The way she said it made him want to defend himself. “My grandfather was the laird of this clan and some people still remember that. The title of laird may no longer have land, but I carry a responsibility to the McTerns.”
“How very romantic,” she said as she took a step toward him. “Does that mean that if I were some McTern girl and being forced to marry a man twice my age you’d step in and help?” She was being sarcastic, but when she saw his face she knew the truth. “You would help her, wouldn’t you?”
“I would feel an obligation, yes, but that hasn’t happened in my lifetime. A girl marries who she wants. It’s the Scots way.”
“It’s the English way, too, except that I’m cursed with having a dowry and an uncle who needs money, plus, I have no friends or relatives to help me.” She took a breath. “What if I pay you?”
“I couldn’t go against your uncle. He owns this place now.”
She took another step forward and he took one back. “What if my uncle decided to marry some pretty girl in your tribe?”
“Clan.” He couldn’t repress a smile.
“All right, your clan. What if my uncle decided he wanted to marry ... your sister?”
“She’s already married and has three bairns.”
“Bairns. Babies. She has three children now, but if she didn’t and Uncle Neville wanted to marry her, what would you do?”
He didn’t say what he thought, which was that Lawler would never marry her. He might make her his mistress, but the man had never shown much interest in women. They’d all heard him say that he’d much rather have a good horse than any woman.
She was still staring up at him with those deep blue eyes and waiting for his reply.
“I would have to send her away,” he said.
“You would do that for her?”
“I would have to, wouldn’t I? Your uncle is a lot of things, but I don’t think he’d make a good husband.” He was teasing her now, but she wasn’t smiling.
“But not me,” she said. “So what I’ve heard is true, that you’d help another woman, but you won’t help me. Why? Because I’m not a blood relative of yours? Or is it me you hate? And why is that? Because I stood up to you? I see the way the girls look at you. Do you refuse to help me because I don’t swoon at the sight of you?”
As she spoke she was moving toward him and he was backing up—and he was working hard to keep his amusement from coming to the surface.
“You’re laughing at me!” she said. “You enjoyed making me fall, enjoyed humiliating me in front of everyone, didn’t you? You know what you are? You’re a bully. You’re a bully, and I hate you! I really and truly hate you!” With that, she once again used her hard-soled boot and kicked him in exactly the same spot where she’d kicked him earlier.
Angus couldn’t help it. Maybe it was the relief that he wasn’t going to have to hide forever in shame after being caught “spying” on her, or relief that he wasn’t going to be punished for tossing her into the cold water. Or maybe it was just giddiness at being so close to this beautiful woman with her wet hair falling deliciously about her neck, but he started laughing. Days of pent-up anger and fear and embarrassment left him, and he leaned against the wall of the roof and started laughing.
“You’re disgusting,” she said with contempt as she went through the door that led back into the castle. Even when Angus heard the bolt thrown on the inside he kept laughing.
3
EDILEAN TALBOT LEANED against the cold stone wall of her bedroom, looked out the narrow, unglazed window, and stared at the courtyard below. All the people down there seemed so happy—and free. But then, they had families and friends and things to laugh about. She saw a man pick up a little boy and toss him high in the air, and she could hear the child’s laughter four stories above.
Turning, she leaned against the wall, then in the next moment she slid down to sit on the old wooden floor. Just three more days, she thought. In just three days she was to be married to some repulsive man. Her uncle’s “friends” had made a pact with him that they would make no effort to win her. There was to be no courting, no flowers, no letters, nothing said to her in private. On the day she was to turn eighteen, she’d be asked before the reverend which man she chose, and she was to say which one she would have.
Edilean knew that if she truly believed the marriage was going to happen she really would throw herself off the roof.
Her father, a retired military man, had known he was going to die when his only child was still young and he’d done his best to protect her future. That it hadn’t been enough wasn’t his fault. He’d spent long hours making what he thought was an ironclad will. Everything he owned was to be sold and converted to gold, and the gold was to be given to his daughter on her eighteenth birthday. He’d written that she was to marry a man of her own choosing. He knew that if she married, control of her estate would go to her husband, but he’d trusted his daughter enough to choose a man who wouldn’t squander her inheritance. The flaw in his plan was that he’d underestimated his daughter’s only living relative, her deceased mother’s brother, who was to be her guardian until she was eighteen.
Her father had met the man once or twice, but he didn’t really know him. Neville had assured the dying man that he would take care of Edilean after she got out of school and that he’d follow the will to the letter. He’d even signed a document before witnesses swearing to uphold the will. Edilean’s father’s will further said that in case his daughter died before she was eighteen, the gold would go to charity.
To Neville Lawler’s mind, he was carrying out the will exactly as it had been written. On her eighteenth birthday, Edilean would be given a choice between two men, and she would marry one of them there and then.
Neither Edilean nor her father had imagined a man of such greed and such a lack of morals as Neville Lawler existed.
Now, Edilean knew that she had only one hope, and that was to come from the man she loved: James Harcourt. She’d met James through a school friend of hers. After her father died and their house was sold, when the holidays came, Edilean had to stay with friends. She was well liked both for her humor and because her beauty attracted young men to the houses, so she never lacked for invitations.
But of all the men who made fools of themselves over her, only James Harcourt interested her. He was tall, broad shouldered, blond, and beautiful. His grandfather had made a lot of money in some trade—James was vague about the details—so James was a gentleman through circumstance if not breeding. She’d soon found that he was sensitive about his background, so she asked him few questions.