Page 72 of Promised to the Forbidden Laird

At last, she folded the document carefully.

“The accord will remain,” she said. “But there will be nae wedding tomorrow.”

Finlay opened his mouth. Donaldina looked at him. He closed it.

“The council will continue preparations for the defense of Dun Ard,” she continued. “Shared patrols remain in place. MacIver and MacNicol stores will be assessed before winter. The question of marriage will be settled by those expected tae enter it.”

Roy felt something ease beneath his ribs. The danger remained. Cormac remained. Donaldina might yet decide that gratitude and trust were not love, and Roy might be required to leave her behind.

But the choice was hers. That mattered more than ease.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Donaldina discovered that freedom, when unexpectedly given, could be almost as unsettling as captivity.

All afternoon, the King’s decree remained upon the table in her solar, folded beneath Lachlan’s seal. It ceased to resemble a command and became instead a question, which was considerably more troublesome. A command might be opposed. A question required an answer, and she had spent the hours since the council meeting finding fault with every answer that presented itself.

Roy could have insisted upon the marriage. The council expected it. The King permitted it. Even Lachlan, from beyond the reach of explanation, had placed his name beneath the agreement. Yet, Roy refused.

When evening settled over Dun Ard, Donaldina abandoned the hopeless occupation of reading the same line in an account book for the seventh time. She drew a wool cloak around her shoulders and left the solar before Mairi could observe her departure and make something intolerably perceptive of it.

The castle gardens rested beneath a thin autumn mist. Rain lingered upon the clipped hedges and gathered along the stone paths, where the last light from the western sky shone weakly in every hollow. The air smelled of wet earth, rosemary and distant salt. Beyond the walls, the sea moved in darkness, its voice softened by distance but never silenced.

Donaldina wandered without a specific destination and soon found Roy by the lower garden wall. He ambled slowly under the bare branches of an ancient apple tree, with his hands behind his back and his head tilted down slightly. Despite the chilly dampness, he wore no cloak. The wind lifted his dark hair, brushing it against the scar on his jaw. His appearance was more of a man trying to outrun lingering thoughts—thoughts that seemed to have longer legs than his—than a laird surveying his stronghold.

Donaldina stopped. Roy sensed her before she spoke. His head lifted, and his gaze found her through the mist.

“Lady Donaldina.”

The formality irritated her, though she could not reasonably accuse him of using her proper name.

“Laird MacIver.”

His mouth altered very slightly. “Have ye come tae inspect the gardens?”

“I might ask the same of ye.”

“I was walking.”

“So I observed.”

He waited. Roy had an infuriating habit of allowing silence to expose the foolishness of other people’s remarks while preserving his own dignity entirely.

Donaldina approached him. The wet gravel shifted beneath her shoes. Roy’s attention moved briefly to the path, as though prepared to catch her should the earth commit some treachery. That quiet vigilance once offended her. Now, it warmed some unguarded place within her before she could forbid it.

“I wished tae ask ye something,” she revealed.

He lifted an amused eyebrow. “That sounds dangerous.”

“Ye survived the bees.”

“Barely.”

Donaldina nearly smiled. She looked beyond him toward the garden wall, where rainwater gleamed upon the stones.

“Why did ye refuse them?”

Roy’s expression sobered. “The council?”