Chapter 39 #2
“Sully my betrothed again, and I shall withdraw my decision to make peace with you, men of MacInnes blood.” He lowered his arm to point his sword at his lady’s kinsmen. “I will make war on you instead, crushing you until none remain.
“Let one MacArthur slander my lady and I will fire your galley and force you to swim home.” He swung his blade toward Balloch’s warriors.
“You, fellow knights and men-of-war, object now if you will. Let us cross swords as worthy opponents. Or accept my marriage to Lady Isolde and forever hold your peace.”
“She cannae wed you,” one brave MacArthur argued from a nearby long table. “She is promised to our lord.”
“Your lord believed so in error.” Donall met the man’s gaze. “She has e’er been pledged to me.”
“You lie!” Another MacArthur leapt to his feet.
Donall gripped Isolde’s arm and drew her behind him. Then he took a long step forward, sword in hand. “She is my betrothed. Say otherwise again and be harried all the way to hell.”
Lorne looked sharply at him, his brows raised.
“A MacLean ne’er lies,” a slight-figured, white-haired man standing next to Lorne called out.
Gerbert. “Our laird in particular!” Baldoon’s steward looked round, ready for war.
The MacArthur who’d jumped up, spat onto the floor. “The hell, you say!”
A low, angry growling began in the far back of the crowd. It spread slowly forward, swelling and falling as it crept the length of the hall, leaping from one table to the next, coming ever closer.
Until one thin voice rang out...
“What the MacLean claims is true,” Ailbert lied, waving his walking stick for emphasis. “Seeing Lady Isolde wed to him was her father’s last wish, sworn to me on his death bed.”
Looking on, listening, Isolde could hardly breathe. She pressed her hands to her face, fought back the thickness rising in her throat.
More and more of her kinsmen joined Ailbert, all of them making similar proclamations, each one bolder than the last.
Tears began rolling down her cheeks, and when the MacLean drew her close, she melted against him. Together, they listened to the tall tales her people spun…
Promised from birth, she and Donall were. Aye, such was the way of it. Handfasted for over a year, a wee bairn already growing to seal their union.
They’ll wed.
The Highlands ne’er saw a pair more in love…
“Ne’er saw a pair more in love,” Isolde repeated the words to herself as, many hours later, she slipped from Donall’s slumbering arms. She climbed down from her great four-poster and went to peer out her bedchamber’s opened windows.
A soft, mist-hung morning greeted her, the quiet stretching from Doon’s sea-kissed shore to the distant MacKinnons’ Isle.
Grateful for her blessings, she rested her hands on the stone window ledge and watched pale gray-pink light tinge the eastern horizon. The new day’s sunrise set MacKinnons’ Isle aglow, and for once, she didn’t shudder to gaze upon it.
The island had lost its menace now that it no longer stood between her and her beloved, a damning symbol of his guilt – or so she’d thought.
At last, the truth was known. And looking at the isle now made her smile. But not nearly as much as thinking about the things she and the MacLean had done in the night, after slipping away from the hall.
She also thought about the things he did to her heart. And the babe she hoped would soon quicken and thrive inside her. Smoothing her hand down her flat abdomen, she felt her smile deepen.
Hoped that dream, too, would soon come true.
“Ne’er saw a pair more in love,” she said again, the words caught and carried off by the sea wind.
But they were no less true, no less powerful, no matter where the wind took them. She held the knowledge in her heart and that was enough.
“So, sweeting…” came a soft, deep voice behind her. “If you finally know how much I love you, I would know again if you will truly have me?”
Isolde turned to face him. She half expected him to be lounging against the bedpost, his arms crossed, and one of his slow, melt-her-bones smiles spreading across his handsome face.
But he surprised her.
He knelt on one knee in the center of her bedchamber, his arms extended as he looked at her.
“What are you doing?” She clasped a hand to her breast, her heart thundering.
“You cannae guess?”
“I’d hear the words,” she said, her eyes filling already.
“Ah, well.” He cleared his throat. “Will you be my lady wife? Make an honest man of me after I’ve made my claim on you before your crowded hall and the half the men in these isles?”
“Mercy, I…” She dashed at her cheek, her throat too thick for words.
“Nae mercy, lass.” He shook his head. “Be warned, I shall remain on bended knee until you answer.”
His smile flashed. “And it must be the answer I desire. I’ll accept no other.”
Her heart melting, she came forward and took his hands. Tilting her head, she pretended to consider. “What if I have a condition?”
“Name it.”
“I want kisses.” She held his gaze, daring him to laugh. “Knight’s kisses.”
“You wish to be kissed as a knight kisses?”
“I do.”
He chuckled. “That, sweeting, can be arranged,” he said, and stood.
Coming forward, he took her by the shoulders. “You shall have as many knightly kisses as you desire,” he promised, leaning forward to place a light one on her freckle.
“I shall rain them on you every night for the rest of our lives,” he said, drawing her close. “Every conceivable kind of them.”
Then he took her hand and led her back to their bed, eager to prove the truth of his words.