The whisky swam in Riona’s head as if she’d drunk it herself. The taste of it was in Hugh’s mouth and on his breath. With his hands holding her head to him, she had no choice but to accept the kiss—not that she could refuse. Just the touch of him, even drunk, was enough to reawaken her body to the pleasure they could share.
But this was dangerous, she knew. Little separated them from intercourse itself, certainly not ropes. If he decided to finish what they’d been working toward for weeks, she probably could not stop him. He rolled his hips up into hers, slowly, rhythmically, setting off the flutters she now knew would escalate into need.
She pressed against his shoulders and lifted her head. “Hugh, stop. If we’re leaving today, you need to sleep.”
His hands dropped to her hips and held her to him, changing the angle until the pressure against her was so full of sweet pleasure that her head dropped back and her eyes closed. There was only the wool of his plaid that separated them, and suddenly it didn’t seem like much. She saw the concentration on his face, the way he watched her, the way he wanted her. But when he reached for her breasts again, she used the moment to slide right off him where she practically sprawled onto the floor, her limbs momentarily too weak to carry her. Rising, she backed away, even as he came up on one elbow and reached a hand toward her.
“Riona, come back to me.”
“No.” She had to force herself not to laugh at the exaggerated sadness on his face. “Sleep, Hugh.”
With a groan he sank back, and soon enough, his snores filled the room.
That had been close, she thought, hugging herself with relief. Though she was happy with the decision, her body wasn’t, and it hummed with a state of arousal the whole time she was dressing for the day.
She spent several hours with Mrs. Wallace, learning what was involved in this kind of procession through the lands, including the ceremonial men who accompanied the chief. Riona wanted to understand all she could about the ways of Scotland, the country she’d long been denied. To her surprise, Maggie and her mother were both remaining behind, preferring to rest at the castle and await their return.
And then she thought about Brendan—should he be the groom who came along to help tend the horses? He and Hugh would spend more time together. To the marshal of horses, she implied that Hugh preferred having Brendan along, but in the end, by the time Hugh had awakened and come down to begin the journey at midday, the marshal asked his opinion about it anyway. She saw the marshal glance at her from across the courtyard, and then Hugh’s gaze narrowed as he studied her. She sighed. Brendan wouldn’t be coming, and she was going to hear about her decision to interfere. What did Hugh expect if he wouldn’t tell her the truth?
But they never had a private moment alone, what with ceremonial men who accompanied them: his bodyguard, the bard to compose and tell clan history, the piper to accompany him, the spokesman to vocalize Hugh’s messages, the quartermaster to arrange lodgings, the cup bearer who was supposed to taste the passed cup before Hugh, several ghillies to keep Hugh dry crossing a river or keep charge of his horse. Hugh seemed uncomfortable with the display of power, but Samuel explained to Riona that the clan expected their chief to behave like a prince. They journeyed west for several hours that day, to Alasdair’s home, a two-story stone mansion built far more recently than Larig Castle, near the far end of Loch Voil, with pasture and farmland spread through the glen, and mountains towering above either side. That evening, they were feasted and entertained, and Riona thought for certain Hugh had forgotten the incident about Brendan that morning, until, during the singing, he pulled her outside into the garden.
They were alone beneath a summer moon, and though she didn’t have a shawl or cloak, it wasn’t terribly cold. With the mansion at her back and the formal gardens around her, she could almost believe she was back in England.
Hugh walked at her side down the winding path, hands joined behind his back, his expression serious.
“This is a beautiful home,” she said to fill the tense silence.
“I don’t wish to discuss the house. I need to make clear why ye cannot behave as ye did this morn, telling the marshal who to include in our company.”
“You wouldn’t care if it hadn’t been Brendan,” she pointed out, coming to a stop and forcing him to face her. Torches lined the gravel path, and she could see his annoyed expression well enough. “Didn’t you just tell me that I had a place in your household as your future wife? I thought that meant I could make such decisions.”
She could see his jaw clench, but he made no answer.
“Hugh, you have to tell me the truth,” she said urgently. “Is he your son by Agnes, the girl you loved?”
“Nay, he’s not,” he finally said between gritted teeth.
She rolled her eyes. “Anyone with eyes can see he’s your son. People have been watching the two of you together.”
“Ye think I’m lying?” he demanded.
“You constantly accuse me of lying. Why should I believe you when I can see with my own eyes—”
“That he’s related to me?” he scoffed. “Of course he is. He’s my half brother, not my son.”
Riona’s mouth briefly sagged open. “What? Your brother?”
“My father raped Agnes.”
The sadness in his voice made Riona shiver at the horror of his words. “Raped?” she whispered, hugging herself.
He nodded solemnly. “My father felt like he was a king of old, that he should have rights to whatever woman he wanted. A clan chief should be a father to his people, not an aggressor. But though he felt entitled, he always chose village girls with no power against him,” he added bitterly. “Agnes wasn’t the first he’d abused, but she became pregnant.”
