Page 107 of Claimed by a Highlander
“She didn’t wish to wed me,” he said. “She only wanted to use me to ruin the marriage arrangement with Hector.”
“What do ye mean by that?”
“Even as a bairn, I knew Hector had a deep grudge against me, but he kept it well hidden from everyone else while my father was alive,” he said. “Grant’s daughter was an astute and determined lass, and I believe she saw it.”
Despite herself, the thought of Rory as a child being the focus of his uncle’s hatred tugged at her heart. She would not, however, let sympathy for the boy he once was excuse how he had hurt and humiliated her.
“So she forced ye against your will, did she?” Sybil said, letting her voice drip with sarcasm.
“I was fifteen and not likely to say nay when a lass that beautiful told me to meet her in a storage room in the undercroft. I thought she meant for us to steal a few kisses,” Rory said. “I won’t say I was blameless, but when things moved quickly beyond kisses, my wits lagged behind.”
Sybil narrowed her eyes at him. “But it wasn’t just the one time ye met her, was it?”
Rory gave her a how-in-the-hell-did-you-know look and heaved a sigh. “Every time the lass crooked her finger, I went to meet her.”
Of course he did. “I take it her plan to avoid marrying Hector succeeded.”
“She told Hector she’d given her virginity to me,” Rory said. “That was a lie, but all Hector needed to hear was that I’d had her first.”
“What I don’t understand,” she said, “is why your fathers didn’t force you and the lass to wed.”
“She said that if I told anyone we’d been together, she’d deny it,” Rory said. “She told me she would never have me for a husband. Though I was not keen on marrying her either, the lass was so adamantly against it that she slashed my pride.”
“But Hector must have told.”
“Nay,” Rory said, shaking his head. “It would have shamed him to have everyone know that the lass he wished to wed had gone to bed with me. He and I knew, and that was bad enough. It was one more reason for him to hate me.”
“And you told no one either?”
“That would have ruined the lass’s reputation,” he said. “I assumed she planned to pretend to be a virgin when she did wed.”
“If no one told, then what broke off the marriage negotiations?”
“Hector didn’t say it was me, but he advised the two chieftains that the lass had been with other men,” Rory said. “The chieftains gave out the story that the pair was unsuited, which was true so far as it went. I thought that was the end of it.”
“Three months later, I left with the MacKenzie warriors to fight the English. As ye know, I was injured in the Battle of Flodden and held prisoner. Sometime after I returned, I heard that Grant’s daughter was with child and refused to name the father. There were whispers that the lass said she had been with too many men to remember.”
“Do ye believe that?”
“I did at the time,” Rory said. “I was too inexperienced to see the anger beneath her laughter and flirtation. Now I suspect there was a man she wanted to marry but could not. Perhaps he was someone her father did not deem important enough for a chieftain’s daughter.”
“If she refused to name you, how does her family know you’re the father?” Sybil asked.
“They don’tknowI am,” Rory said. “She died of a fever a few months ago. The Grant chieftain claims she confessed on her deathbed that the child is mine.”
“Ye did bed her.”Every time she crooked her finger.
“Aye, and if she had told me the child was mine, I would have accepted it as my duty to claim the lad whether I believed her or no,” he said. “But years later, when her family attempts to dupe me by concocting this story of her deathbed confession? Nay. I cannot accept that.”
Sybil did not speak another word on the ride back to the castle or as they walked from the stable to the keep. She ignored the curious looks as they crossed the hall and continued up the stairs to their chamber in silence. He shut the door and still she did not speak.
“Now that I’ve explained it all,” he said, “do ye understand why I didn’t tell you?”
“I do,” she said. “Ye didn’t trust me. Ye still don’t. And ye used me to avoid marrying Grant’s other daughter.”
“I didn’t want to marry her, but that is not why I came for you.”
“You berated me and broke my heart because of what I didn’t tell you,” she said. “All the while, you were keeping all this from me—the boy, the marriage negotiations, the would-be bride.”
