She should be on her way.
Mama and Bettie, and the boys too, would’ve worked themselves into a proper worry by now. In fact, Mama had likely dispatched clansmen to the village already. Surprising she hadn’t sent them last night, truth be told.
Except, she’d ken Mayra always visited Maggi MacPherson and sometimes, more often than she ought since Da died, Mama indulged in laudanum a bit too freely. She mightn’t have realized Mayra hadn’t returned home until this morning.
If only Mayra dared defy the edict and marry another like Aunt Astrid had.
By all the wriggling eels in Loch Tolhorf that would solve the dowry problem. But then, what became of Dunrangour? Mama and the boys?
Would King George punish them and Coburn?
Would he care the least about two Highland clans’ issues from his pompous English throne?
She heaved a frustrated sigh. The risk to them was simply too great to take.
A soft knock interrupted her unsettled musings.
“Aye? Come in.”
Coburn, his hair damp, but his green eyes snapping with happiness stepped part way inside. “I have breakfast awaiting us below. Then I’ll accompany you home. I must speak with your mother.”
“Why?” Mayra paused in collecting her arisaid, hanging over the chair’s back.
Coburn cocked his head boyishly, a teasing grin crimping his mouth.
“Why do I have breakfast below?”
“Nae, why do you want to speak with Mama, you daft mon?”
Laughing, she threw a pillow at him, and he ducked.
“Because I intend to ask her for your hand in marriage.”
Jaw unhinged and mouth gone dry, Mayra went still as stone.
Oh, if only it could be so.
“It’s nae possible without the king’s consent.”
“It is possible. Will you trust me?”
His gaze sent a message she couldn’t understand, as he touched her cheek and traced a path to her lips, then drew her into his arms whispering in her unruly hair. “There’s something I should’ve told you when we first met. Something I’ve tried to tell you many times.”
She shut her eyes, swathed in contentment and savoring the precious moment until rapid hoof beats, stampeding into the village, drew her attention to the small window.
Aye, indeed. Mama was in a right royal fuss and froth.
Six Dunrangour clansmen trotted their mounts straight to The Dozing Stag.
“My clansmen are here. I’d expected as much.”
If she stayed in this chamber with Coburn, she’d have her scandal.
Indecision plucked her nerves like taut harp strings before she filled her lungs with a revitalizing breath.
Mayra whirled away from him and the window.
She couldn’t so easily bring disgrace on the Findlay name and her clan after all.
So, she’d give Coburn his chance with Mama, and then if that failed, only then would she resort to ruination.
Draping her arisaid about her shoulders, she hurried to the door. “You can call this afternoon. I’ll try to prepare Mama, though be warned, she’ll not easily be swayed. She’s lived in fear for so long, I don’t think she’ll be amendable.”
“Mayra, wait.” His face taut, Coburn held out his hand, palm upward. “There’s something I really must tell you.”
The echo of booted feet hammering up the stairs filtered into the chamber.
“Miss Mayra?” called a familiar voice.
Fergus, Dunrangour’s war chief, and Da’s closest friend.
She sent Coburn a panicked glance.
“It’s all right.” He came to her and after clasping her hand, offered a reassuring smile. “We’ll face them together.”
Och, nae help for it now.
Scandal was upon her.
She backed away from the door a few paces.
“I’m in here, Fergus.”
Coburn squared his shoulders and notched his chin upward like a general about to enter the battlefield.
Fergus and Hamish strode into the chamber, stopping short upon spying Coburn. Fergus’s wary gaze sank to Mayra’s fingers entwined with Coburn’s.
“By Odin’s bones, yer the last person I expected to see,” Fergus said, his eyes wide with astonishment and disbelief.
Eyes faintly squinted, Mayra swung her gaze from man to man.
“You ken each other?”
Not impossible. She just hadn’t anticipated it. More fool she.
“Aye.” Hamish tilted his head a fraction, appearing none too pleased at the admittance. “I’d have recognized ye anywhere, Rutherford. Even if it has been nigh on to three-and-a-half years since I was banished by yer sire from settin’ foot on Lockelieth’s land again.”
