Page 41 of A Two-Faced Laird
He reached out, intending to put his arms around her, but she took a step backwards, her face thunderous.
“My father and Laird Anderson have signed the marriage documents already, Edina. I have no say in the matter, and neither does my betrothed. She is as trapped as I am. We have talked about this, we knew it was coming. You seemed to have realised that!”
“I know you are the heir, I know that your parents will never accept me as your wife, but I hoped you would fight for me more! I thought you wanted to spend more time with me.”
“I do want that, Edina. I would give up everything to be with you longer, but there are things happening in my family that you wouldn’t understand. It is my duty to the clan?—”
Then, to his astonishment, Edina’s tone and expression changed.
“I understand a lot more than you think. I understand that what I suspected is true; You took your brother’s place, while he was away recovering from his addiction. He is not at the sea, as you tried to convince me, and he is not coming back, Aidan.”
Aidan stepped closer to her, his temper rising in seconds.
“You know nothing! He will be back, he promised me,” he yelled.
“He is dead!” Edina screamed back. “He is gone, and no one ever cared to tell you this because they need you to keep playing Young Master. You are trapped in this game, Aidan. When areyougoing to realise that?”
For a tense moment, they stared at each other, then he turned away and made for the main stairs, which he took two at a time.
Edina instantly regretted her outrage. She shouldn’t have told him like that; it was his brother, for god’s sake!
“Aidan, wait! I’m sorry.”
He looked back to see that Edina was following him, and he began to move faster, and by the time he reached the top of the stairs he had left her far behind. He ran along the passage as if the hounds of hell were chasing him until he arrived at the door to his brother’s chamber. He went inside and stood with his back to the door for a second, then pulled a chair towards him and wedged its back firmly under the door handle. Nobody was strong enough to enter now; he was sure of it.
15
Edina ran up to the door and tried to pull the handle down, but it was stuck, and no matter how hard she pushed, it would not budge.
“Let me in, Aidan!” she yelled angrily as she banged the flat of her hand on the door panels. “Please, we must talk!”
She waited for a moment, but there was utter silence from the other side of the door, and after a moment she tried again, but the result this time was no better.
Her heart softened with pity, at the same time as she became absolutely furious with herself.
I should not have done this,she thought.She stepped back to the door again and put her mouth to the keyhole.
“Aidan, forgive me, please,” she said sadly. “I behaved badly in telling you, but I believed you must know. Please talk to me.”
Silence.
However, he had underestimated Edina’s determination. She would stay there all day if she had to.
Despite her predicament, she sat down on the floor with her back to the wall. Her body was shaking, and she tried to controlher breathing and calm her nerves. Lewis was dead, and Aidan was getting married. She was to be left all alone.
As panic threatened to consume her whole, she forced her mind to recall a happy memory. Tears escaped her eyes anew as she remembered another escapade from their childhood. This one had convinced her that she might have been born in a girl’s body, but she was as tough and stubborn as any boy.
They had gone swimming in the loch. It was a favourite pastime of theirs in the summer when the water temperature was just about bearable. However, it was the middle of March, and their adventure had only come about because Edina had suggested it.
“Wait till June,” Lewis, the sensible one, had proposed. “It is far too cold.”
“Scared?” Aidan asked, raising an eyebrow.
That was akin to a red rag to a bull. With both Edina and Aidan ganging up on him, Lewis could not possibly refuse to go along with her hare-brained plan. They managed to escape from the castle without a guard and made their way downhill to the loch, where they stopped on the shore.
Edina wore an old petticoat to swim in, and the boys wore tattered old breeches. They all looked at each other, then Edina shouted, “One, two, three—go!”
There was a spectacular splash as they all hit the water at once, and a collective scream as the freezing water bit into their flesh. Lewis wanted to get out at once.
