The Guardian

by Margaret Mallory

Sìleas? Ian shook his head. Nay, this could not be…

  The young woman was nothing like the scrawny thirteen-year-old he remembered. Instead of gawky limbs and pointed elbows, she had graceful lines and rounded curves that made his throat go dry.

  And yet… that was Sìleas’s upturned nose. And he supposed that glorious mass of curling red hair could be hers, if it were brushed and combed—a state he’d never seen it in before.

  “Welcome home,” the young woman said to Alex in the kind of throaty voice a man wanted to hear in the dark.

  Sìleas never had one of those high-pitched little girl voices… but this beauty could not truly be her.

  “Ye two must be hungry after your travels. Come, Sìleas, let us get these men fed,” his mother said, taking the lass by the arm. His mother gave him a wide-eyed look over her shoulder, the kind she used to give him when he was a lad and had committed some grievous error in front of company.

  When he started to follow the two women to the table, Alex hauled him back. “Are ye an idiot?” Alex hissed in his face. “Ye didn’t even greet Sìleas. What’s the matter with ye?”

  “Are ye sure that’s Sìleas?” Ian said, leaning to the side so he could see past Alex to the red-haired lass.

  “Of course it is, ye fool,” Alex said. “Did ye no hear your mam just say her name?”

  Ian had to tear his gaze away from her when Niall and the other man joined them. Now that he took a good look at the man, he saw it was their neighbor, Gòrdan Graumach MacDonald.

  “Ian, Alex,” Gòrdan said, giving them each a curt nod.

  Ian met the man’s stubborn hazel eyes. “Gòrdan.”

  “You’ve been gone a long time,” Gòrdan said, sounding as though Ian could not be gone long enough to make him happy. “A good deal has changed here in your absence.”

  “Has it now?” Ian said, knowing a challenge when he heard one. “Well, ye can expect it all to change again, now that I’m back.”

  Gòrdan scowled at him before turning on his heel to join the women, who were busy setting food on the table on the other side of the room.

  “Thank ye kindly for supper,” Gòrdan said to them.

  “Ye are always welcome to join us. ’Tis small thanks for all you’ve done for us,” his mother said, beaming at Gòrdan. “ ’Twas kind of ye to take Sìleas out for a stroll today.”

  What in the name of all the saints was his mother doing, thanking that conniving Gòrdan?

  “If ye need me for… for anything at all,” Gòrdan said to Sìleas in a low voice, “ye know where to find me.” Gòrdan touched her arm as he spoke to her, and an unaccountable surge of anger rose in Ian’s chest, choking him.

  If Sìleas answered, Ian didn’t hear it over the blood pounding in his ears. Just what was going on between Sìleas and Gòrdan Graumach MacDonald? He was about to help Gòrdan out the door, when the man showed the good sense to leave.

  “Ye won’t have far to look to find a man to replace ye,” Alex said in Ian’s ear. “That is what ye wanted, no?”

  “That doesn’t mean I’ll let Gòrdan make a cuckold of me,” Ian ground out through his teeth.

  Ian didn’t know whether to regret drinking so much whiskey—or to wish he had drunk a good deal more. After traveling half the world, he felt disoriented in his own home. Everyone had changed—his brother, his mother. And most of all, Sìleas. He still could not quite believe it was her.

  “Where’s da?” he asked his mother.

  “Come have some supper,” his mother said, and disappeared into the kitchen. She returned a moment later with a steaming bowl. “I’ve got your favorite fish stew.”

  Ian’s stomach rumbled as the savory smell reached him. He was near starved.

  “Where’s da?” he asked again, as he sat down at the table.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw the back of Sìleas’s skirt disappearing up the stairs.

  He stopped with his spoon halfway to his mouth as it occurred to him he had the right to follow her up and take her to bed. Tonight. Right now. Before supper, if he wanted. And again, after. The part of him between his legs was giving him an emphatic Aye!

  His reaction startled him. For five long years, he had planned to end the marriage as soon as he returned. He’d harbored not a single doubt. The only question had been how to do it with the least embarrassment to Sìleas—and the least difficulty for him.

