoke.
‘Why didn’t you marryhim?’
‘He abandoned me, Murray. I trusted him, and he just left the next day and never said goodbye, never came back. I kept thinking he would but he did not. And then I heard rumours of a betrothal, and I realised he had used me.’ Her voice was a ragged sob now, the sound of it filling the room.
‘So Ilene, why marryme? Was it to wound him?’ His voice was wary as if he dreaded the answer, but she had to give it.
‘I had to.’ She took a deep breath and told him the worst of it. ‘I had to marry you because I need a father for the child I am carrying.’
Chapter Thirteen
Murray felt his face go stiff with shock and rage take the breath from his lungs. He clutched his hands into his hair, pressing his fingernails into his scalp until it hurt. The very thought of Aidan having her, joining his body with hers, made him sick with jealousy, but he could have reconciled himself to it in time and forgiven her naivety in trusting that dog. But this! To learn that another man’s child squirmed in her belly.
He leapt up off the bed and raged about the room. Anger took him, like a fist beating him from the inside out. He punched the wall hard.
‘Murray, don’t,’ Ilene shouted in anguish. Better for her that she stay silent, for the crushing pain barely distracted him for a moment from the darkness flooding his mind and the urge to take her pretty little neck in his hands, and then squeeze the life out of her. As his blood dripped down from his torn knuckle onto the floor, he made a vow - one day he would kill Aidan Grant for this.
He grabbed his plaid and wound it roughly around him, barely aware of what he was doing, as a whirl of emotions took hold of him. Luck had never been on his side, life could never be this perfect, he should have known that. Anger at that Grant dog was nothing compared to his anger at Ilene. Taking her to bed had been such a joy, and there was so much love in his heart for her, and now, in its place, was an only an overwhelming desire to punish her.
He could make love to her, take her now as was his right, and she would suffer it, but it would all be a lie. Marriage had given him her beautiful body to use for his pleasure but he would never have her affection, he would never touch her soul. All those hopes for a good marriage, after all his years of striving, had brought a stranger into his bed, a lying stranger who had thoughts and wishes in her head that he could not even begin to understand. Ilene had no affection for him, he didn’t know her at all and had her parents known of her shame? Had they been part of this deceit? Had he been betrayed by the only family he had ever known?
Ilene was watching him, fear all too plain on her tear-streaked face, which in itself was awful. His new wife not only despised him, now she was frightened of him too. There was nothing in his life that was worth having, fortune, wife, hope, it was all an illusion. His quest for acceptance, his reason for returning to Cailleach had borne bitter fruit. And worst of all, he was ashamed at his own foolishness in trusting his heart to Ilene and letting her use him.
‘Murray forgive me. I did not mean to sin with Aidan, but I thought we were to be wed,’ she pleaded.
Bitterness and disappointment made him cruel. ‘Better for all of us if you had kept your knees together until a priest had made you so,’ he snarled, coming towards her with his fists balled, scattering droplets of blood on the floor. She flinched back as he loomed over her, and it broke his heart to see it.
‘You think I would do that? You think I would take my fists to you?’ The thought that Ilene believed him capable of hurting her wounded him more than anything. Is that how she saw him, as nothing but a mindless brute? Couldn’t she see that he had married her because he needed her? It was the final humiliation.
‘I never meant to wound you like this Murray, but I had no choice.’
‘No choice! You come unchaste to my bed, with have another man’s brat in your belly, and you have the gall to say you had no choice?’
‘There were others to consider. If my father…’
‘Ah, of course, you could not risk Duncan’s rage if he found out you had opened your legs for that young fool.’
‘I could bear his rage, but not his starting a fight with the Grants over my honour.’
‘Meagre though it is,’ he sneered, feeling his face twist in disgust.
‘He would have challenged the Grants and he would have killed Aidan.’
‘It’s no less than he deserves. Now I will be the one to have the satisfaction of driving a blade through his heart.’
‘No Murray, if you do that you could start a war and I can’t let the clan suffer for my mistake. I did this terrible thing, hoping you would remember our friendship and the high regard in which I hold you.’ Her voice was strangled and desperate. ‘I hoped that all the affection we had for each other in the past would give us a chance together.’
‘If you had any feelings for me at all, you should have wed some other fool instead.’
‘I couldn’t, not quickly enough to hide the fact I have a bairn coming and you are going away from Cailleach to start afresh. I thought I could too. I trust you and so I hoped you would keep my secret.’
‘And trust, it would seem, is all on my side. How calculating you are Ilene, how cold. You planned all this very carefully, didn’t you?’ The thought spread like a rash through Murray’s mind. ‘Your fine words, longing looks and putting yourself in my path, that was all just a show, to lure me in?’
‘No.’ She shook her head.
‘How you must have laughed at me as you sought to lie your way to respectability. Foolish Murray, the bastard, so easy to dupe and forever grateful for the crumbs from the Campbell’s table. God, I was so dazzled by you I could not see it.’
‘Murray, stop, please, if you would only hear me out,’ she pleaded with him, eyes fixed on his.