Everything she’d thought about Hugh when he was nineteen now rearranged itself in her head. “You weren’t in love with her?”
“Nay, but I felt responsible. I was back from Sheriffmuir; I felt like I was a man, and that as my father’s tanist, I should protect the weak. But I didn’t see what was happening, what he was doing to her. She worked in the kitchens, and sometimes I would see her weeding in the gardens. She was kind to me, concerned about my wound. We were friends.”
She put a hand on his arm. “Oh, Hugh . . .”
He shrugged her off. “I found her crying. She didn’t want to tell me what had happened, but I made her. In that moment, she was as frightened of me as of my father, and I hated him for it.”
His words seemed to ring through the air with power.
“I offered to marry her,” Hugh said at last. “I told my father to hell with the contract, that I was going to make this right.”
Riona briefly covered her mouth before whispering, “But he wouldn’t let you.”
“He laughed as he pointed out how trapped I was by the contract, that our clan would not only lose your dowry, but a land that was the source of our pride, the source of rare coin in the Highlands. I had to choose between Agnes and the clan.”
She wanted to hold him, to comfort him, but he stood as remote as a tall mountain in a range of hills. A wash of painful emotion swept over her, and she knew it was too late, that she’d fallen in love with this stubborn, noble man who’d always put his clan first, and had spent his life agonizing over something that wasn’t his fault. But loving him didn’t mean she would ever be able to marry him.
“Agnes wouldn’t have married me regardless,” he continued bitterly. “She didn’t want the clan to suffer for her. I made sure she had a new house in the village, promised her an annual sum for her and the child—but she died in childbirth, only knowing the shame, but never the joy of having a son.”
Riona’s eyes stung. “Brendan’s grandmother has taken loving care of him, Hugh. He’s a good boy.”
“But then why is working as a groom?” he demanded. “Why is he opening up himself to hurt and shame? He was never to know about our father—our father made sure to tell his grandmother she’d lose everything from us if she told Brendan the truth.”
“But he must have seen you, Hugh. He’s not stupid. He sees the resemblance and knows what people are saying. He doesn’t seem bitter, just curious. Sadly, in our world, many bastards know they can’t ever be a part of their true family.”
“I can’t keep myself distant—that would be worse. I have to make a decision about telling him the truth.”
She stopped herself from offering advice, knowing he could think through the ramifications himself. “Did your mother know?” she asked hesitantly.
His tone was grim as he said, “She knew.”
“How horrible to discover that your husband is capable of something like that. Why do you hold it against her?”
His brows lowered. “She spent no time with my father, and wouldn’t have suffered if she’d have spoken the truth.”
“That you didn’t impregnate a girl and leave her behind of your own volition?”
He brusquely nodded. “If we’d have gone against my father together, we could have explained everything. If she would have stood at my side instead of abandoning me, abandoning Agnes, things might have gone differently.”
“If it’s any consolation, she seems to deeply regret what happened.” She wished to say more, but knew there was no point. Hugh knew his mother hadn’t abused and abandoned the girl, but he could focus his anger on Lady McCallum as he’d never been able to with his father.
“Her conscience is full of guilt and I cannot absolve her of that,” he said. “She has to find her own peace.”
But Riona thought he’d never find his if he continued to blame his mother for her weakness.
OVER the next few days, Riona felt more like a consort’s wife than a chief’s betrothed. The chieftains and the gentlemen housed them in the same room as if the trial marriage were a real thing. During the day, Hugh held court, solving disputes at assemblies of the local people, even helping a newly widowed man find a wife. The law was in his hand, as was the sheriffship. He made fair rulings, and thank God, nothing was serious enough to be punishable by death. But even that was truly in his power.
People seemed intimidated before him, but later, when Hugh was distracted, she heard the rumblings of mistrust over his youthful transgressions, and of course the “bastard” that was now working in his stables.
She seldom had even a moment alone. The thought of fleeing sometimes seemed cowardly rather than an attempt to save herself. She needed to find a way to show the clan that when the contract fell apart, it was her uncle’s manipulation at fault, not Hugh. She hadn’t made the decision to abandon her escape plan lightly, but she couldn’t leave Hugh to suffer. It was a decision she could freely make, and she’d learned to appreciate in a small way the things she could control.
On their final day away, he took her to the sacred glen of his people, leaving behind their retinue and following a path that seemed to lead into the mountain itself. But the path turned, went through a woodland, and before her spread out a broad glen that seemed carved out of the mountain itself. On the far side, stalks of barley seemed to wrap around the next mountain. A wet bog oozed across the floor of the glen, tufts of grasses rising from watery ground. He motioned to her and they followed a path that meandered along the base of the mountain, until they reached a cleft where water bubbled and overflowed from high above.
“Drink it,” Hugh said. “’Tis the best, purest water in all of Scotland—in all of the world.”
She laughed and drank in her cupped hands, and the cold clarity of it was invigorating. “Delicious.”
