CHAPTER 36
Rory’s back ached from sleeping on a bench. Before the other men sleeping in the hall awoke, Rory rose silently and again climbed the stairs to their bedchamber. He prayed that after a night’s rest, Sybil would be less angry. With his heart in his throat, he rapped lightly on the door. Sybil did not answer.
He did not want to wake her, but he longed just to see her, to watch her in her sleep.
When he eased the door open, the room was empty, the bed not slept in. He stepped inside and turned slowly. Her shoes, which she usually left beside the bed, were gone, as was her cloak from the peg by the door.
His heart stopped in his chest. She’d left him.
God help him, was she out there alone? It was not safe for her to leave the castle. Sybil did not know these lands, had no kin or friends to give her help or protection. Yet she had wanted to be away from him so badly that she had gone anyway.
He ran down the steps, crossed the hall filled with snoring MacKenzies and Grants, and hurried to the stables.
“Have ye seen my wife?” he asked the stable lad.
“The lady asked me to saddle a horse for her,” the lad said. “She said you’d follow her soon and that it was a game ye were playing.”
A game? “When was this?”
“Too early for riding, if ye ask me,” he said. “Sky held no more than a hint of dawn.”
Rory saddled and mounted Curan and headed to the gate, where he learned she’d used the same ruse to persuade the guards to open the gate. Ach, that lass could persuade a river to flow upstream if she set her mind to it.
“Lady Sybil told us she was not going far, and that the laird”—the guard paused and waggled his eyebrows—“would know where to find her.”
Rory closed his eyes. Without actually saying so, Sybil had managed to convince the guards that he and his bride were meeting for an outdoor tryst. If he found her quickly, no one would be the wiser.
“That wife of yours had such a fetching way about her when she said, Don’t spoil our fun.” The older guard tilted his head and batted his eyelashes in a ridiculous imitation. “Ach, brought back sweet memories from when the wife and I were newlyweds.”
Christ above. “How long ago did she leave?”
“The sky was glowing pink with the coming dawn,” the older guard said.
The guard was a damned poet. Rory clenched his jaw to keep from shouting.
“In truth, we didn’t expect ye to keep her waiting.”
“How long has it been?” Rory asked.
“An hour, perhaps more,” the other guard said.
Rory stifled a curse. Sybil was a skilled rider, and she had a good lead on him.
“Keep our secret,” Rory said, and winked. “Not a word of this to anyone.”
He spurred his horse and galloped out the gate. Please, God, keep her safe until I find her. Wherever she was and however far she’d gone, he would find her. He had no notion how he would persuade her to come back with him once he did, but one way or another, he would bring her home.
Now that he had driven her away, he knew in his heart the only truth that mattered.
Sybil belonged with him.
When Rory came to the river, the trail split in opposite directions. Ignoring the branch that followed the river inland, he turned Curan east toward the sea, where Sybil could seek a boat to carry her away.
He had ridden no more than a half-mile from the castle when he saw her sitting on a rock by the river with her back to him and her horse grazing nearby. She appeared in no hurry.
Since she did not look as if she had taken a fall and injured herself, Rory dismounted and approached her quietly through the tall grass. He did not want to spook her. Sweat glistened on the horse’s back. She had ridden him hard and farther from the castle, but something had made her turn around. He hoped it was him.
When she looked over her shoulder and saw him, she did not seem surprised. He sat down beside her, careful not to touch her. He felt as if she had a protective layer around her that he should not attempt to breach, at least not yet.
“I was five miles down the trail,” she said, staring at the river. “Ye would never have caught me.”
He did not argue the point, though he most definitely would have found her and brought her home.
“I’m grateful ye decided to turn around.”
“I didn’t do it for you,” she said. “I did it for the boy.”
The boy? It took him a long moment to realize she meant the Grant lad.
“I remembered my promise that I would be his friend and mind his back among you MacKenzies,” she said. “So I couldn’t leave yet.”
Yet. The word hit him like a punch in the gut. The fact that she had no place she could go was no comfort.
“Let me explain,” he said.
“’Tis a bit late for that, don’t ye think?” she said. “I believe I understand all I need to know.”
“Ye don’t.”
“Ye have a son, ye refused to wed his mother,” she said, ticking her points off with her fingers, “and now that the poor lass is dead, her family expected ye to make things right through a marriage to her sister.”
“It sounds far worse than it is,” he said. “There’s more to the story, if you’ll only listen.”
“Oh, aye, there’s more,” she said. “I forgot to add that all the while ye were seducing innocent young lasses, ye believed ye were bound to wed me!”
Now she was being ridiculous, but he had the sense to bite his tongue. No man was expected to abstain before the marriage contract was consummated.
“Whether ye listen or no,” he said, “I’m going to tell ye what happened.”
“I can’t stop ye.”