  But he made that plan before she turned into this enchanting lass with a voice that was like velvet sliding over his skin—and curves that would have him dreaming of her naked as soon as he closed his eyes.

  Aye, he most definitely wanted to take Sìleas to bed. Any man would. The question, however, was whether he wanted her to be the last woman he ever took to his bed. He wasn’t prepared to decide that tonight. Hell, he didn’t even know Sìleas anymore. Was the woman anything like the wild-haired bairn who used to follow him about and always need rescuing?

  Ian knew he should say something to her. But what? He couldn’t tell her he was ready to be her husband and bind his life to hers forever. Though he had no idea what he would say, he got up from his chair, stomach rumbling, to follow her upstairs.

  Before he had taken two steps, he was stopped by a loud crash in the next room. He turned in time to catch his mother and brother exchanging glances.

  At the sound of a second crash, Niall jumped to his feet. “I’ll get him.”

  Sìleas ignored the crash of pottery and the bellowing that followed as she ran up the stairs. This once, they would have to manage without her. She slammed the bedchamber door, leaned against it, and gulped in deep breaths. Damn him! She had wept for Ian MacDonald too many times over the last five years, and she was not going to do it again.

  Her head pounded, her chest hurt, and she could not get enough air.

  The foolish plans she’d held on to since she was a wee girl were shattering like the crockery Ian’s father was hurling against the wall downstairs. She had lied to herself. Lied, when she told herself she had put her childish dreams away. Lied, when she said she’d ceased expecting Ian to want to share a life with her when he finally returned.

  If she had given up her dreams, her heart would not be breaking from the loss of them now.

  When Ian embraced his mother first, she understood. That was only right. And she hardly resented it at all when he greeted Niall next, for Niall had missed Ian almost as much as she had. But then, it was her turn. She fixed her gaze on the floor and held her breath, waiting. He was the one who left; he should come to her. In any case, her feet would not move.

  Then the room went silent, and she felt his gaze on her. Slowly, she lifted her head and looked into the bluest eyes in the Highlands. Her fingers were ice, her palms sweaty, and her bodice felt too tight. For five years, she had waited for this moment.

  She had imagined it a thousand times. Ian would give her a wide smile that warmed his eyes and pull her into his arms. He would tell her how much he missed her and how glad he was to be home. Then, in front of God and his family, he would call her wife and give her a kiss—her first real kiss.

  In her more realistic moments, she thought it might be awkward between them at first, but that Ian would attempt to make it right and seek her forgiveness. Never did she imagine he would not speak to her.

  Not a single word.

  With her heart in her throat, she implored him with her eyes to do as he ought. Instead, he stared at her as if she had grown a tail and fins. If he didn’t want to claim her, he could have had the courtesy to greet her as the old friend she was, then told her in private he did not wish to be her husband. His public dismissal was both insulting and heartless.

  Sìleas paced up and down her bedchamber, clenching her hands until her nails pierced the skin. The boy she had known would never have been so unkind. The angry young man who had called her repulsive, however, was capable of such cruelty. All this time, she had made excuses for him. Even now, she was tempted—but failing to acknowledge her in some
small way was simply unforgiveable.

  Ian’s words from their wedding day rang in her ears. Have ye taken a good look at her, da? Ach! She gave the door a good kick—they wouldn’t hear it below over the yelling.

  She tilted her head back. “Dear God, did ye have to make him more handsome than ever? Was that truly necessary?”

  Ian had been a lovely boy, with kind, sky-blue eyes framed by thick, dark lashes—the sort all the mothers cooed over. But there was nothing left of the sweet lad in the man who strode into the house tonight. True enough, his eyes were as blue as ever and his hair the same shiny black of a selkie. But the man had a rough, dangerous air about him.

  It was possible he’d been like this when he returned from fighting on the borders, and she had been too young to recognize it. But the moment he burst into the room tonight, she felt it, recognized it, knew it for the danger it was. And instead of making her wary, a ripple of excitement shivered through her, right down to the tips of her toes. She wanted to be next to him, to feel the power of his presence, to touch the vibrating energy that coursed through him.

