Chapter Thirty #2
Strachan looked him up and down and narrowed his eyes. ‘Cullen?’
‘Aye. This is Cullen Macaulay,’ said Lowri.
‘A Macaulay?’ Peyton Strachan’s face turned thunderous, eyes as hard as tacks. ‘What does he have to do with us?’
‘He is my husband,’ said Lowri.
‘The hell, he is,’ snarled Strachan, his hand going to his dirk. ‘Did that snake Griffin Macaulay have something to do with this?’
Cullen faced down Strachan’s fierce stare. ‘Lowri is my wife before the law and God. And aye, this marriage is my father’s doing.’
‘That bastard. Did he force you into this, Lowri?’ snarled Peyton, his face a mask of disgust.
‘Only at first,’ laughed Lowri, with a smile in Cullen’s direction, which he loved her for.
Strachan did not find that amusing. He glanced from one of them to the other and said, ‘Well, you need not be married for long.’
‘Do your worst, but you’ll not take her from me,’ growled Cullen, stepping chest to chest with Strachan.
‘I’ll make her a widow, and be done with it.’
‘Peyton! Stop!’ cried the lovely Cecily. ‘For heaven’s sake, hear them out before you go blundering in. We can all go to the hall and talk and eat. Let us calm our tempers.’
Strachan’s jaw worked, and he did not seem calmed, though he stepped back a pace, and so did Cullen.
‘Let us go and talk then,’ said Peyton with a glare.
Cullen ignored him and turned to Cecily. ‘I thank you, Mistress, for your hospitality, but I must go. I trust I can leave Lowri in your care until I return.’
‘Her care!’ bellowed Peyton. ‘Lowri is my sister, my own blood, and is nought to do with you.’
‘Peyton, stop,’ said Lowri, getting between them. ‘Please calm down and let me explain.’
Strachan shook his head. ‘You can’t have married a Macaulay. Why would you do that to me?’
‘I did nothing to you. I simply got myself in trouble, as I always do, and Cullen got me out of it. I am his wife now, and very happy about it, and if you try to hurt one hair on his head, I will never see or speak to you again.’
That wounded Strachan. His face took on a bewildered frown. ‘But the Macaulays are rats. They raid, connive and steal on our lands. Griffin Macaulay is my sworn enemy and a plague on Clan Strachan. Where is your loyalty, sister?’
She put a hand to her stomach. ‘It lies with my husband, and the bairn we have coming, first and foremost.’
‘Bairn?’
‘Aye. I am carrying Cullen’s child, but you must know that I will always be loyal to you, Peyton, and if you love me, you will hear me out and not make me choose between two men that I love.’ Lowri crossed her arms and faced her brother down. But she should not have to.
Cullen put his arm around Lowri’s shoulders. It was as much a declaration of ownership as it was of comfort. He narrowed his eyes at Strachan. It’s not as if backing down would do him any good. ‘I will not force Lowri to choose between us. She may do as she pleases.’
‘She always has,’ snapped Strachan, rolling his eyes.
‘Then it is best that I leave you to talk it out. There is no forcing from me, you may be assured of that.’
‘But I choose you!’ cried Lowri.
‘Aye, but you must reconcile with your family and explain how we came to be married. I should not be here for that. And you know that I have to go.’
‘Go where?’ snarled Peyton.
Cullen ignored the man, for it was clear there was no reasoning with him at present. He bowed to Cecily. She gave him a sweet, bemused smile in return.
Cullen walked towards the gates in a fury.
Strachan had insulted him to his face, and Cullen was prepared to take it, given the circumstances.
After all, his family had as good as kidnapped Lowri.
But there was a pit of dread in his gut.
What if Lowri wanted to stay at Fellscarp and never go with him again?
Her family clearly loved her, and her brother would forgive her anything, which might account for her reckless, wilful character.
‘Cullen!’
Lowri rushed to him and flung her arms around his neck. ‘Please don’t go. Peyton will calm down. He is all bluster.’
‘There is murder in his eyes. He will never accept this.’
‘He will, and if he does not, it is you and me, always, Cullen. Just you and me, and no one else matters.
Cullen stared at Lowri, drinking in every scrap of her wild beauty.
He might never see her again if it went against him at Scarcross.
The thought was a gut punch and stole his words from his throat.
So, instead of goodbye, he kissed Lowri like his life depended on it and rushed away, so that he wouldn’t have to see the tears streaking her cheeks and feel his heart break into a thousand pieces.
***
Peyton’s face was stern in the firelight, all hard edges and a grim set to his jaw.
He was seething inside, she knew it. Cecily had wisely left them to it, after much fussing, with orders to Peyton to hold his temper and hear Lowri out.
Dusk was falling outside the windows. Cullen would be at Scarcross by now, facing God knows what.
‘This is a fine mess, isn’t it?’
When her brother spoke into the silence, Lowri did not recognise the flinty edge to his voice.
She had indulged in all kinds of folly, but she had never been on the receiving end of Peyton’s all-out wrath before.
In her absence, he seemed to have taken on the mantle of Laird Strachan, and he now had the command and presence of one who men obey without question. Not so his errant sister.
‘Are you going to sulk at the fire all night?’ she said.
He glared. ‘What do you expect – joy, celebrations, a wedding feast. You went off with a Macaulay without so much as a by-your-leave. I thought you were dead. Can you understand how agonising that was for me, for all of us?’
Suddenly, recounting all the highs and lows of her adventures seemed a daunting task. How could she ever explain falling head over heels for an enemy? How to make her brother understand that forcing had turned into loving?
‘Peyton. I never meant to hurt you. But how I came to be with a Macaulay is a long story.’
