Page 6 of The Laird's Masked Passion

This time his eyes sharpened. She hated that some foolish, detached part of her mind observed the line of him, the quiet force, the dark attention now fixed wholly upon her.

“How was this arranged?” she asked.

Colin’s answer came without softness. “I bought ye.”

The world went very still. Elspeth did not understand him. Or rather, she understood every word, and her mind rejected them as one rejected poison before the tongue could name it.

“Bought?” she echoed.

The music began in a hymn that should have been sacred and instead seemed monstrous. The sound filled the cathedral, drowning her next breath, her next question, her next protest. She turned toward her father, but the priest had begun to speak.

“Dearly beloved?—”

“Nay,” Elspeth declared.

The priest faltered. Colin’s hand still encircled her wrist. He didn’t move to hurt her, nor to comfort her. He simply kept her in place.

“Nay,” she said again more loudly.

The music wavered. Her father’s face hardened. The Crown men watched. Whatever bargain had placed her here, it had not been hidden from them. It had been witnessed.

The priest’s mouth trembled. “Me lady?—”

“I am nae supposed tae be married,” Elspeth urged. “I havenae consented. I… have nae even been told.”

A stir moved through the church, swift and hungry as wind through dry leaves.

Colin leaned closer, his voice low enough that only she could hear. “If ye refuse now, it willnae free ye.”

“How comforting. Is that what passes fer courtship in Wester Ross?”

His mouth almost changed. It wasn’t a smile, but something more dangerous because it had not decided whether it wished to be one.

It was in that very moment that she turned to her mother. Her father’s grip had shifted from her mother’s hand to her wrist. His thumb pressed into the tender inside of it with deliberate force. She made no sound, but pain pinched her mouth. Elspeth’s whole body went cold. If she resisted, her mother would pay first.

She looked at Colin again. The priest began faster this time, as though speed might lend holiness to coercion. Elspeth heard very little. Words passed around her in a solemn blur.

Duty. Union. Obedience. Covenant.

She stood in her ivory gown and felt herself becoming a possession before the eyes of God and men, while her father held her mother in pain and her bridegroom held her by the wrist.

When the moment came for her vows, silence opened before her. Elspeth’s mouth remained closed. Her father’s fingers tightened around her mother’s wrist.

Elspeth smiled. It was not a pretty smile. It did not belong to a bride. It belonged to a woman who had found, amid terror andhumiliation, a single sharp weapon and meant to keep it hidden until it could draw blood.

“I will,” she nodded.

The words tasted like ash. The vows passed. Hers were spoken clearly. His were spoken with such cold steadiness that one might have thought he had pledged himself to a treaty, not a woman. And yet each response pulled the invisible knot tighter, until Elspeth could scarcely breathe beneath the weight of what had been done.

Then, a sound rose outside. At first, it was nothing more than a disturbance beyond the great doors. Then another shout came more sharply, of metal striking metal.

Colin’s head turned. So did the men behind him. The polished one moved first, and the iron-built man’s hand went to his sword. The wolfish one looked toward the doors with an expression that made him seem almost pleased to have been proved right about the world.

The priest stopped speaking entirely. Colin’s eyes snapped back to him.

“Finish it,” he snarled.

The poor man found his tongue. His words tumbled now, holy phrases made breathless by fear, while the noise outside grew louder. Elspeth’s heart hammered so violently she felt it in her fingertips. Then, the priest pronounced them husband and wife.