Oh, for goodness sake. They’d confused him for Logan.
To alleviate Fergus’s and Hamish’s scowls, Mayra withdrew her hand from Coburn’s.
“You’re mistaken, Hamish. He’s Coburn Wallace, not Rutherford.”
She finished securing the Luckenbooth brooch at her breast for the last time. After this morning, she’d never wear it again.
Fergus’s grizzly eyebrows made a slow accent up his broad forehead, and he cast Coburn an accusatory glare.
“Nae, lass, he isna. He’s Logan Rutherford. I’d swear my life on it. Coburn Wallace be his cousin.”
A lethargic fog engulfed her, slowing her heartbeat, muffling her hearing, distorting her vision. In trance-like disbelief, Mayra blinked and shook her head.
Surely she’d heard wrong.
Fergus hadn’t vowed Coburn was Rutherford?
As in Logan Rutherford.
Her betrothed.
Oh, God, nae. Please dinna let it be so.
She jerked her head to look at Coburn, seeing the answer in his grim countenance and speaking eyes.
He’d been impersonating his cousin.
She closed her eyes against the entry in his.
Charlatan! Liar!
“Please, let me explain, Mayra.”
He reached for her hand again, but she pulled her arms tight to her chest and retreated a pair of steps.
“Aye, somebody better be about explainin’,” Hamish grumbled, his arms akimbo as he exchanged a severe glance with Fergus. “Yer mother’s frantic, and she didna mention anything about yer meetin’ yer betrothed in the village.” His eyes, usually a toasty brown, narrowed a wee bit, just this side of condemnation.
“That’s ’cause she didna ken, did she, lass?” Fergus’s question hung suspended.
Nae, Mama didn’t ken, but neither had Mayra.
But she did ken how guilty she and Co—Logan appeared, and if she’d been able to draw a decent breath, she’d have laughed at the irony.
Clandestine meetings with her affianced.
The stuff of sordid tales.
And what’s more, she’d stupidly fallen in love with him. A man she’d convinced herself was a worthless sot.
He’s nae a worthless sot. He’s a lying scunner.
Deceiver. Cull. Scoundrel. Rogue.
And, to her absolute consternation, even amidst his gut-wrenching treachery, he was still the man she loved with every painful breath she drew. One’s heart didna stop loving simply because a person’s name changed.
However, it could, in the span of a heartbeat, stop trusting and believing.
After commanding her thoughts and stomach to cease their pitching, she inhaled a great gulp of fortifying air. Gradually releasing it, she angled her head.
“Hamish, Fergus, would you please give me a moment alone with…”
Mayra couldn’t call him Logan.
In her mind he was still Coburn.
From the corner of her eye, she saw the frown framing his firm mouth and the lines creasing his forehead over the slightly hooded gaze regarding her.
“Please give us a moment alone,” she managed, righteous anger giving her strength.
Flinty faces unyielding, neither of her clansmen seemed incl
ined to move a muscle of their large, imposing forms.
Another time, she might have appreciated their protectiveness, but not when the tight rein she held on her composure, threatened to plummet over the humiliating precipice of hysterics.
“You may wait in in the passageway, outside the door. I’ll only be a few moments.”
Mayra would have her say with… Logan.
How could she ever become accustomed to thinking of him as that?
She’d harbored resentment for so long and it had colored Logan Rutherford as a heartless, selfish knave. Her mind couldn’t reconcile that personality with the marvelous mon before her that she’d come to ken and love.
“I give my word as a Scot, she has nothing to fear from me.” Logan unflinchingly met her champions’ stony gazes.
Nothing in their steely countenances yielded a jot.
“Five minutes, is all I require,” he said, his countenance every bit as unyielding.
To do what?
“I am still her betrothed,” Logan reminded them, a trifle more force behind his words.
God rot his handsome face, he was.
