Page 3 of The Laird's Masked Passion

Elspeth’s fear flared into anger, as it often did, like a candle touched to dry straw.

“Walk,” he ordered.

“I was walking perfectly well before ye mistook yerself fer a gaoler.”

His grip tightened. Pain lanced up her arm, but Elspeth would not give him the satisfaction of seeing it. She lifted her chin, gathered what dignity she could from an ivory gown that suddenly felt like a shroud, and walked.

The inn stair smelled of stale ale and tallow. Voices hushed as they descended. The innkeeper bowed too low when her father passed. His wife crossed herself when she saw Elspeth. Outside, St Andrews lay before them in pale stone and sea-wind, its narrow streets glistening from a shower that had passed before dawn.

The cathedral was within walking distance, its towers and broken grandeur rising above the town like the bones of a giant saint. People had gathered along the street, far more than Elspeth had expected for Rose’s marriage.

“Why are they looking at me?” she whispered.

Her father didn’t answer. Her mother walked on Elspeth’s other side, with her hands clasped so tightly before her that the knuckles showed white through the thin skin. Every step toward the cathedral seemed to remove her from the ordinary world. The great doors stood open, swallowing guests into an interior smelling of cold stone, incense, damp wood, and the faint sweetness of crushed rushes beneath many feet.

Inside, light fell in long, pale shafts, turning dust into drifting gold. The nave was filled.

Elspeth stopped just within the entrance.

There were clansmen, ladies in dark silks, men with swords at their hips and calculation in their eyes. Near the front stood several figures whose attire bore the sober richness of royal service. Why were men of the Crown present at this wedding? Rose’s people were respectable, certainly, but hardly so powerful as to require royal witnesses.

The Frasers, aye. The MacKenzies, perhaps. The great lords of the north and west, certainly. But Rose?

They moved down the nave. At first, Elspeth tried to angle herself toward the side, the proper place for family who had arrived late. Her father jerked her forward.

“We are family,” he murmured. “We stand at the front.”

“The front is for the bride’s parents and closest kin.”

“Precisely.”

His tone closed the matter, but not her mind. Her thoughts ran ahead, collided, scattered, reformed. Perhaps there had been some last-minute change in ceremony. Perhaps her father had arranged some matter of Fraser precedence and meant to display them before rival clans.

But each explanation felt flimsier than the last, and beneath them all her mother’s whisper persisted.

Dae ye ken what happens between a man and a woman in the marriage bed?

Elspeth shivered.

Then she saw the man at the altar. The sight of him stopped every thought in her head.

He was standing beside the priest with three men slightly behind him, and though all four were formidable enough to draw attention, the first commanded it without seeming to seek it. He was tall, lean rather than broad, and dressed in dark garments cut for function more than vanity. His hair was black, his face severe, and his posture possessed that stillness that did not suggest ease but danger held perfectly in check.

Elspeth knew, with instant and inconvenient certainty, that she had never seen anyone so frightening. She knew, with equal distress, that she had never seen anyone so arresting.

His features were not gentle enough to be called handsome by timid women, nor agreeable enough to be praised by those who preferred charm to consequence. But there was power in the hard line of his cheek, intelligence in the cool watchfulness of hiseyes, and something about his mouth that made Elspeth’s breath catch before she could prevent it.

Shame on ye, Elspeth. This is Rose’s groom. This is yer cousin’s husband-tae-be.

Elspeth looked away quickly and fixed her gaze upon a carved pillar.

What sort of woman noticed the shape of a groom’s mouth on his wedding day, ever more so when the bride was her own cousin? Afoolishwoman. Awickedwoman. A woman who had been frightened beyond the limits of sense and was now misplacing her faculties in the direction of a stranger’s face. She ought to have been thinking of Rose.

Where is Rose?

They were nearer the altar now.

Elspeth slowed. “Faither.”