Dare to Love a Scot Page 13

  She nodded. “I see…” She took a deep breath, letting his words seep in. Adam was in love with a man. She’d heard of such a thing; there were always whispers in ball rooms, but Prim would never have suspected it. She was simply too sheltered to notice something like that. She shook her wits into place. It didn’t matter to her. It didn’t change the fact that Adam was a caring friend, and right now, the only one who could help her on the worst day of her life. Her heart pounded, her thoughts chaotic. “I’ll keep your secret, and you’ll keep mine,” she said at last.

  He was willing to protect her, and it was only right that she do the same for him.

  “It sounds terrible when put that way.”

  “It is terrible,” she replied. “Neither of us can marry the person we truly want. But it will be bearable. With you, it will be bearable, and I know I won’t have to lie to you about my child or my deeper feelings.”

  “And I won’t have to lie to you about Martin.”

  “No.” Prim took a shaky breath. “And I won’t ask you to give him up, either. We can be discreet and spend most of our time away from Society. I don’t feel like returning at all, but for the sake of our families, and their standing, we should appear in town occasionally.”

  “I really do love to travel. Would you like a change of scenery?”

  Prim thought about it. From this point on, she didn’t really care what happened, or where she was. She shrugged. “I suppose it would be nice.”

  He kissed her cheek, surprising her. “I may not be the brawny Scotsman of your heart, but I am your friend, and I will do whatever I have to do to see you happy again.”

  At that, Prim cried. She had no idea if she was making a huge mistake by agreeing to marry Adam in such haste, but she didn’t know what else to do. Her sadness was too heavy to carry on her own. Her sisters had their own lives to live, and she couldn’t stand to burden them with her miserable circumstances. But Adam understood. He was hiding just as much as she was, and together they could withstand it all.

  Or so she hoped.

  Chapter 16

  Lachy drove past the cottage but didn’t stop to see if Mr. Wilson was settling into his new home with his family. His eyes burned as he stared unblinkingly between Bethany’s ears. His breathing was ragged, and his heart was pounding. His palms were sweating into the tartan neckerchief he fisted in one hand. With the other, he held the leather of the reins in his white-knuckle grip. He couldn’t think when his head was filled with an endless roar of pain, and yet on the outside, he was silent, his lips clamped shut.

  She’d had it all this time?

  He thought he’d lost it that day on the road to Aberdeen, when he’d undressed for her. How long ago that seemed now, and how absurdly ridiculous that he’d done that, testing her—and himself.

  They’d both failed to resist each other.

  He hadn’t felt this sort of helpless rage since the surgeon had told him they would take his leg in the morning, or he’d die. All night he’d stayed awake, cursing God, cursing the damn English for starting this bloody war, cursing himself for replaying the scene of the battlefield in his head over and over, torturing himself.

  But on this day, there was no bloodied vision of bodies and cannon smoke. Instead, it was Prim’s face that filled his mind, and the endless bellow in his head drowned out her words, but he still remembered what she’d said as if the words themselves had been carved into his heart.

  “Perhaps I will marry Adam.”

  Perhaps was such a casual word. Perhaps I’ll have jam with my toast, or perhaps I’ll take the south road for the scenery. Perhaps I’ll rip your heart out and stomp on it, too.

  Lachy’s breathing quickened.

  The word perhaps was now a bullet ripping through him. It burned, and with every beat, he didn’t know which would be his last. But that was the scary thing about heartache. One didn’t die immediately. It was a slow, destructive death. He knew that now. It had taken his father many years to die after his mother had passed. Lachy had never known it was because of love that his father had turned into such a waste of a man, that losing the woman one loved could be so defeating to a man’s soul.

  He now knew far more about his parents, his family, and the English extension of it, than he would have ever known had he not begun this search. He pressed his eyes closed for a moment, the rage growing inside him, and then he opened them and took a deep breath.

  “Unlike you, I know who he is. I know I can trust him.”