Their reluctance as obvious as their disapproval, Fergus and Hamish shuffled from the room, shutting the door behind their broad backs.
Mayra hadn’t a doubt they stood directly outside the door, probably had their ears pressed to the course slats, truth be told.
Both looked ready to pound Rutherford to next March.
She’d like to punch him in his aristocratic nose too.
Mayra wandered to the window, and after presenting her back, pressed her fingers between her eyes for a moment.
She wouldn’t cry.
Nonetheless, such a painful ache burgeoned from her belly, traveling up her constricted chest and tight throat, she could hardly summon one anguished, whispered word.
“Why?”
“Mayra, my precious bonnie lass.”
Logan moved to stand behind her, a wall of virile masculinity.
The heat of his body enshrouded her as did his scent.
Then he settled his big, yet wonderfully gentle hands on her shoulders, and rather than railing her indignation, she wanted to turn into his embrace and weep like a bairn.
Instead, she stiffened her spine and shoulders and shrugged off his hands. Out of self-preservation, she kept her back to him. For if she looked into his eyes, those mesmerizing hazel pools, she feared she’d weaken and succumb to her heart.
And right now, this instant, her mind and her indignation insisted on answers.
“Why?”
She sent the briefest of glances over her shoulder before gripping the window sill, her knuckles white from the pressure.
“I need to understand why you deceived me when the truth would have served us both so much better.”
“Because I’m an idiot. I kent you desperately wanted out of the betrothal, and I couldn’t honor your request.” Logan’s long sigh warmed her nape, he stood so close.
“My da spent the dowry entrusted to his care, and I dinna have the monies to replace it. It fact, Lockelieth totters on financial ruin. To save her, we must wed verra soon, so I can claim the rest of the dowry.”
Nae.
She whipped around, her mouth parted in shock and dismay.
“He spent it? All of it? And Lockelieth still faces ruin. How?”
Scorching, stubborn tears welled, but just as obstinately, she blinked them away.
She understood full well what this meant. Damn Artair Rutherford’s corrupt soul.
Outraged fury wrestled with reason until common sense, heavily tinged with bitterness, prevailed.
“You could’ve simply told me as much, Logan. Been honest with me. At least after the first time we met. But to carry on the charade…” Mayra shook her head, and several curls tumbled loose.
Stupid, diddy hair. She’d cut it off above her ears!
He caught one tendril between his fingers and tugging it ever so gently, pulled her into his arms.
Outside the door, the floorboards squeaked, and a wry smile quirked one side of her mouth.
Fergus and Hamish were certainly getting an earful.
“You’re right. And in hindsight, my excuse seems feeble, even to me. I ken that now. I meant to tell you. I was stupid and weak and a fool.” His nostrils flared before he pressed a tender kiss to her forehead. “And… I was afraid.”
Her brawny, powerful highland rogue afraid?
“Afraid? Of what? That, I couldn’t love the real you? You never gave me a chance to do so. What we have,” Mayra waffled her hand between them, “has been built on a lie. I dinna ken what’s real anymore.”
She felt violated and exposed, and worst of all, she couldn’t trust her instincts.
What was she to do now?
Her greatest hope of returning Dunrangour to prosperity had been blasted to smithereens as had any hope of nullifying their betrothal.
And even that notion had her thoughts tumbling about in confusion.
Vulnerability she’d never seen before shadowed Logan’s face. He shifted his attention over her head to gaze outside, and his throat worked for a moment before he spoke again.
“Aye, I dreaded you’d loathe me, Mayra. But more than that, I feared your loyalty, feared to trust you. Then I fell in love with you, and above all else, that terrified me to my marrow. Love bewitches and befuddles, makes even the most decent, logical of men do stupid, rash, asinine things.”
Two heavy raps rattled the door, demanding her attention, and she tossed a frustrated glance over shoulder.
“It’s been more than five minutes,” Fergus said.
“Just a few more moments.” She cocked her head at Logan’s cynicism. “You make love sound like a disease to be avoided.”