“A few months before we fought at Flodden and I was taken prisoner, my father hosted a gathering of Highland chieftains,” Rory began his tale. “Grant brought his family, including his eldest daughter. I didn’t know at the time that Hector had an eye for the lass and had asked my father to negotiate a marriage between them during the gathering.”
Sybil folded her arms and turned her face away. Still, he knew she was listening.
“The lass was seventeen, beautiful and headstrong. As best I can guess, thinking about it afterward, she met Hector and decided to thwart the marriage plan.”
***
“She wished to wed you instead of Hector?” Sybil’s curiosity got the better of her, and the question slipped out.
“She didn’t wish to wed me,” he said. “She only wanted to use me to ruin the marriage arrangement with Hector.”
“What do ye mean by that?”
“Even as a bairn, I knew Hector had a deep grudge against me, but he kept it well hidden from everyone else while my father was alive,” he said. “Grant’s daughter was an astute and determined lass, and I believe she saw it.”
Despite herself, the thought of Rory as a child being the focus of his uncle’s hatred tugged at her heart. She would not, however, let sympathy for the boy he once was excuse how he had hurt and humiliated her.
“So she forced ye against your will, did she?” Sybil said, letting her voice drip with sarcasm.
“I was fifteen and not likely to say nay when a lass that beautiful told me to meet her in a storage room in the undercroft. I thought she meant for us to steal a few kisses,” Rory said. “I won’t say I was blameless, but when things moved quickly beyond kisses, my wits lagged behind.”
Sybil narrowed her eyes at him. “But it wasn’t just the one time ye met her, was it?”
Rory gave her a how-in-the-hell-did-you-know look and heaved a sigh. “Every time the lass crooked her finger, I went to meet her.”
Of course he did. “I take it her plan to avoid marrying Hector succeeded.”
“She told Hector she’d given her virginity to me,” Rory said. “That was a lie, but all Hector needed to hear was that I’d had her first.”
“What I don’t understand,” she said, “is why your fathers didn’t force you and the lass to wed.”
“She said that if I told anyone we’d been together, she’d deny it,” Rory said. “She told me she would never have me for a husband. Though I was not keen on marrying her either, the lass was so adamantly against it that she slashed my pride.”
“But Hector must have told.”
“Nay,” Rory said, shaking his head. “It would have shamed him to have everyone know that the lass he wished to wed had gone to bed with me. He and I knew, and that was bad enough. It was one more reason for him to hate me.”
“And you told no one either?”
“That would have ruined the lass’s reputation,” he said. “I assumed she planned to pretend to be a virgin when she did wed.”
“If no one told, then what broke off the marriage negotiations?”
“Hector didn’t say it was me, but he advised the two chieftains that the lass had been with other men,” Rory said. “The chieftains gave out the story that the pair was unsuited, which was true so far as it went. I thought that was the end of it.”
“Three months later, I left with the MacKenzie warriors to fight the English. As ye know, I was injured in the Battle of Flodden and held prisoner. Sometime after I returned, I heard that Grant’s daughter was with child and refused to name the father. There were whispers that the lass said she had been with too many men to remember.”
“Do ye believe that?”
“I did at the time,” Rory said. “I was too inexperienced to see the anger beneath her laughter and flirtation. Now I suspect there was a man she wanted to marry but could not. Perhaps he was someone her father did not deem important enough for a chieftain’s daughter.”
“If she refused to name you, how does her family know you’re the father?” Sybil asked.
“They don’t know I am,” Rory said. “She died of a fever a few months ago. The Grant chieftain claims she confessed on her deathbed that the child is mine.”
“Ye did bed her.” Every time she crooked her finger.
“Aye, and if she had told me the child was mine, I would have accepted it as my duty to claim the lad whether I believed her or no,” he said. “But years later, when her family attempts to dupe me by concocting this story of her deathbed confession? Nay. I cannot accept that.”
Sybil did not speak another word on the ride back to the castle or as they walked from the stable to the keep. She ignored the curious looks as they crossed the hall and continued up the stairs to their chamber in silence. He shut the door and still she did not speak.
“Now that I’ve explained it all,” he said, “do ye understand why I didn’t tell you?”
“I do,” she said. “Ye didn’t trust me. Ye still don’t. And ye used me to avoid marrying Grant’s other daughter.”
“I didn’t want to marry her, but that is not why I came for you.”
“You berated me and broke my heart because of what I didn’t tell you,” she said. “All the while, you were keeping all this from me—the boy, the marriage negotiations, the would-be bride.”
He felt like shite for hurting her. He reached for her, but she slapped his hands away.
“I should have told you,” he said.
“Aye, ye should have, instead of making a fool of me in front of the entire clan.”
“We each had our secrets. I promise I’ll not keep things from ye again. From here forward, I want us to be honest with each other.”
“All right, then, I’ll be honest.” She planted her hand on her hip and poked his chest. “I believe that boy is your son. And you’ve no cause to deny him because his mother wouldn’t have ye.”