  Prim’s words came back to him like cannon fire, jarring the thoughts inside his head. She was right. He hadn’t known himself at all. It was only now that he knew the full extent of his father and grandfather’s past. What they’d done, and why.

  And he would tell his clansmen how love had been their final downfall. They had all lost so much more than stone blocks. It had torn them apart from the very top. And there wasn’t anything Lachy could do about it, because he was not a man of endless means. There wasn’t enough money in the world that would convince a court of law to take property from a duke no matter how ill-gotten said property was.

  A duke was a duke, and he was only a common man.

  The only solution was to build his clan from the ground up again. A new castle right there in the village, on land that still belonged to him. He needed new purpose to lead his people back to their former greatness.

  But it all seemed impossible, or maybe just more difficult than he presently had the ability to achieve. Above all else, he just wanted to sleep, to close his eyes and not hear Prim’s words or the bellow of pain inside him. A reprieve from all pain for a short while, and then he’d get up and start all over again.

  Is there a sleep deep enough to achieve that, short of death?

  Then the village came into view, and Lachy straightened.

  The time had come to step into his father’s and grandfather’s shoes. It was the least he could do. The clan might never forgive him for the past deeds of his grandfather, but they would accept his apology and his leadership—Lachy hoped.

  Tonight would be a meeting unlike any other, a new beginning for the Dennehy Clan. They would return to some old traditions, and begin new ones. All he had to do was convince them to let go of their long-held anger and move on, something these men hadn’t wanted to do since before he was born. But Lachy had hope that with this new information his lawyer had discovered, they could be persuaded to do so.

  He drove his cart through the village and around the back of the house where his uncle lived. Clouds covered the sun, making the day appear later than it was as Lachy unhitched Bethany and set her up in the lean-to beside the old timber cottage he used to live in before beginning his work at the dairy.

  His uncle had made sure his displeasure about Lachy’s decisions were known every chance he got. He never understood why his nephew had gone to war, or why he’d chosen to work with the duke.

  Lachy snorted as he rubbed Bethany down.

  Perhaps he understood his uncle’s disdain for the English a bit better now. They’d come and taken so much from him, seemingly so easily. But he wondered if his uncle knew the true reason, the risk to his brother, and the connection they had to the duke.

  It still made Lachy a bit light-headed to think of it.

  Cousins.

  All of his life, he’d never had a sibling or cousins. He’d made friends with the other clan boys, but after his grandfather, his mother, and then his father died, his only family had been his uncle. And all this time, living in the castle he’d not known was supposed to be Lachy’s home, the duke had lived, a sickly little boy at first, but now a grown man.

  Lachy stood frozen in the entry of the lean-to and stared at the ramshackle house he’d grown up in. It wasn’t the laird’s home this clan deserved. They had burned that to the ground after his mother had died, and taken up this place, a musty cottage with a sagging roof. As a boy, it hadn’t seemed so bad, but he’d been in a haze of anger after his mother had died, fueled
by his father’s drunken grief. There was so much going on then, that he hadn’t realized there was a whole dark history regarding his parents that he’d never been aware of.

  The ache of longing his father must have endured… Lachy now understood that: the anger, the hate for what couldn’t be. The long future ahead, that seemed bleak in comparison to what one had once had.

  His father had buried it all under his drinking, but Lachy finally understood him for the first time.

  He sucked in a breath, even though he wasn’t going to voice the words.

  I love Prim.

  He could recall the smell of her hair as easily as he drew breath, the sound of her voice as she sighed in his ear. He loved her, but he couldn’t have her. Not at the continued cost to his clan and his pride.

  The sky rumbled above him, and Lachy forced himself to move into the cottage. He couldn’t dwell on his feelings for Prim, or the depth of hers. He looked down at the bit of tartan in his hand, and then stuffed it in his pocket. His people depended on him, and that meant he didn’t have time to mourn what could never be. And he wouldn’t regret it, either. They’d had their fill, but now they had to accept their different fates. She was destined to be a lord’s wife, and he would be the laird his clan needed.

