Page 67 of The Groom Wore Plaid
“Ye had dreams about him as a child. Ye think fate didn’t plan for ye to be together?”
“Then why did fate give me this dream?” Maggie cried with anguish.
Lady McCallum took her hand and squeezed.
Maggie choked back her tears. “I’m not going to cry anymore. I have a plan to solve everything between our clans. He can marry another McCallum girl.”
Her mother tsked. “Dorothy or Helen. I knew something was afoot, but couldn’t place it. Ye can see they don’t appeal to him, not with the way he looks at ye, Margaret.”
A hot blush stole over her. “He’s barely spoken withthem. They’re very different from each other, yet lovely in their own right—one of them is bound to appeal to him.”
“Margaret—”
“What else can I do? I can’t marry him! And I can’t disappoint Hugh. He is so honorable, and it practically broke him to know his love of Riona jeopardized the clan. Ye weren’t there, Mathair—those two foolish men would have fought to the death if I hadn’t insisted we find another way. And Owen proposed. Obviously, that was a poor plan, as the fates have decided to show me. So Iwillfind another way, and Hugh will never have to feel any regret or guilt.”
Maggie was vastly relieved when, after a quick knock, Kathleen stepped into the room, and Maggie no longer had to keep convincing her mother—convincing herself.
ONthe first day of Lughnasadh, there was always a berry-picking excursion, celebrating the ripening of the first fruits of the season, followed by a horse race. Owen knew which one he usually attended, and the one he ignored. But not today. Today he had a woman to woo.
To his frustration, Maggie had invited two other women to accompany them on what could have been a romantic walk across the mountain. Instead, as he politely carried baskets and let the ladies pick bilberries and wild strawberries, he had to listen to Maggie coax details of their lives from both Dorothy and Helen.They were sweet girls, and they were overjoyed to be away from home for the first time, but neither of them was the woman he would marry.
The only woman he wanted—to be truthful, the only woman he’d ever truly wanted to marry—was eating bilberries and staining her mouth a luscious purple that he wanted to lick right off her.
But again he kept his thoughts distracted from his baser instincts with mentally repeating how many digits he had memorized of the mathematical constant pi.
Then those lips said something he didn’t catch. “Pardon me?”
“Ye look distracted,” Maggie repeated patiently. “I knew my cousins would catch your eye.”
The two young women had gone ahead of them to search for berries. “They seem well-bred, but they’re not you.” She opened her mouth to counter him, but he kept talking. “You’ve told me more than once that you didn’t allow yourself friends, that you could never confide in anyone. Are you including your cousins in that, too?”
She frowned and glanced at the young women, who were chattering happily. “They are my cousins, and I love them, but did I allow them to be close friends? Nay, I could not. But they’re generous, lovely women who always tried to include me in their plans.”
“I simply don’t understand your reluctance. You could have kept quiet about your dreams. Surely women don’t tell each othereverything.”
“Ye’d be surprised,” she said dryly. She walked at a slow pace, the basket softly bumping her skirts with her uneven stride on the slope of the hillside.
“That sounds like you have experience with friends,” he pointed out.
“Nay, I have experience with women who tried to be my friend, who confided in me and tried to draw forth my own deepest thoughts. They wanted me to talk—they wanted to help. But I . . . couldn’t.”
She suddenly seemed so lonely to him, inside a prison of her own making it was true, but that didn’t change how she felt.
“I couldn’t risk that I might reveal my dreams,” she said solemnly. “Even talking to ye about them makes my stomach hurt.”
“You fear I would tell someone?” he said in a soft, husky voice.
“’Tis a fear I’ve had all my life. When I was ten years old, there was a woman in my village, a healer like Euphemia, but also a seer. She had the people’s respect, too, and sometimes when I visited her, I used to imagine what it would be like to be open with my deepest secrets, if everyone knew. Maybe they’d respect me like they did her—like they do Euphemia. But both of those women took a terrible chance by trusting others. Euphemia has been lucky, but the healer in our village? An outsider came, a friend of a clansman who’d heard of her abilities. This woman was desperate for a child and pursued Maeve for days trying to get her tosee a child in her future. When finally Maeve saw only a cradle with cobwebs upon it, the woman was furious. She began to poison the minds of any who listen, how Maeve was a witch who could not be trusted.”
Owen watched Maggie’s expressive face, the sadness and the fear she didn’t hide from him. He didn’t want her to think he believed in all of this, but could not deny how watching someone accused of witchcraft must have affected her.
“Surely, Maeve’s friends and family didn’t believe this stranger,” he said.
“Nay, but others did, especially those who’d not received the help they thought they’d been due. Eventually, Maeve was driven to flee for her life, leaving behind her family. I never forgot that, Owen. My family was all I had. I didn’t want to shame them—I didn’t want to leave them. I may not have allowed myself close friends, but I still had the love and support of my clan.” Her lips twisted in a wry smile. “Even if I could never let anyone but my brother and mother truly know me.”
She’d let her fears isolate her—and yet she’d still become a warm, loving woman instead of someone bitter at the fate she believed she’d been handed. He wanted to know more, but just then Maggie’s cousins called for help to reach a bush just off the edge of the path. When he was done, he turned around and found Maggie completely gone. Helen innocently told him that Maggie had earlier mentioned a promise to helpher mother. Owen knew it was an excuse, that Maggie had planned to abandon him, but he felt obligated to accompany the McCallum women until their baskets were full. Dorothy and Helen seemed so carefree and innocent, something Maggie had never been allowed to be.
He saw many of his clansmen scattered over the mountainside, and it eased his distracted thoughts to be participating in an event that had been handed down for centuries, perhaps even a millennium. He’d forgotten how it felt to be one with his people, with his land, harsh and rugged though it was.
