Chapter Fifteen #2
Meggie ignored her husband and leaned forward slightly, her eyes warm.
“Jacob,” she said, “your father and I are not angry with you. Truly. But we are... concerned. This alliance means something to the MacTavishes—to all of us. We came here to strengthen ties with the families of the Lowlands, easing internal tensions while the kingdom tries to hold fast to its fragile peace.”
“I ken that well enough, Mam,” Jacob said. “I understand the implications, the difficulty I’ve caused.” He hesitated, then shrugged, the gesture stiff with frustration. “I just dinna... I couldnae—” He broke off, knowing there was no defense worth offering for what he had allowed himself to do.
“You could not help yourself,” Meggie guessed quietly, her head tilting with sympathy.
Jacob shifted, unsettled by how easily she had named it. He shook his head, unwilling to claim it as excuse, yet he did not deny that she was right.
“Elena is Liam’s only daughter,” Gabriel started anew. “Her choices reflect on him. As yer actions reflect on us.”
Jacob nodded again, though this time with more weight.
He was truly remorseful for the trouble he’d caused to Liam MacTavish, even as he wasn’t sorry at all that it revealed a side of Thomas Hamilton that he had to believe Liam was happy to discover now rather than later.
He listened as his father settled fully into the lecture, words coming now in a steady, familiar stream.
It was not anger so much as disappointment threaded with concern, the sort of rambling admonition Gabriel had delivered on many occasions to any one of his three sons.
Jacob let it wash over him, absorbing what he could, enduring the rest, knowing this was his due.
He had earned every word of it, and so he stood there in silence, jaw set, nodding when appropriate.
Gabriel ran a hand over his jaw, his sermon having run its course.
“Jacob,” he said, more softly now, “ye have always been steady. Ye measure your steps, weigh consequences, consider others before yourself. That part of ye is one I am proudest of. So when I see ye act without thought—without caution—it tells me something else was at work.”
Knowing he was expected to say something here, that a noncommittal shrug wouldn’t suffice, Jacob said only, “I couldnae help myself, Da.”
Gabriel sighed and laid his hands on his hips, studying his son. “Jesu, Jacob, do ye care for Elena?”
His mother rolled her eyes and rose to her feet—she’d been forced to endure the lecture as much as Jacob. “Very good of you to catch up, love,” she said, holding Jacob’s gaze though the remark was meant for her husband.
“How—when did this happen?” Gabriel wondered gruffly.
“Years ago, Gabriel,” Meggie informed him.
“And at this very moment, Liam MacTavish is probably learning a few things he didn’t know either.
” She touched Jacob’s arm. “You do not need to justify your heart to us,” she said softly.
“But you do need to understand the consequences it may bring—to yourself, to Elena, to her family. This moment will follow all of us for some time.”
Jacob swallowed hard. “Yes, Mam.”
“When did it start?” Gabriel wanted to know.
Meggie ignored him and squeezed Jacob’s arm, the corners of her eyes softening with pride and worry. “You must conduct yourself with care, Jacob,” she said, “for Elena’s sake as much as your own. Impulses have their place in passion, but not in politics.”
He nodded dutifully again.
“It will sort itself out,” she predicted airily, turning away, patting the cheek of her husband, who was still in the process of catching up.
“Am I the only one who dinna ken this?”
ELENA DID NOT REMEMBER crossing the yard or climbing the stair, only the steady insistence of Jacob’s voice at her back—go straight to yer chamber.
She’d obeyed without question, her legs moving while her thoughts lagged somewhere behind.
By the time she reached the keep, her hands were trembling badly enough that she had to pause just inside the door, pressing her palms together until the shaking eased, until the world felt solid again beneath her feet.
How grotesquely unfair that the one moment she had longed for all her life should finally be hers, only to be chased immediately by discovery, transforming triumph into catastrophe in the span of a breath.
She’d gone straight in search of her mother, fortuitously finding her inside her chamber, setting aside a cloak as though she had only just returned herself.
Isabel took one look at Elena’s face and did not ask a single question.
She closed the door behind her and guided Elena to a chair before the hearth.
“What happened?”
“Jacob kissed me,” Elena cried to her mother, unable to keep the joy from her expression or voice, even as tears spilled down her cheeks.