  Their two paths would likely never cross again.

  The cottage was empty when Lachy investigated its sparse rooms. His uncle was likely having his meal at the tavern. Lachy decided he may as well go there and start to gather the men. At dusk, they would meet in the old smithy again.

  He took a meal at the tavern and enlisted the help of Mr. Wilson—who Lachy found having a game of chess with his father—and old Shamus to spread the word about the official clan meeting happening tonight. There was a bounce in Shamus’s step as he gave Lachy a toothless grin and set about his task. Murmurs grew louder as the word spread around the tavern.

  Excitement, Lachy would call it. The clan was going to be reinvigorated by this meeting. Their hope would be renewed.

  Close to dusk, Mr. Wilson returned with his eldest son at his side. Lachy took notice of the boy’s excited air. Three generations of Wilsons would attend this meeting tonight, something that hadn’t happened since Lachy was a babe himself.

  It gave him hope, and a small bit of peace. He was doing the right thing. Already he’d brought families back together, and now there would be more. New generations of Wilsons, Stewarts, and O’Brians. There would be children playing on the green, new little babes bouncing on their mother’s hips as they walked the shops along the street. His clansmen would slowly see their families return, and grow on their homeland once more.

  Lachy looked out over the room. But who will come after me?

  His heart sputtered to a pause, his chest echoing with a raw hunger for the future he would not have.

  He’d lain with Prim with the hope of starting a family with her. He’d loved her as if he’d had the right to keep her, and to see her carry his child. But it was not to be. And for the life of him, he couldn’t even bear to think of another woman taking that place. The Dennehy lineage might well die with him. In that case, he’d choose a new family to succeed him as laird. Perhaps it was destined to be that way, cursed as the Dennehy men had been with love.

  Lachy pushed away from the bar and stumbled out of the tavern, seeking refuge in the empty alley along the side, where a skinny dog licked at an empty bowl. He braced his hands on his knees, his heart pounding.

  She was going to marry Peverel and have his children. That single thought tore through him like a cannon ball, decimating his insides, shattering his tightly restrained pain.

  “What you doing there, boy? Something turning your stomach? You afraid to speak to the lot of us?”

  Lachy shook his head as Shamus came into the alley and placed a hand on his back.

  “I just…needed to catch my breath. I’m fine.”

  “Looks more like regret, now that I see you up close.”

  Lachy pinched his eyes closed for a second and then stood, his head woozy, but his legs holding him as he met Shamus’s gaze.

  Regret.

  Goddamn it, he would forever regret everything he’d done to push Prim back into the arms of Lord Peverel.

  That was it. This stone sitting inside his heart was regret. He’d made a huge mistake in letting Prim go, and all the lies he’d told himself to deny it rapidly fell away as he held Shamus’s stare. They’d had everything together, and then he’d let jealousy and pride come between them. As if she could be so heartless and run back to her fiancé, after giving herself to him. She was an innocent. She’d worn her heart on her sleeve from the moment she’d met him.

  How could I blame her for what the Earl of Cassel had done?

  “What is a man to do, when the thing he wants most he canna have?”

  “What man hasn’t wanted something enough to just take it?” Shamus replied.

  Lachy blinked. “Take it? ’Tis not that easy.”

  “Nothin’ ever is. But that doesn’t stop most men. If it’s really that important to you, what could stop you? Come now, the lads are waiting, and they haven’t been this riled since the Granny Mary Stewart got herself good and knackered and rode naked through the village.”

  Lachy winced at the memory. “Don’t remind me.”

  “Then what’s your trouble, lad?”

  Lachy couldn’t tell Shamus he’d fallen in love with Prim Everly. The clansman would laugh him out of the village. Not again, they’d think. Or perhaps not. Because he was certain they didn’t know that the real reason they’d lost their castle to the earl was because of Lachy’s mother.

