Page 33 of The Groom Wore Plaid
“I didn’t know Hugh had defended us,” Owen said. “While he fought, I read books. Are you notimpressed?” he asked bitterly. “Clan Duff was represented by my uncle Harold and many of our men, while I was safe in England.”
She understood far more than he was actually saying. Was that guilt he was trying to hide? Could that have been part of the reason he rarely came home?
“But I learned from all of it,” he continued. “I’ve made sure these last years that although the Disarming Act was supposed to deprive us of weapons, we’ve taken good care to hide ours away. Let the Campbells and the Hanoverians and Whigs do without; we’ll be ready to defend what is ours.”
He sounded like a warrior, like a Highlander, and it made something deep inside give a little quiver of need.
To distract herself, she asked quickly, “Does the watch bother ye here?”
“They don’t dare. Those companies can police the Lowlands and the burghs. We take care of our own in the Highlands.”
Maggie saw the determination in the coldness of his deep brown eyes as he stared out the window. She imagined he looked out across the breadth of his land, unseen in the dark, and like many men, he must wish the soldiers would try to come against him, so that he could fight. It was an uncivilized urge for a civilized man, and it made him far too attractive to her.
She deliberately turned back to his telescope and gestured.
The edge of his mouth lifted in a faint smile. “I lined up the telescope where Jupiter is, but let me prepare it for you. You’ll be amazed that there are so many moons around one planet.”
Trying to ignore his nearness, she bent over the telescope to look through the eyepiece. He didn’t let her ignore him, of course. He guided her position at the telescope by placing his hands on her hips to move her, then touched her back as he bent over her to make sure she was looking through it correctly. There was only one eyepiece—how wrong could she get it?
She studied the white disk in the black sky, and when Owen told her how to see the moons’ shadows against Jupiter, she finally started losing herself in the wonder of it all.
She straightened and looked up at Owen. “That is . . . magical,” she breathed. “To think that there are other moons, other planets, that men have developed ways to see them through the vast reaches of the heavens . . .”
“Not just men. I read the works of a French astronomer, a woman named Jeanne Dumée.”
“A woman?” Maggie breathed, stunned.
“She said she hoped to convince people there was no difference between the brains of men and women. I didn’t need her to tell me that. I grew up alongside a formidable woman.”
His relationship with his sister was as strong as herswith Hugh. It made her think more kindly of Owen, when she couldn’t afford to.
She said, “Cat was very lucky to be allowed to show her intelligence. Though your father was cruel to my brother, he seemed to allow Cat to grow up with dignity and a freedom many women lack.”
Owen shrugged. “He deliberately chose when he would allow either of us that right.”
She thought of Owen confined to his home, reading for endless hours when he wanted to be with his clan fighting for Scottish freedom. For a long moment, they seemed held near one another by invisible strings of tension that pulled her closer regardless of her rational wariness. Her skin felt too sensitive for her body, and somehow she knew touching him would make things both better and far more dangerous.
But he turned back to the telescope and started lecturing again, and she told herself to feel relieved. She put her hand on the law book to remember her priorities.
CHAPTER8
The next morning, when Owen informed her he was leading his men on a hunting party for a few days, Maggie was relieved. He knew it, she knew it, but he only shook his head and made his plans, giving her a resounding kiss in the great hall as he departed, where everyone could see him. He took obvious delight in telling her to talk with Mrs. Robertson about an upcoming festival the castle would be hosting. When she looked aghast, he settled her down by telling her that her family would be invited, too. Then Maggie retreated to her room to begin a sewing project that made her gleeful when she imagined Owen’s reaction. Mrs. Robertson seemed relieved she had some form of womanly inclination, but Maggie made certain the housekeeper couldn’t see exactly what she was sewing. Maggie noticed that Mrs. Robertson didn’t bother to mention the festival, and Maggie didn’t bother to bring it up, knowing she needed to pretend indifference. Mrs. Robertson was probably relieved to handle it herself.
In the afternoon, Maggie spent hours in the library, struggling through books on marriage law and making little headway. By evening, she was exhausted and suffering a headache, so she made her excuses to miss supper in the great hall and ate quietly from a tray in her room. With plans to find her bed early, she called for Kathleen’s help undressing, then dismissed her for the night. Maggie practically sighed her pleasure as she pulled down the counterpane on her bed.
She jerked in surprise at what was nestled in her clean sheets—a stick, bare of bark, with the letters of her name carved backward in it. There was nothing else, though she tossed back all the bedding just in case.
The stick seemed ugly and foreign against the white sheets, a representation that someone had invaded her room and left this to . . . what?
It was a talisman, she suddenly realized, and shivered. A talisman or charm, and she knew enough of superstition—had educated herself because of her fears of what others would think of her—to know that it was the mark of witchcraft, specifically a mark of evil intent.
Was it supposed to make her fear a curse, which she didn’t believe in, or implicateheras a witch? No one knew the secret of her dreams except Owen—or did they? She suddenly felt very vulnerable and frightened. Without thinking, she picked up the ugly thingand tossed it onto the fire, where flames licked greedily before consuming it.
She hugged herself and watched, even as she wondered if the same person behind this had started the fires on clan lands. Had this person grown bolder when no one connected those fires to accuse the McCallums? Was she now to be the focus of someone’s hatred? She needed to tell Owen and—
Then she groaned aloud. She’d burned it, had only been thinking that she didn’t want the evidence of hatred anywhere near her—hadn’t wanted a servant to find it in her possession.
But now she had no proof to show Owen that this villain had penetrated into the castle itself with his threats.