He looked out upon his land with pride. “When the malt taxes were revived a few years ago, there were riots in Scotland because we could no longer brew ale cheaply. Whisky took its place, and to avoid the taxes, it mostly went hidden. We’re careful only to make a finite amount every year, and the Duffs went along with it, to conserve the water, peat, and barley necessary for distilling our whisky.”
“And that keeps the price high,” Riona said.
He grinned. “To keep what’s ours from the excisemen, I’ve heard of whisky being hidden beneath altars and within coffins. ’Tis that important to us.”
She took a deep, almost painful breath. The place was beautiful, bleak and forbidding, yet magical. She could see people in the distance, cutting deep bricks of peat and laying it across the ground to dry. Yet . . . the clan was close to losing it all, and there was nothing she could do.
But . . . she could do something to help Hugh, to bolster the respect of his people before things turned bad.
A Storm followed them home, and though the entire party arrived drenched, frantic clansmen met them in the courtyard and Hugh went off to help rescue trapped and drowning calves.
Riona wasn’t surprised. Hugh would do anything for his people. Admiration and sadness were twin flames inside her, but she had to keep moving, keep focusing on things she could control. She found Lady McCallum and Maggie sewing in the family’s withdrawing room late in the morning, and while lightning flashed and wind roared, she tried to keep Lady McCallum calm by telling them about the trip, the people she’d met, the Gaelic words Hugh had been teaching her.
But through it all, she thought about Hugh’s accusations against his mother, and she had to know more details. Dancing around the issue would take too much time, and Hugh could be home at any moment.
“Lady McCallum, I’ve been talking to Hugh about Agnes.”
Maggie’s head lifted from her sewing in surprise. Lady McCallum’s pale face grew even whiter. The older woman gazed helplessly at Riona as if needing her silence.
The whole family had all been silent too long.
“The groom you met—Brendan?” Riona said. “She was his mother.”
Maggie watched Riona cautiously. “The groom who looks like Hugh.”
“He’s not Hugh’s son,” Riona said. “Maggie, you know that Brendan is your brother. Hugh finally told me.”
Maggie winced and glanced at Lady McCallum with worry.
“Your mother already knows,” Riona explained. “Don’t you, my lady?”
Lady McCallum’s sewing dropped into her lap, and she put a trembling hand to her mouth.
“Mother—” Maggie began, then had to swallow. “Hugh told me never to speak of it, even to you. I’m so sorry that Father hurt ye this way.”
“He hurt all of you,” Riona said. “He let everyone believe Hugh was the boy’s father, yet when Hugh wanted to marry Agnes, your father forbade it, because of me—because of the contract,” she amended. Sometimes it seemed so real that she should be Hugh’s bride.
Maggie lifted both hands. “What else could Hugh have done? He couldn’t break the contract.”
“Of course not. And Hugh feels guilty enough about that. But does he also have to bear the sins of his father, who let the entire clan think his son fostered a bastard on an innocent young girl rather than admit that he himself had raped her?”
Lady McCallum gave a little scream at that horrible word. Even Maggie blanched.
“And it’s not ending,” Riona continued. “This ugly secret could poison Hugh’s relationship with the whole clan. Lady McCallum, your husband is dead now and can’t hurt anyone else in the clan—including you. Can you not speak out in your son’s defense? Agnes—and maybe other women—suffered, and we can’t change that. But hasn’t Hugh suffered long enough?”
Lady McCallum put her face into her hands and wept. Maggie wiped her own eyes, but didn’t go to her mother, just stared at her, waiting, but Lady McCallum didn’t speak.
“I heard other things I wasn’t supposed to,” Maggie finally said, her voice a hoarse whisper. “I wasn’t here much, so people didn’t know me, even forgot about me when I was near and spoke plainly. I heard . . . I heard a village girl hung herself because of my father.”
Riona held her breath, and for a moment, all that could be heard were Lady McCallum’s wrenching sobs. Maggie’s strangely colored eyes glimmered in the candlelight, and outside the wind slammed a shutter somewhere in the castle below.
“I didn’t want to believe it,” Maggie added woodenly. “I knew he drank, that he could be loud and lose his temper, but I didn’t know what—a man could do to a woman that would make her kill herself. I made myself stop thinking about it.”
Riona reached to clasp Maggie’s hand. “There was nothing you could have done.”
“I can do something now. I just remembered—they said . . . they said she had a sister, too.”
She didn’t meet Riona’s eyes as she said this, and Riona assumed it was out of misplaced guilt.
“I need to find this girl,” Riona said, feeling renewed determination surge up inside her. “If she would speak up, we’d have proof of what your father was capable of. Then we could tell the truth about Agnes and the clan would surely believe us.” If she could make just this part of Hugh’s life better, she would feel some sort of solace when she was gone. “Do you know her name?”
Maggie shook her head.
“I do,” said Lady McCallum, her eyes wide and stark with fear.