Page 70 of Hard-Hearted Highlander
“Ihaven’t smuggled anything. My conscience is clear. I see no reason to end our engagement.”
She was entirely impossible to understand.
“May we go back now?” she asked.
“No,”he said. He tried to think how to explain this to her. “You do realize you will vow to honor and obey me for all the rest of your days in two days’ time, do you no’?”
“Of course I do,” she said softly.
He stepped closer. “You will be wed to a man who doesna want to be wed to you, Avaline. A man who is a free trader. And a Highlander. Are you certain that is what you want?”
She laughed nervously. “Well...no. Are you certain of it?”
“I donna want it at all,” he answered truthfully.
“But the agreement has been made.”
“Agreements can be broken,” he said, but she was shaking her head.
“I understand,” she said carefully. “But if I don’t marry you as agreed, my father will return me to Bothing, and mine will not be a happy life, sir. At least here...atleastI have Killeaven.”
For the first time since meeting her, something clicked in Rabbie’s head, and he thought he understood her—she was as trapped as he was. He clenched his jaw and nodded. His chest felt as if it was cracking open.
“May we please go back now?” she asked.
He nodded again, feeling suddenly incapable of speech. The lass practically ran for the door. She despised him, she feared him, and yet she was determined to wed him to escape life under Kent’s thumb. Rabbie was not unsympathetic.
The world seemed impossibly unfair to him. He’d finally found the spark that ignited his will to live again...only to have it doused by Avaline’s determination to escape her father.
He followed Avaline into the great room and watched how she hurried in the direction of his siblings, all of them gathered near the hearth. But before Avaline could reach them, Ellis intercepted her.
Rabbie spent the rest of the evening in a haze of disbelief, anger and longing. It seemed an eternity before Lord Kent agreed it was time for them to depart, but not without first exacting a promise that the Mackenzies would dine at Killeaven on the morrow. His mother agreed, Rabbie suspected, just so the Kents would go.
“We’ve not much time left, have we?” Kent said jovially. “Another supper, a wedding and a feast, and then, we shall leave our daughter in your care and return to England,” he explained to Rabbie’s mother.
“So soon,” she said mildly as she handed Lady Kent her cloak.
“I am needed at Bothing. It’s an estate of great standing, you see. Quite larger than anything you would have experienced in the Highlands.”
“Naturally,”Rabbie’s mother said. “Then by all means, you should make haste.”
When they had poured themselves into the coach and it had lumbered away, the Mackenzies wearily retreated to the family salon.
“Impossible people,” his mother said. “And we must dine with them again on the morrow! I’ve never in mylifedone so much celebrating of a nuptial!”
“I knew Old MacGregor would sell the land, I did,” Rabbie’s father said as he caned his way to a seat and sat, stretching out his bad leg.
“Aye, but Kent doesna have a ship,” Cailean pointed out.
“No, but Kent has money, and a lot of it, he does. He’ll buy a ship, and then fill it with Highlanders looking for work. We canna stop it.” He glanced at Rabbie. “And you, Rabbie. Have you anything to say?”
Startled, Rabbie looked around him. “Me?”
“Do you mean to go through with it?” his father asked bluntly.
Rabbie knew a moment in which he thought he would speak the truth and say no. But he said, “Aye, as I’ve said.”
“Aye, you’ve said...but it is verra clear that your heart doesna want it.”