‘I have all night, so tell it, Lowri. Tell me what I did to deserve such disdain.’
Lowri took a deep breath and told her brother the bare truth.
It was mortifying, but she left nothing out – not her foolish plan to reive against his orders, her degrading imprisonment, her fear that she would dangle at the end of a noose.
She haltingly recounted her forced marriage and the arrangement she entered to save her friends.
But she had to stop momentarily when she reached the part of the tale where Donnan revealed himself a traitor, because Peyton’s hands clenched into fists so hard that his knuckles turned white.
Lowri decided it was best to leave out the part about Butcher and Briony and the danger they had posed.
That would keep until another time. She was allowed some secrets, as Peyton had kept his in the past.
‘I am sorry, I caused you grief,’ she said. ‘It was not intentional. I got mixed up in folly and paid a terrible price. But it brought me to a good place.’
‘And how is that?’
‘Peyton, there is much more to tell, but not tonight. I am tired.’
‘Am I ever to hear it?
‘In time, I will tell you everything. But for now, can you just know that I am happy and married, and you cannot hate the Macaulays, not with a bairn coming.’
‘Aye, that makes it final, doesn’t it?’ Peyton’s face soured. ‘If you are so happy, why did you look at your husband as if he terrified you?’
‘I am not terrified of him, but for him.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he has gone to Scarcross to challenge his brother for the lairdship of Clan Macaulay. It will end with one of them dead.’
Peyton considered this for a while, then he said, ‘Ah, well, rats often eat their own kind. And if that Cullen of yours triumphs and comes back a laird, then he will think he owns you. He will be beating down my door to claim his bride and the bairn in her belly.’
‘And when he does, I will go with him.’
‘Why? You have my protection, and he has no hold over you. Your marriage was forced under a lie, so you can abandon it.’
‘I can’t, because I love him, Peyton. I love Cullen Macaulay, and years of enmity and feuding will not change it.’
Peyton suddenly burst into laughter. ‘Damn that rat, Griffin Macaulay. His scheme to get revenge has borne more fruit than he ever could have hoped. Not only did he get a Strachan to marry a Macaulay, but now you have a bairn in your belly, and you are hopelessly in love with that rat’s son.
And love it is, for I could see it on your face when you looked at him.
In that moment, I knew I had lost you all over again, sister. ’
Lowri fell at his feet and clutched his hands. They were calloused from all the fighting for his clan.
‘Stop being a fool, Lowri, and get up,’ he snarled.
‘No. You are my brother, my blood, and you will never lose me. You will just have to get used to having the Macaulays as allies again.’
‘Only if Cullen triumphs over his brother. If not, I will go to war with Griffin Macaulay, and I will get vengeance for what he has done to you.’
‘Peyton, this is my battle to fight.’
‘No. This cannot go unchallenged, Lowri. I am Laird of Clan Strachan, and any attack on my blood must be met with blood.’
Peyton rose and left Lowri alone before the fireplace.
She stared into the flames for the longest time, but she could not settle, nor sleep, if she went to her chamber, for she was too fraught with worry.
Lowri made her way down to the edge of the estuary, wrapping her shawl about her as the biting wind tightened her skin on her scalp and took her breath away.
She had often come out at the edge of the water to order her thoughts and get away from others. This time, she was not alone. She crunched over the shingle to Cecily.
‘Peyton was crushed when you disappeared,’ she said, staring across the water.
‘I have begged his forgiveness, Cecily, and he has given it.’
Cecily turned angry eyes to her. ‘What about mine? I missed you, too. I fretted as to your fate. Has some man hurt her, I thought? Is she lying in a ditch somewhere, mouldering away so that we never know her fate? Or did Lowri just run away to a new life, selfishly and cruelly leaving us hanging? It was awful, and I had to endure my husband being brought so low by your disappearance. It almost finished him.’
‘I was taken to Ireland against my will, Cecily.’
‘And the reiving of Macaulay cattle. Who forced you to do that?’
‘My foolish pride and arrogance. It was a mistake, and I own it. I have learned my lesson, Cecily.’
Cecily suddenly reached out a hand, took Lowri’s, and placed it on her belly. ‘Feel how he kicks, your nephew.’
It was strange, the quickening inside Cecily’s belly, as if some tiny person was knocking to be let out. Would she feel that too, with Cullen’s bairn?
‘He will need his aunt’s protection as well as his mother’s, Lowri. Are you going to leave us again? I only ask so that we can guard our hearts against it.’
‘No. I won’t leave again. I have a good reason to stay.’
‘Cullen Macaulay.’
‘Aye.’
‘Your man is beautiful, in a rough sort of way,’ said Cecily.
Lowri’s first thought was, ‘Don’t take him from me.
I know you could, looking the way you do.
’ But she bit her tongue and chided herself for her jealousy.
Cecily would never do that, but her unease was a testament to how much she loved Cullen.
God save her, he had to come back. If he died, what would become of her poor, crushed heart?
While she might be loved and cared for at Fellscarp, she could not bear to return to the restlessness and aching loneliness that had dogged her life thus far. Lowri bit back tears.
Cecily gave her a little smile. ‘Cullen looks strong and savage, like Peyton, like you. Not soft, like me. I am sure he will come back to you. And if he does not, you will go on, for the sake of your bairn, and you know you have the strength to do it, for you have Strachan blood.’
Cecily took Lowri’s hand in hers. It was soft and small, like a child’s, but, for some reason, it gave her strength.
And Lowri made a silent vow and swore to it on the stones of Fellscarp.
If Cullen fell, it would not be Peyton who would avenge him and rain hell down on the Macaulays. It would be her.