Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
“There was somethin’ else I was goin’ to tell ye last night,” he revealed. “Somethin’ that I’ve nae told anyone. Nae even Joseph.”
The only sign that she was listening to him and registering what he was saying was the slight widening of her eyes. He took that as a good sign, before continuing to speak.
“I told ye that Joseph was a bastard. And we all ken about that. I told ye how the council treated him poorly because of it. But what if I told ye that Ayla is only me half-sister as well?”
Marissa stopped her breathing exercise, her mouth gaping open in surprise.
“What?” she asked in astonishment.
Arthur shook his head. “Keep breathin’ and tryin’ to calm yerself. I’ll do the talkin’.”
He waited just long enough for her to start again, pulling in big lungfuls of air through her nose and expelling them through her mouth.
“Ayla has always believed that we share the same maither,” Arthur explained. “It’s what me faither always told her. It’s what he told me as well, up until the day he died. He had an affair with one of our maids, and the woman died givin’ birth to Ayla. Me maither…”
He shook his head, recalling the woman who had raised him with affection.
“She was so kind. Loved everyone she came across. She kenned me faither had violated his vows, kenned all about his mistresses. But she couldnae bring herself to let the bairn suffer for the sins of her faither. So, when Ayla’s maither passed, me maither decided to step in and raise her as her own. ”
As Arthur talked, he noticed the tension slowly leaving Marissa. With each word that he spoke, her muscles had started to relax. She was still breathing the way he’d taught her, but some of the panic had left her eyes, and her hands had stopped sweating.
“Me faither didnae even have the decency to tell me himself,” he said, the story coming out of him in a rush, now that he was finally telling it.
“He wrote me a letter, one that he’d left in his study for me to find after he died.
It explained everythin’. He’d always been distant with Ayla, which I’d always thought was because she was a daughter and nae a son.
I suppose that was partly true. But it was mostly because she wasnae a legitimate child, and he didnae care what happened to the daughter of a maid. ”
Marissa had stopped the exercise. Now, she was focused on him entirely. She was still holding his hands, though. She hadn’t yet released them.
“And ye didnae tell Ayla?” she asked.
Arthur shook his head. “What good would that do? Her real maither was dead. Me maither had passed years before, and that was hard enough on her. Ayla had seemed… relieved when our faither died. And it wouldnae have done any good to dredge all of this up. Plus, she would have endured more pressure from the council if they kenned she wasnae legitimate.”
“But ye could legitimize her,” Marissa argued. “If she kenned the truth, ye could still make her claim to the family name legitimate.”
“What would be the point of it all, though?” Arthur retorted.
He understood why Marissa was arguing her point. It was something that he had struggled with for years.
Arthur had gone back and forth over whether or not to tell Ayla the truth what felt like a thousand times. But each time he landed on the same exact reason to keep the secret. And it was the same reason that he told Marissa at that moment.
“What happens if I tell her?” he asked pointedly.
“What happens if I tell her that the only maither she had ever kenned wasnae actually her maither? That the woman who raised her, who loved her, lied to her for her entire life and kept this secret from her? And then, she has to fight off the sneers and the words of everyone around her, on top of all of that.”
Marissa opened her mouth to argue further, but Arthur quickly silenced her.
“I would legitimize her, aye,” he said hastily.
“I would do it without a second thought. But I dinnae need to. Nae when she is already legitimate in the eyes of everyone. Because even though it isnae the truth, everyone believes that she is the daughter of me maither and that she has every right to the name that I do.”
Marissa stared at him as he shifted from foot to foot. Never in his life had he felt this nervous.
She had said that she trusted him, and to some extent, he believed her. Clearly, she trusted him enough to allow him to ease her worries around the ducks.
But this secret? It could make things incredibly difficult for him.
And had Marissa not grown close to Ayla over the last few days? Had he not seen them laughing and giggling together? What if she felt a sense of loyalty to her as well and went and told her the truth?
“Ye’re right,” Marissa said finally, prompting him to expel a sigh of relief. “The only thing tellin’ her would do is make her life more difficult. It willnae do any good for anyone.”
Arthur huffed his appreciation.
“Thank ye,” he murmured.
A weight suddenly lifted from his shoulders.
“That secret has weighed on me for a very long time,” he admitted. “I love Ayla. And it hurts, knowin’ that I’m keepin’ the truth from her.”
Marissa nodded. “If I kenned somethin’ like that about one of me sisters, I’m nae sure if I could have kept it in. Even if tellin’ them would have made everythin’ worse.”
Arthur wasn’t sure if she was agreeing that he’d done the right thing. But she had acknowledged his struggles throughout the years all the same. Which was more than he had ever thought he would get.
Marissa blinked up at him, her expression softening before, she turned her gaze back toward the loch.
In the time that he’d been talking, her posture had relaxed almost entirely. He expected her to tense up again, to start losing her cool now that she was focused on the ducks.
“They have hardly paid us any mind,” she mused. “They’ve barely even glanced at us.”
Arthur grinned. “I told ye they werenae so bad. But dinnae try to touch ‘em now. I’m certain they wouldnae thank ye for that.”
She scoffed at him. “Dinnae worry. I’ll nae try to touch a duck, or any bird for that matter, for quite a long time.”
“But mayhap ye can admit that they’re nae so bad. Now, what did ye call them? Foul creatures?” he teased.
She smirked as she turned her gaze back to him. She looked lovely like this.
The sun had moved higher in the sky, painting the tips of her auburn hair golden. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were bright. And Arthur could not help himself.