“Oh, my,” Isabel had said, not recoiling, though her hand did slide up her chest, concern etched on her face.
“Mother, he’s nae indifferent,” Elena confirmed to her.
“He’s nae. I always wondered,” Elena said, speaking swiftly, “whether it was only me. Whether I had imagined everything—every look, every kindness. I told myself it must be so, because he never said anything, never gave me cause to hope. And now I ken—” She broke off, laughing weakly, the sound caught somewhere between joy and despair.
“Now I ken I was nae wrong. I didn’t imagine it, Mother. ”
“Elena,” she said hesitantly, her brow knitting, hinting at caution—clearly torn between joy for her daughter and concern over the fallout—which promptly reminded Elena of the travesty of it all.
She winced and told her mother, “But we were seen. Lord Kinnard stumbled upon us—he turned and ran immediately, straight to Lord Hamilton, I should guess.”
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Isabel breathed.
“I’m so happy,” Elena admitted unnecessarily, “but it’s tangled now with fear.”
“Understandably,” her mother allowed, chewing her lip. “The fear is nae misplaced, I’m sorry to say.”
Elena swallowed. “Da will be furious.”
“Aye,” Isabel said calmly. “He will.”
“And Thomas—” Elena shook her head, the words failing her. “I never wished to shame anyone. I dinna mean to make things harder for ye and Da. I only—” She pressed a hand to her chest. “I only wanted to ken. And now I do, and I dinna ken how to bear it.”
Isabel leaned forward then and brushed her daughter’s hair back from her face, the gesture deeply familiar, loving. “Listen to me,” she said softly. “What ye feel now—the joy and the fear together—is the price of truth. ?Tis rarely ever clean. But ?tis better than doubt, even when it wounds.”
Elena closed her eyes, breathing in slowly, clinging to that steadiness. Somewhere beyond the walls of the keep, voices rose and fell, the world continuing as though nothing irrevocable had just happened.
“I dinna regret it,” she said finally, almost in a whisper. “Nae matter what comes of it, I dinna.”
Isabel’s mouth curved, just slightly. “Nor should ye,” she replied. “But ye must be prepared, love. Knowing a thing changes everything.”
Elena nodded, her heart aching and light all at once, and sat there beside her mother, suspended between happiness and dread, waiting for the rest of the world to catch to her.
She didn’t have long to wait.
The door opened without warning not five minutes later.
Elena straightened instinctively, her breath catching as her father entered the chamber and closed the door behind him.
Elena held her breath, and rose to her feet, deciding that Liam MacTavish did not look like a man in the grip of fresh fury; he looked instead like one who had spent it already, leaving something heavier in its place.
His shoulders were squared, his expression drawn, and when his gaze moved from Isabel to Elena, there was a flicker of something quick and unsettled before it was gone again.
She was accustomed to her father pacing when he was displeased and was trying not to holler at his children. Just now, he sat on the edge of the bed and crossed his legs at the ankle, looking far more casual in posture than in expression.
“Of all the things ye could have done, Elena,” he said, his tone measured, “ye choose this—this. Have ye any idea what this looks like? What it means for yer future? For ours?”
Elena lowered her gaze briefly, not out of shame but because looking at her father when he was like this felt like facing a gale. “Da,” she began, “I ken it seems—”
“Do ye?” he ground out, cutting her off.
“Do ye ken what stories will spread before nightfall? Do ye ken what Strathfinnan is likely saying already? His son was humiliated. Humiliated by ye and Jacob. In broad daylight, Elena,” he said, as if this were her greatest mistake.
He placed his hands on the mattress on either side of him.
“God’s wounds, lass, did neither of ye consider the consequences?
Years spent on this alliance in the making, building trust, currying good will, and ye undo it with a single—” He caught himself abruptly, words snarling in his throat as he searched for a phrasing fit to be spoken before his daughter. “—a single lapse in judgment.”
Elena’s cheeks warmed with something that wasn’t shame, precisely—something more complicated. Still, she dared to confess, “It wasn’t a lapse.”
Liam’s jaw dropped. He stared at her, waiting.
“I did it on purpose,” she murmured.
He laughed without humor. “Ye did? Nae Jacob?”
“I...approached him—I made it happen. I wanted to—”
“I dinna care what ye wanted, lass,” he said wearily, more aggrieved than angry it seemed.
