“Alastair and two others.”
Alastair. He’d not been in the training yard. At least she was safe. But Ian wasn’t a complete idiot. He could see Marian was mad at him. It had been obvious from her first comment.
“We’re family,” he prompted. “Say what you’re thinking.”
Marian dropped whatever she was knitting in her lap.
“I’m thinking you and your brother have much in common. And that you’re likely to regret your speech to Màiri, though it will be too late to fix what you’ve broken when you do.”
His speech. “So she told you everything.”
Marian reached up to push a strand of long blond hair behind her back. She stared into the fire for so long, Ian almost repeated the question.
“Aye, she did.”
“I just wanted to protect her, Marian. It wasn’t fair to keep her tethered to me anymore.”
“She did not precisely see it that way.”
Ian was going stir-crazy, although he couldn’t say why. Màiri had done exactly what he’d suggested. But she’d done it without him. Was it wrong of him to have thought she’d at least say goodbye? They were married, after all. Kind of.
“How, precisely, did she see it?”
Ian didn’t mean to be so short with Marian, but he couldn’t help it. How was she so calm? His wife had literally left, without saying a word. He would never see her again. His shoulders sagged.
“She said,Ian does not feel as I do. There’s no reason for me to stay any longer.”
His heart skipped a beat. “What does that mean? ‘As I do’?”
Marian looked at him the same way Reik did whenever he asked his brother to go out. Sometimes he would actually agree, if only to leave the hell of his own thoughts, but he still always gave Ian that look.
“Surely you realize Màiri loves you?”
Ian swallowed. “I doubt it. We hardly know each other.”
That look, still.
“She’ll realize pretty quickly I’m not the only guy who can make her . . .” Yeah, he wasn’t going to talk about orgasms with his sister-in-law. “Feel good.”
Marian frowned, shaking her head. “Then perhaps it is for the best that she left. The others will be here any day. As you said, there is no reason for her to wait.”
Marian picked up her knitting again and started where she’d left off. He watched the movement of her hands, but he didn’t really see them. Numb, and not from his frozen toes, Ian didn’t move. He thought of Màiri bundled up against the cold, riding next to Alastair, heading back to Kinross. What would she tell her father?
Ian had intended to go with her to ease the transition. Would she tell her father the truth? Would he believe it? Perhaps not.
Or maybe she would tell her father that Ian had sent her home. Laird Kelbrue could show up here asking for his head on a plate. Would that be such a bad thing? Maybe Màiri would come, too, and they could at least say goodbye.
Asshole.
Of course it would be a bad thing. Way to smooth over one clan rivalry and start a brand new one. He might even continue to withhold support from the Bruce out of spite because a MacKinnish had wronged his daughter.
That would be a serious problem—he knew that—but he also knew that wasn’t what bothered him most. He hated the idea of never seeing Màiri again, her smile or that look of pure pleasure he’d put on her face.
“You’re thinking of her?”
Grey’s wife was persistent, to be sure.
“She’d have liked New Orleans,” he said. The first time he’d dared to say it out loud, but not the first time he’d thought it. “No one would look at her strangely there. A birthmark on her cheek? If anything, she’d be embraced because of it. My city’s history is steeped in acceptance, in some ways at least. We have a ways to go in others . . .”
