Page 13 of Promised to the Cursed Laird

"Ye told me I didnae arrive and ye found out where I'd gone." She kept her eyes forward. "That's what happened. I'm asking why."

He was quiet for a moment. The horses moved. The forest pressed in on both sides, dark and indifferent.

"Ye were expected," he said. "Ye didnae arrive."

"So ye came tae collect what my brother refused tae give ye."

The arm across her middle didn't move. His voice, when it came, was level in the way of someone choosing levelness deliberately.

"Is that what ye think happened."

"I think," she said, "that a man who spent three years fighting Chisholms would find it very satisfying tae ride intae MacRath's hold and take a Chisholm bride by force when her brother tried tae withhold her. It has a certain poetry tae it."

"Poetry," he repeated.

"A certain kind."

"The kind," he said, "where a man makes a long uncomfortable ride in the dark tae retrieve a woman he's never met from a stronghold she was being held in against her will, and she accuses him of doing it for satisfaction."

"I dinnae know yer reasons," she said. "I know what Fearchar told me about ye."

"And what did Fearchar tell ye?"

She looked at the road. "That ye were ruthless. That ye had nae more interest in this marriage than any man has in taking something he's owed. That what happened in those glens—" She stopped. "That what ye were capable of in war didnae recommend ye as a husband."

The silence that followed had a different quality than the ones before it.

"And ye believed him," Marcas said.

"He's my brother."

"He's a man with reasons tae keep ye from this marriage," he said. "The same way I have reasons tae see it happen. Neither of us is without interest in the outcome." He shifted his grip on the reins. "Ye'd do well tae account for that when ye weigh what either of us tells ye."

She blinked.

She had not expected that.

He's telling me nae tae trust him either, she thought. Or at least that he knows I shouldn't take his word alone. That's⁠—

She stopped herself. That was exactly the kind of thing a man said when he wanted a woman to lower her guard.

"Then give me a reason that isnae self-interest," she said. "Why did ye come?"

Another silence. Longer.

"I waited two days," he said, and something in his voice had changed, gone somewhere quieter and less managed. "Ye were contracted tae arrive. Ye didnae. I told myself there was a reason, weather, a delay on the road. I waited another day." He paused.

She said nothing.

"A woman traveling with a small escort through contested Highland roads, in winter, under the terms of an Accord half the clans still resent." His voice was flat. "When she doesnae arrive, there are a number of things that might have happened. Most of them are things I—" He stopped. "I became concerned."

He became concerned, she thought, and then immediately thought, he became concerned about his contracted bride, which is nae the same as being concerned about a person, it's being concerned about an obligation⁠—

"So ye searched," she said.

"I found a man at the crossroads," he said. "He told me where ye'd been sent. I left the same night."

She absorbed that.