Folding his arms across his chest, he glanced at his wife, as if to seek her thoughts on the matter.
What he saw gave him pause, and roused something closer to disbelieving rage.
“Isabel,” he seethed, “what, by all the devils, are ye smiling about? There is naught—and I mean naught—in this entire situation worthy of that look.”
Isabel ignored him entirely. She stepped closer to Elena, lifting a hand to brush a thumb gently along her daughter’s cheek. “Ye have your father’s eyes,” she murmured, “but at this moment, lass, I see my own past more clearly than I’ve seen it in years.”
“What in hell’s name does that mean?” Liam growled.
Isabel turned to him, calm as a lake in midsummer. “It means,” she said softly, “that I recognize that look in her eyes. I had it myself once.”
Liam scowled. “What look?”
“That dazed, rattled, utterly undone expression,” Isabel said warmly, reaching to take her husband’s rough hand in hers. “It’s the look I likely wore the first time ye kissed me, more than twenty years ago—
Liam’s breath left him in a strangled sound that didn’t know if it wanted to be protest nor acknowledgment. For a moment, he simply stared at his wife, then at his daughter, then back at Isabel, his usually unshakable confidence slipping.
“Elena,” he said slowly, voice dropping to something softer, something wary, “are ye telling me...” His throat worked. “Do ye have feelings for the lad?”
Elena opened her mouth, but the words stuck. She nodded swiftly.
“This is nae simply a symptom of being rescued by Jacob?” He asked, his posture dropping a bit. When Elena shook her head, he pressed both hands over his face, exhaled through them, then let them drop.
“Elena has been enamored of Jacob almost since the first moment he stepped foot at Wolvesly,” Isabel informed him. “Haven’t ye, love?”
Elena nodded again.
“Son of a...” he muttered at last, the words puncturing the thick silence with blunt resignation.
Isabel patted his shoulder. “There he is,” she said affectionately. “That’s the man I married.”
Liam shot her a wounded glare. “Nae the time, Isabel.” He faced Elena again. “Did ye do this? Truly? He said he was to blame.”
“I wanted—” she paused and clarified, “I needed to know, before I committed to betrothing myself to Thomas, if there was...any hope at all... even the tiniest scrap.”
Isabel raised her fingers to cover her mouth, covering her irreverent smile. “By all accounts, it seems the question was answered sufficiently.”
Liam turned another glare onto his wife.
“Oh, stop. Ye said yerself just last night ye’d given her leave to make her own decision—”
“Aye, but nae in this manner,” Liam argued hotly. “She might have only said I dinna wish to wed him—she needn’t have gone out and perpetrated her own...seduction.”
Mother and daughter protested his choice of words at once.
“Father!”
“Liam!”
He waved a dismissive hand and resettled himself with a weary sigh before adding, “As it stands—and regardless of what Hamilton ultimately decides, though he begged time to consider the betrothal—I would nae allow you to wed his son.”
The words landed like a dropped plate. Elena stared at him, stunned, and from the sharp intake of breath beside her, it was clear Isabel had not anticipated this turn either.
Liam continued without pause. “He displayed behavior today that I would never deem acceptable in a man meant to stand beside my daughter.”
Isabel’s brows drew together. “Meaning what, precisely?”
“His anger,” Liam said flatly. “It rose too quickly, too fiercely, and with a lack of control I dinna expect. Another moment and I would nae have been surprised to see him frothing like a baited dog.”
Elena gasped outright.
“Nae,” Isabel whispered.
“Aye,” Liam confirmed.
Isabel threw up her hands. “Then why all this fuss—”
“Because of how it was done,” Liam cut in, his voice firm now. “There were ways to bring this to an end without exposing her to scrutiny or humiliating Thomas outright—ways that would have preserved dignity and the alliances we came here to secure.”
Liam exhaled slowly and pushed himself to his feet.
“Hamilton asked for the night to consider,” he said.
“By the morrow, we’ll ken his answer—and give our own if his is nae to my liking.
” His gaze returned to Elena, steady rather than stern.
“Until then, it would be best if ye took your supper in yer chamber. Let the hall cool and the tongues still themselves.”
Elena nodded at once, relieved not to be forced to show herself.