Page 76 of The Sinner
After a short while, he rolled to his side, bringing her with him. Her limbs felt limp, as if they would bend in the waves like seaweed. She lay with her head on his chest and his heart thundering in her ear.
Something profound had happened, and it had altered her forever. It wasn’t that she had agreed to wed him, though that would certainly change her life. God help her, but there was no avoiding it—she had fallen in love with him. Was she alone in this, or had Alex felt as much as she did when he was inside her?
Alex lay on his back with one arm about her and his other hand holding hers on his chest. Glynis watched his profile while he stared at the ceiling.
“What are ye thinking?” she finally asked.
“That it’s strange to be married without Connor, Ian, and Duncan knowing it,” Alex said.
She swallowed back her disappointment. “Ye are close to them, aren’t ye?”
“Aye. The four of us have been through everything together,” he said with a smile in his voice. “They are the first ones I will tell.”
“What about your parents?”
He blew his breath out. “I’ll tell them when I see them.”
Would his parents not be pleased with the marriage? Did they have someone else in mind for him?
Alex turned toward her and cradled the side of her face with his hand. “We shall wed properly when we return to Skye,” he said, with his eyes intent on hers. “I’ll send word to your father. As soon as he arrives, we’ll say our pledges again before witnesses and have a great wedding feast at Dunscaith Castle.”
“I’ll meet your parents at this wedding feast?” she asked. “What are they like?”
“We can talk about my parents later,” he said, as he brought his lips to hers.
* * *
It was not like Glynis to go back on her word. All the same, Alex would not be content until he had a formal marriage contract with her father, and they had said their pledges before a dozen of their clansmen. If Alex could find a priest, all the better.
While they made love, his anger and resentment had burned away in the hot flame of desire. He was so lost in his passion for Glynis that nothing else mattered. And then after, as she lay in his arms, happiness took told of him for long moments, blinding him to truths he should not let himself forget.
But with the dawn, his caution returned with his resentment.
Alex knew he had no right to resent that Glynis only agreed to wed him after she learned D’Arcy was not offering her marriage. Nor should it have angered him that Glynis saw him as the least offensive of undesirable choices, for Alex had made that very argument himself. And if she also did it because she wanted to be a mother to his daughter, he should be glad of that.
And yet, all these things ate at him.
Alex had not wanted to marry any more than she did. But when he decided to, Glynis MacNeil was his first and his only choice. No one else would do.
And that troubled him most of all.
CHAPTER 33
Poor Bessie had shown herself to be a Lowlander by spending much of the long sail with her head over the side. While Glynis tucked a blanket around the sleeping maid, she heard Alex laughing and talking with the Campbell men who were sailing them to Skye.
The Campbell chieftain had provided a boat to take them home, and Alex had persuaded the Campbell men sailing it to let him take the rudder. Under his sure hand, the boat glided over the water and around the rocks as smoothly as a fairy flying through trees in a forest.
Glynis bit her lip and fixed her gaze on the Isle of Skye ahead on the horizon. Alex had not laughed with her once since they left Inveraray Castle days before. From the moment she had told him she would be his wife, he had lost his easy cheerfulness.
Clearly, Alex did not want this marriage. He needed a wife—or rather, a mother for his daughter—but he was not happy about it. She should have taken heed from her first conversation with him back on Barra. Ye are quite safe from finding wedded bliss with me.
Wedded bliss, indeed. Misery seemed more the way of it. What had she got herself into?
Glynis sat back down next to Sorcha and combed the child’s windblown hair with her fingers. When Sorcha smiled at her, she was reminded that the marriage did have its good side. It brought her motherhood, a precious gift she had thought she would be denied. And Alex did not constantly criticize her and expect her to be other than what she was, as both Magnus and her stepmother had. He would protect her with his life, no doubt of that.
But Alex was bound to break her heart. When Magnus took other women, it had hurt her pride, but that was all. It would be different with Alex. When they lay together, he not only gave her pleasure—though there was plenty of that, to be sure—he showed her parts of herself she had not known before. After what they had shared, she could not bear to know he was going to another woman’s bed.
Because she loved him. God help her.