  She felt it, wanted it… and Ian ignored her.

  She needed to be gone from this house. Nay, she would not be married to a man who did not want her. She jerked the cloth sack off the hook on the back of her door, threw it on the bed, and started tossing things into it.

  Not all men found her disgusting. She knew several clansmen who would be pleased to have her for a wife—and not just for her lands.

  As she looked around the room, deciding what to take with her, her gaze lingered on the quilt his mother had made her… the colored stones Niall had collected with her… the wooden box Ian’s father had carved for her.

  She’d lived here for five years, but she’d been wrong to think of this as her home. No matter how much she loved Ian’s family, they were his blood, his family. Not hers.

  Sìleas looked down at the gown in her hand and remembered how she and Ian’s mother had talked by the fire as they worked on it together. All her life, she had longed for a family, for a home where people laughed at the table and cared for each other. She had been happy here, despite the waiting.

  Ian’s family had welcomed her from the start, and eventually accepted and loved her. His father had taken the longest to win over—but she had. Losing the family she had come to think of as her own would be hard. Very hard, indeed. But she was here as Ian’s wife. If she wasn’t that, she could not stay.

  But where could she go?

  Sìleas sank to the floor and leaned her head against the side of the bed. She had no family to take her in, no home to go to. Although she was heir to Knock Castle, her step-da, Murdoc MacKinnon, had it now. After he took it, she feared he would come for her too.

  She could go to Gòrdan, of course, but she wasn’t ready to make that decision.

  Despair weighed down on her as she looked at the moonless black sky outside her window. Traveling in the dark would be foolish—and she had no place to go. Besides, she couldn’t just abandon the family after all they had done for her. There were things she must see to before she could leave.

  She was so tired she felt light-headed. The last weeks had been difficult—and tonight, worse. In the morning, she would make a plan for her future.

  She pulled the half-filled bag off the bed and let it drop to the floor with a thump. As she crawled into bed, Sìleas tried to forget that this was meant to be her marriage bed.

  Ian’s stomach tightened. “Mam, what is it? Has something happened to da?”

  “Your father was wounded at Flodden.” His mother gave him a thin, tense smile. “But he’s much better now.”

  She flinched at the sound of another crash and broken crockery falling to the floor. This time, it was followed by his father’s voice, bellowing, “Leave me be, damn ye!”

  Ian sprinted through the doorway to the small room that used to serve as a servant’s bedchamber. He stopped in his tracks when he saw the man on the bed.

  His father lay under a quilt, looking thinner than seemed possible. A bandage covered the top of his head and one eye. Below the bandage, a red gash ran down the side of his face to below his jaw. The part of his face that wasn’t covered by bandages was parchment white, rather than its usual ruddy color.

  In all his memories, his father was a tall, powerfully built warrior who could swing a claymore with enough force to cut an enemy in half. He was a man who spent his time outdoors, in the mountains or on the sea. Finding him a bed-ridden invalid shook Ian to his foundations.

  “Hello, da,” he said, forcing his voice to be steady.

  “It took ye a damned long time to come home.” His father’s voice sounded raspy, as if he had to fight to draw breath to speak. His father’s gaze went past him to Alex, who had come in on his heels. “The same goes for you, Alex Bàn MacDonald. Have Duncan and Connor returned as well?”

  “Aye,” Alex said. “They’ve gone to the west to have a look about.”

  Ian’s mouth went dry. The quilt covering his father lay flat on the bed where his father’s left leg should have been.

  Ian tore his gaze from the missing leg, guilt weighing on his chest like a stone. “You’re right, da. I should have come home sooner. I should have been here to fight with ye at Flodden.”

  “Ye think ye could have saved my leg, is that it?” his father said, his face flushing with anger. Then, in a quieter voice, he said, “No, son, I would not have wished ye there. Ye would have been lost like the others, and the family needs ye now that I’m useless.”

  Regardless of the outcome, Ian should have fought at his father’s side. His father’s words did not absolve him. Redemption was something a man had to earn.

