Page 64 of Highlander’s Protector

Anna cleared her throat. “After being trapped in the oubliette for what felt like eternity, I was chased by the MacDowells and then stuck in a storm for a sennight. I’m just tired.”

“Aye, the storm raged for days here, as well,” Laoghaire said slowly. “How did ye survive that?”

“On an abandoned farm. Thankfully, there was a house where David and I could shelter.”

Laoghaire sat back and bit her lip. “David, aye?”

Feeling like she’d said too much, Anna shrugged one shoulder. “Aye. He was protecting me the whole time.”

“A handsome man,” said Laoghaire, pouring more wine for Anna. “Isna he?”

He was the most handsome and attractive man Anna had ever laid her eyes on. But she knew where Laoghaire was leading with this, so she said, “I didna notice.”

Laoghaire let out a long sigh and leaned back in the chair, looking at the dark ceiling where shadows from the candles played and danced. “Plenty of time locked in a house alone with a man who isna yer husband…”

Laoghaire always knew how to hit right where it hurt. There was nothing as damaging to Anna’s reputation as Laoghaire’s suspicions, even if Laoghaire didn’t know anything. Just a shadow of doubt in Anna would be enough to make Philip back away from the deal.

“Laoghaire,” Anna said. “Do not assume anything.”

“I dinna, cousin. Just tell me I’m wrong and I’ll believe ye.”

Problem was, she was exactly right. About everything.

“Ye are wrong, Laoghaire,” Anna said firmly.

Laoghaire took a sip of wine. “If ye say so, I believe ye. Yer father, the king, is betting much on yer virginity. And I am sure, as he is, ye wouldna do anything to compromise that. Wouldna it be treason?”

Anna stood up and marched through the pavilion. She ached for a different world. A world where, like David had said, virginity was not an important condition, where she wouldn’t be a negotiation piece in powerful men’s games. Instead, she lived in a world where her reputation could be ruined by gossip. And her father didn’t even talk to her. He didn’t spend time with her like she had hoped. He had brought her to the bridge in front of the Stirling Castle gate and held his hand on her back while Sir Philip Mowbray stared at her from the top of the wall.

And once Sir Philip had seen her with his own eyes, he’d nodded and yelled that the wedding would be tomorrow and disappeared.

Then her father was off doing his important things.

She was just a way for him to get the castle. And she was giving her life and her happiness for that? And if she was pregnant, her child’s life?

Tomorrow was the wedding. Tomorrow she’d lose David forever. Tomorrow, her only chance at happiness would be lost.

Anna lay down on the bed, pulled the blankets over herself, and turned with her back to Laoghaire. “Dinna ye fash, cousin. Tomorrow I will give Stirling to my father.”

The mattress dipped as Laoghaire sat on the bed and laid her hand on Anna’s shoulder. “I dinna fash. I am glad ye are alive. We were all very worried for a while.”

Anna froze, as though in the presence of a deer she didn’t want to spook. Laoghaire’s affection was rare, even though Anna knew Laoghaire cared for her more than she’d shown.

Then Laoghaire stood and called for her maidservant. Under the rustling of clothes and the quiet murmuring between the two women, Anna struggled to fall asleep. She felt cold and empty at her back, where David had faithfully kept her warm. Darkness was creeping at her from all corners, and even the presence of two other women didn’t keep it away.

She should get used to it. Even her new husband wouldn’t be able to give her the safety and warmth that she needed…because he wasn’t David.

CHAPTER 26

The camp was quiet, sleeping, but in David’s head voices screamed and laughed despite two whole horns of uisge that he’d drunk with Colum with a sole purpose.

To forget. To forget that he’d brought the love of his life to marry another man. That she may be in trouble because he’d taken her virginity.

That he could still change it all and convince her to choose him. Run away with her.

But something must have been wrong with the uisge because it didn’t make him forget any of those things.

In fact, he remembered them more forcefully than ever before.