  His pulse was now steady, and his head had cleared. For the moment, he could lock his feelings for Prim inside himself. He couldn’t do to the clan what his father had done. He wasn’t going to put love before his clan, and doom them all to poverty.

  “Never mind me troubles. It’s time to speak to the clan, and tell them the truth about what happened long ago.”

  Shamus raised a brow. “If you’re sure?”

  Did he already know? Shamus probably knew everything about everyone.

  “I’m sure,” Lachy replied with a heavy sigh. “I can’t move this clan forward without closing the door on the past. I’m certain of that.”

  Shamus nodded, and they walked into the smithy together. When they entered, the room quieted, and stares followed Lachy as he moved to the head of the room and faced them. Benches and chairs had been gathered, and weathered faces with expressions of hope turned to him in expectation. There were more men here than the last time he’d addressed them, which was good. It was a sign that they were willing to hear him, to let him lead them. Before him was proof that some clansmen had already returned from the larger towns, hoping to be united again.

  “I’m happy to see you gathered here tonight, to listen to the tale I’ve only just now learned about. As you may have heard, I’ve been gone these past two weeks to discover more about the taking of the castle, and I’m now going to relate that information. Like me, you may find it wasn’t what you thought. There were many things hidden from us.”

  A few nods of understanding answered him, and the rest waited patiently.

  “Me lawyer discovered that in the original contract with the Earl of Cassel, the Castle Dennehy was not sold, but leased.”

  A few shouts of outrage answered this, but Lachy put up his hand, and they quieted.

  “I was encouraged by this news meself, because I thought that perhaps the illegal sale to the duke could be overturned somehow. But as my lawyer predicted, no court of law will entertain the idea of taking a castle from a duke, no matter how illegal the sale might have been.”

  A larger wave of shouts rang out this time, and it took a long moment before Lachy and Shamus could get everyone quiet again.

  “The news is disheartening, I know. But there is more.”

  “Aye, that there is,” his uncle said, moving from the back of the room to the front.

>   Lachy watched him for a moment. “Uncle? Would you like to speak, given the knowledge you apparently have?”

  “You can tell it, Laird Dennehy,” his uncle replied, and then spat in the dirt.

  Lachy glared at him. “I’m guessing this is the source of all your bitter animosity toward me and the duke. Couldn’t you have told me yourself?”

  “Shamus made me swear.”

  Lachy turned to the older man in disbelief. “So, you knew, as well?”

  “I knew all your grandfather’s secrets, boy. He was me best friend.”

  Lachy ground his teeth together and faced his clansmen. Damn these old men and their secrets.

  For all his life, he should have known this information, but instead he’d had to find it all out in the worst way, and lose Prim in the process.

  “As Shamus and me uncle have been unwilling to tell all of you, me grandfather leased the castle to the Earl of Cassel to gain funds for the village. But then me father fell in love with me mother, the earl’s ward. Not only was she his ward, but his bastard child. He’d been hiding his mistress and child in the castle, away from his countess and family. When me mother and father came to him, the earl refused their marriage, stating he would have me father hanged for defiling his daughter unless me grandfather signed over the castle completely—which he did.”

  Men shot to their feet at this, shouting curses and other things lost in the sheer noise.

  “Settle down, you mangy mutts!” Shamus shouted over them. “What would you have done? Seen our own hang for a pile of stone?”

  “Yes,” Lachy’s uncle said. “That pile of stone was me legacy, too. Me home. But da threw it all away so me brother could marry that little tart.”

  Lachy lurched for him, but Shamus and Mr. Wilson caught him before he could reach his uncle.

  “That is me mother you’re talking about,” Lachy growled.

  “Enough!” Shamus bellowed. “Out wit you, Bruce. You were never laird, and you were never gonna be. Lachy is the laird now, and I’ll not see you disrespect him.”