He bent down, brushing his lips across hers in a soft, gentle kiss.
“I want to get married by the loch,” she murmured, her mouth moving against his lips.
It made him smile, and when he pulled back to gaze down at her, she was smiling, too.
“What about the ducks?” he asked, nodding his head in their general direction.
With a huff of a laugh, Marissa shook her head.
“I dinnae want to get married right at this spot.” She took a moment to look around them for the first time, no doubt taking in the scenery beyond the ducks. “Mayhap over by the cave? Along the beach there?”
It was not a hard decision for Arthur. In fact, he didn’t need time to consider it at all.
He nodded. “If that’s what ye want, then that’s what we’ll do.”
Marissa’s cheeks flushed with delight. “Thank ye.”
He kissed her again, and she rose on her tiptoes, giving him greater access.
All of their previous kisses had been filled with passion. There’d been a need behind them, a need to devour. To act in a moment where they’d been driven by their baser instincts.
But now, the kiss they shared was soft and tender. Something that Arthur had never truly experienced. Not quite like this.
And it was easy for him to give himself over to it entirely. His hands explored her body gently, his fingers running up and down her back, pressing her to him more firmly.
She moaned low in her throat, the kiss deepening into something that became all-consuming. The loch no longer existed.
Arthur could no longer hear the quacking of the ducks. Could no longer smell the water on the breeze or feel or focus on anything else that was not Marissa.
“Well, this is quite lovely,” a cruel, sneering voice said, breaking the spell that had fallen over them.
Marissa yipped in surprise, jumping back from Arthur and out of his arms. Arthur whirled around, immediately sweeping his arm back to push her behind him.
Men stood along the bank of the loch, no more than twenty feet away from them. His gaze swept over them, counting them as quickly as he could.
Ten. Ten men stood, glaring at him.
The man standing in the center, with the others all fanned around him, was clearly in charge.
It was likely him who spoke.
That suspicion was confirmed a moment later when the man spoke again. His eyes flicked over Arthur’s shoulder, landing directly on Marissa. Arthur heard her quick intake of breath, the quiet, subtle “nay” that she whispered as she stared at the man.
“It’s a pleasure to see ye again, Marissa,” the man said, his mouth curling into a wide smile, revealing a set of yellowed teeth.
Arthur didn’t need her to say it. Did not need to hear her utter the words. He knew precisely who the man standing in front of him was.
So, it came as no surprise when Marissa opened her mouth and said one simple word. Or rather, a name. A name filled with so much contempt and fear that it seemed to shoot through Arthur like an arrow to his heart.
“Eric.”
“What are ye doin’ here?”
Marissa’s voice shook as she spoke, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.
Despite what had happened at the cèilidh, she had never assumed that Eric would be standing before her now. But there he was.
She’d seen only mere glimpses of him in the last three years. A flash of him through a crowd, just quick enough that she would begin to doubt if he’d been there at all, until one of his letters had arrived.
But now that he was in front of her and without distractions, it rocked her all over again how uncanny his look was.
Still, after all this time and everything she had done, she had to admit that he was handsome. It was one of the reasons why she’d never understood why he hadn’t given up. Many women would have been giddy to marry a laird who looked like him.
A predatory smile tugged at his lips, sending a chill all the way to her bones. Her eyes scanned the group, noting just how outnumbered she and Arthur were. At the thought of it, her stomach went sour.
“Imagine me surprise,” Eric drawled, his voice sliding through the air between them to slick over her skin like oil, “when the man I sent to fetch ye didnae return.”
He took a step forward. The distance between them closing by even so much as a step made Marissa want to run away.
I dinnae want to be close to him. I dinnae think I can bear it.
“The man ye sent to kill her, ye mean,” Arthur barked.
Marissa’s eyes flicked to the back of his head. She couldn’t see his face, not as he stood with his back to her so he could position himself between her and the intruders. But it was easy enough to read his body language.
His shoulders were squared, facing Eric directly. Even beneath the fabric of his clothes, Marissa could see that his muscles were tense and bulging.
Eric might be a predator, but Arthur was the bigger threat. That much was obvious.
But that would only matter if it was just the two of them. It’s nae. There must be ten men standin’ before him. He cannae take them on by himself. Nay one can do that.
A knot of dread formed in her belly at the thought. It sent out icy fingers, slithering within her and locking itself around her muscles. She became paralyzed with it.
“Ye think I sent him to kill her?” Eric said, before barking an erratic laugh. “Nay. I wouldnae kill her. I sent him after ye.” He cocked his head at Arthur, his eyes sweeping over him from navel to nose, sizing him up. “I see that he failed.”
Arthur shrugged, seemingly unbothered by the insinuation that the instruction had been to take his life. “Mayhap ye sent the wrong man.”
Eric let out another laugh, but this one was dark. “Clearly,” he said.
It was a simple word. But the way it fell from his lips made it sound like a threat. There was a challenge behind every syllable. One that Marissa could see Arthur reacting to.
His hands flexed at his sides, nothing more than a twitch of the fingers. But it was enough to tell her that he wished to draw his weapon.
She scanned his body quickly, looking for anything that he might be able to use. But as she continued to look, her heart sank.
The only thing he seemed to have carried with him was a small hunting knife, strapped to his waist in a leather sheath. She had seen it before. And she knew it to be a dull, old thing. More of a tool than a weapon.
So, it is only Arthur, who may as well be unarmed, against ten men.
The odds of this encounter did not appear to be in their favor. Not by a long shot.