Page 80 of The Sinner
After she and Alex returned to their places, the two chieftains made speeches about a glorious union, fertility, and such. She saw no priest, so it appeared Alex had not succeeded in finding one on short notice. Glynis ignored the speeches and closed her eyes to say her own prayer.
Please, God, give me a few months with him before he breaks my heart.
“Glynis!” When she heard her father say her name, she opened her eyes to find both chieftains staring at her. “Say your pledge,” her father hissed.
Her heart hammered so loudly she thought they must hear it.
“I…” Her throat was too dry, and she had to stop to swallow. It took her three tries, but she got the words out. She fixed her gaze on the floor as she waited for Alex to say his vows.
He was silent. The longer Alex did not speak, the more his silence seemed to expand and fill the hall. When Glynis risked a sideways glance at him, he was staring at her with a fiercely grim expression on his face.
Alex grabbed her by the wrist. She had to struggle to keep her feet under her as he proceeded to haul her out of the hall with his long-legged strides.
“O shluagh!” she whispered. What had she done to deserve this?
CHAPTER 35
Alex dragged Glynis into a large bedchamber that she assumed must be the chieftain’s because it adjoined the hall, though it was plainly furnished and the walls had no decoration at all. After sitting her down in a chair, Alex pulled another up opposite so that they sat face-to-face with no more than a foot between them.
“Glynis, I cannot go ahead with this marriage when ye look as if you’re going to your own hanging,” Alex said. “We’ll end this right now if it makes ye this unhappy to be my wife.”
She was too shocked to speak. After doing everything he could to persuade her to wed him, now he wanted to release her from her pledge?
“I hoped ye would come to see me as a man ye could be content with and reconcile yourself to the marriage,” he said. “But it appears ye cannot, and I will no raise my daughter in a house filled with anger and unhappiness.”
Glynis’s heart was pounding so hard that her chest hurt.
“It won’t be easy convincing your father that I haven’t taken ye to bed and given him cause to force the marriage,” he said with a resigned sigh, “but I will.”
She did not want to return to her father’s house to be put on display for an endless stream of unsavory suitors again. “What about all those people waiting out there for us?”
Alex dismissed them all with a wave of his hand. “I know I pressed ye hard to do this, but you’re a stubborn lass who knows her own mind. So tell me, why did ye agree to wed me?”
Glynis paused to lick her lips. She was unsure whether to tell him the truth, but she had nothing else to say. “Because I feared ye would wed Catherine, and I believed she would harm Sorcha.”
Instead of dismissing her accusation as foolishness or demanding proof, Alex simply looked at her steadily and waited for her to explain herself.
“Because Sorcha is silent, she senses things that others miss.”
“Aye, I’ve noticed that,” Alex said.
“I found Catherine taking Sorcha out in the loch where no one could see,” Glynis said. “I could tell that Sorcha was frightened to death of her.” She told him the rest of what happened, though there was not much more to tell.
“One brings danger,” he muttered as he ran his hands through his hair. “I had no notion Catherine would want to harm Sorcha.”
Glynis was used to her father—and everyone else—dismissing her judgment. It touched her that Alex did not question her perception of what had happened at the loch that day.
“Well, I was right about one thing,” Alex said with a sad smile. “Ye would be a good mother to Sorcha.”
“A child alone cannot bind us,” Glynis said, blinking hard to keep back tears. “As ye said, being a wife is more than being a nursemaid.”
“I wanted ye for myself as well,” he said, and touched the back of his fingers to her cheek. “I know it is important to ye that your husband is faithful. Is that part of what is making ye so miserable about the prospect of being married to me?”
Glynis dropped her gaze to her hands folded in her lap and nodded.
“Then I would give ye my promise that so long as we share a bed as man and wife, I’ll take no other.”
When he first spoke of marriage, he had only promised to be discreet in his affairs. He was willing to give her the promise she wanted now, but could she trust him? Even if Alex meant it now, would he still mean it in a month?