  “But if ye had been at the battle, I know ye would have let me die like a man,” his father said with a vicious look at Niall.

  Ian glanced at Niall, realizing for the first time that his young brother must have fought at Flodden. A strong fifteen-year-old who was trained to fight would not be left home with the women and children.

  The muscles in Niall’s jaw clenched, before he said, “Come, da, let me help ye sit up.”

  When Niall tried to take his arm, his father shook him off. “I said, let me be!”

  Something more than losing a leg had changed in his father. Payton MacDonald had been a warrior who sent terror into the hearts of his enemies, but he had also been a man who showed warmth and kindness to his family.

  “Give Ian the chair and go,” his father barked without looking at Niall. “Alex, get out of the doorway and come in. I must tell the two of ye of our clan’s misfortunes, for the future of the MacDonalds of Sleat rests with ye.”

  CHAPTER 5

  “Do ye think we should be leaving so soon?” Alex asked, as they crossed the yard to the byre. “We only just arrived.”

  “We need to find Connor and Duncan and make our plan,” Ian said.

  His father’s grim news had kept Ian and Alex up talking far into the night. As they had feared, Hugh Dubh and his rough, clanless men had taken control of Dunscaith, the chieftain’s castle, as soon as the men returned from Flodden bearing the body of their dead chieftain. Hugh had proclaimed himself the new chieftain. And then, the new “chieftain” had stood by and done nothing while the MacKinnons attacked Knock Castle.

  Ach, it made Ian blind with fury.

  “Connor said he’d come for us when he wants us,” Alex said.

  “I can’t sit here on my arse doing nothing with so much at stake,” Ian said.

  Besides, he needed to escape, if only for a day or two. Nothing at home was as he expected. Finding his father crippled had shaken him badly. And seeing Sìleas had confused him.

  “So what are ye going to do about Sìleas?” Alex asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Ye think being away from her will help ye decide?” Alex asked. “Ye must know that’s utter foolishness, cousin.”

  Foolish or no, that was what Ian was doing. Because he was for
ced to say vows when he’d committed no offense, he’d never considered keeping them. But if he took Sìleas as his true wife now, that would be an entirely different matter. It would be his decision, and he would feel honorbound to keep his vows. ’Til death.

  “I need time to decide,” Ian said.

  “So ye think it’s your choice, do ye?” Alex said. “Are ye so sure Sìleas wants ye?”

  Ian turned to look at Alex to see if he was serious. “She’s been living with my family all this time, waiting for me.” With a grin, he added, “The whole clan knows the lass has adored me since she was a child.”

  “Ach, but she’s not an ignorant child now,” Alex said over his shoulder as he pulled open the door to the byre.

  Alex stopped so abruptly that Ian ran into him. When Ian pushed past him, he saw what—or rather, who—had caught Alex by surprise.

  Sìleas was dressed in a man’s shirt and old boots, and she was mucking out a stall with a pitchfork. With streaks of dirt on her face and bits of straw tangled in her hair, she looked more like the Sìleas that Ian remembered.

  Her pitchfork was half-raised when she saw them. Her eyes widened, and then, very slowly, she rested the wooden end of the pitchfork on the dirt floor.

  “Do not tell me ye have it in your head to leave,” she said, looking at Ian.

  “Just for a few days,” Ian said, feeling unaccountably guilty. He had every reason to go.

  “Ye cannot mean it,” she said, her voice rising. “You’ve seen how it is here. You’ve seen what’s happened to your da.”

  “Sìl, a man must do what he must,” Ian said. “The future of the clan is at stake.”

  “Hugh Dubh has been sitting in the chieftain’s castle for weeks,” she said, planting one hand on her hip. “I believe we can survive another day or two with him in it.”

  “Delay will only make things worse,” Ian said.

  “Ye cannot spare your mother more than an evening after the poor woman didn’t lay eyes on ye for five years?” Sìleas said.

  Ian felt a twinge of guilt about that, but he had to go. To divert her—and because he was curious—he asked, “What are ye doing dressed like that and mucking out the stalls?”