Lena grabbed Marsaili by the hand. “Ye will have my loyalty always.” Marsaili’s only response was to look distantly past Lena. Whatever was bothering Marsaili weighed heavily upon her.
“Tell me what happened,” Lena urged. “Please.”
“’Tis simple,” Marsaili said with a shrug. “He treated me with kindness, which turned to much attention in the time he was at my da’s. He told me he wished to marry me but could nae until he had the approval of his da. He promised to travel home and then return to collect me within a few sennights. I—” Marsaili paused, a deep blush stealing over her face. “I believed him, and I thought myself in love, so I, well, I—” She looked at Lena with such anguish that Lena nodded her understanding so Marsaili would not feel she had to continue.
“Ye gave yer body to him,” Lena said gently.
“Aye. And my heart,” she said dully. “When he did nae return within three fortnights, I feared something had happened to him. I inquired about his family one night, hoping to learn something about him without making my da suspicious. That’s when I learned he had been betrothed to another since he was but a child, and he apparently had married the lass directly after he’d returned to his home. He took my body and my heart, and gave me a child in return,” Marsaili said, a hard look crossing her face.
“A child!” Lena exclaimed. “Ye had a bairn? Where is he or she?”
“I dunnae,” Marsaili replied, biting her lip and looking away. “I believed the bairn died at birth.”
Lena gasped. “What? Why would ye believe that?”
Marsaili shook her head as she furiously wiped at the tears that slid down her face. “I kinnae say more. I must nae.”
“But, Marsaili,” Lena began, but before she could finish her sentence, the pipers started playing loudly, and suddenly, the men and women of Alex’s clan flooded the middle of the great hall to dance.
Lena watched Alex being dragged out to dance by Lara. He was shaking his head, but then he was laughing. If Lena had not still been so shocked at what Marsaili had told her, she would have laughed at her solidly built husband and laird of the clan being maneuvered by a slip of a woman in her yawning years. Alex was just the sort of man, though, to be so thoughtful as to attempt to please his friend’s wife.
A tall, blond warrior she did not know approached the dais. Lena assumed he came to ask Marsaili to dance, as the men surely knew Marsaili was not attached and she was very pretty. So when his green eyes fastened on her instead of her half sister, she was stunned. Then a bolt of anxiety shot to her chest and lodged there.
Even as he spoke, asking her to accompany him to the dance floor and explaining that it was tradition for the laird’s wife to dance with the men from the laird’s guard, Lena battled with her rising panic at the thought of being touched by a strange man, of being encircled in his arms. As three other men approached, she realized with dawning horror that each of them intended to dance with her, as was custom.
She glanced to Marsaili for aid, but one of the guards had already asked her to dance, and Marsaili was rising from the dais to follow the man. To call to her half sister now would only draw attention to her, and the rioting emotions within her would be all too discernible. Five men stood in front of her.
Blast. Six now.
And two more were walking toward her. She wiped her sweaty palms on the skirts of her gown as the man smiled at her and gave her an expectant look.
She could do this. She scanned the room for Alex, but could not find him in the gathered crowd. She had to do this. Didn’t she? She judged the distance from the dais to the door that led out of the great hall. For a moment, she considered racing toward it without explanation, but that would not do. She gulped in several breaths for courage and stood on shaking legs. “One dance each?” she asked the man before her.
“Aye,” he said with a grin. “And at the end of the dances, ye pick the best partner, and he gets the honor of being yer personal guard for the first week as our mistress.”
She didn’t need, nor want, a personal guard. She had Alex, and he was all she needed. The thought both shocked and comforted her. She craned her neck once more looking for a single glimpse of him to give her courage, yet he was nowhere. Moving slowly down the dais, she came to stand in front of the blond man. He was almost as tall as Alex but not as big, and yet, his eyes… All the air sucked out of her lungs. His eyes were almost the exact color Findlay’s had been—a very pale blue. It did not matter that it was a common color, her mind was screaming at her, flashing images of Findlay.
Heat washed over her body as he placed a hand on her back to lead her to the dancing area. Sharp pricks of panic jabbed her arms, legs, and scalp, and no matter how she tried to breathe in air, it would not come.
Three steps into the progress toward the dancers, he turned to her. “My lady, I forgot to present myself. I’m Fardley.”
Fardley, Findlay, Fardley, Findlay.The names rang in her ears and clashed together to make her heart race.
“I cannot,” she murmured, acutely aware that she was on the verge of falling to a million shattered pieces.
“My lady?” he asked, giving her a gentle tug toward the dancers, which served to send her panic to a deafening, thunderous roar. When a couple swung around in their dance, Lena stood immobile from fright as they came toward her. At the last second, Fardley jerked her against him, her body hitting his with a jarring impact.
It was to protect her.She forced the knowledge to the forefront, but the blackness that she had hoped she had banished swallowed the thought into a dark nothingness. “I kinnae dance,” she choked out and tried to shove away from him.
Understanding dawned in his eyes, which made her sigh with relief. But then he gave her a grin, slipped an arm about her waist, and said, “Dunnae fash yerself. I’m an excellent dancer. I’ll lead ye.”
Before she could voice her protest, he swirled her around and lifted her off her feet. That was all it took for the small bit of control she’d maintained to snap like a twig under the weight of his innocent actions.
“Release me!” she cried out, not caring about the people who stopped dancing to gape at her, nor the embarrassment she would cause herself and Alex. She cared for naught but escape. The room was suffocating her.This mansuffocated her. The fear had a hold on her that she could not shake.
“Release me!” she demanded again, and when the man did not do so, she reared back and slapped him, just as she had once slapped Findlay, and her mind went immediately to how Findlay had retaliated.
Nine