He veered her a swift, sidelong glance before returning his perusal to the street filling with villagers going about their daily routines.
“My father’s wife betrayed him with countless men. Rodena bore a wee lass, Isla, that wasna a product of my father’s loins. I was determined not to allow my emotions to rule my head and turn me into a lovesick dobber as he had. He lost sight of all that he valued. His integrity, his honor, his self-respect. She destroyed him. It was Rodena who convinced Da to squander your dowry.”
Even with her heart fragmented, her soul battered from his duplicity, Mayra understood Logan’s reluctance, although she couldn’t agree with his reasoning.
“I dinna believe love does that to everyone. Perhaps those with weak, feckless characters.” Which Artair Rutherford had proven he possessed. “But love also has the ability to strengthen. To fortify. To encourage greatness. My parents’ marriage was a perfect example of that.”
“Aye. You’re right. It’s difficult and painful to admit my father wasna the man I thought he was. But I vow to you, I am not him.”
“And I’m not your stepmother.”
A wry half-smile quirked his mouth upward on one side. “Can I ask why you’ve been so determined to end our betrothal? Is it because you didna want to marry a stranger, or is there something more?”
Mayra hunched a shoulder an inch, sadness and bone deep disappointment a heavy mantle upon her.
“It was partially because I didna want to marry a man I didna ken. One I believed a callous cull. I’ve never been a dobby female who dreamed of a knight or a prince carrying her off on a white horse to live blissfully ever after. But since Da died, it’s been because I couldn’t fathom another way to save Dunrangour except to use the dowry. However, unlike the portion trusted to your father’s care, the other half has remained untouched.”
“I believe I have a solution for that, Mayra, which would also help the villagers and restore Lockelieth. I want to start a mining venture on the land that’s part of your settlement.”
Excitement lit his countenance, and eagerness inflected his voice. “I believe the adjacent acres are also silver and copper rich. I’ve had a letter from my cousin who says there are also tin and coal d
eposits in the region. We’d need the rest of your dowry to start the venture, but I’ve also several investments that I hope will begin producing a solid income within a year.”
“You’ve thought this out, it seems.”
If what Logan said were true, then at least she didna have to fear for Dunrangour’s or her family’s future.
Just her own, which looked precarious at best.
Logan brought her hands to his mouth and pressed his lips for a long moment to first the knuckles of one hand, then the other. “Can ye forgive me, Mayra? Give our love a chance? Let me make amends? Prove that ye can trust me?”
“Forgive you? Aye. In time, I have nae doubt I can. I dinna hold grudges. However, trust you? Nae. That I canna vow. Trust canna be rekindled as simply as putting a spark to tinder.” She snapped her fingers before his face, permitting her hurt to speak.
He bowed his neck. “You’re right, of course.”
“And, I believe a marriage without trust, even an arranged one, is worse than one without love. I’ve been forthright with you from the verra beginning, Logan. I told you I was betrothed. I told you I’d considered creating a scandal, and,” she lowered her voice so Fergus and Hamish couldn’t hear her confession, “I didna give myself to you, because my honor wouldn’t permit it.”
“And I love you all the more for each of those. I ken I dinna deserve you. Nevertheless, please, believe me when I say that above all else, I would make you my wife. Not because a paper says we must, but because I canna imagine my life without you now.”
Entreaty and sincerity sharpened the contours of Logan’s dear face, but the moisture filling the corners of his eyes nearly undid her.
Yet, for weeks he’d lied, and that she couldn’t easily forget or put aside. She respected herself too much.
Righteous anger prompted her words, even as the door shuddered when either Hamish or Fergus bumped it.
“For all of your pretty professions, unless His Majesty releases us, you ken as well as I that I’ve nae choice but to wed you.” Mayra was right back where she started, only her heart was nae longer her own.
An auburn haired rogue, whether he deserved it or not, had laid claim to the bruised organ.
One hand on his nape, Logan tucked his head to his chest, remaining silent for a long moment before raising his gaze to snare hers.
The Forbidden Highlands Page 40
