Page 79 of The Groom Wore Plaid
“I said I could question Kathleen again.”
“No, we don’t want her to alert her brother. I had achance earlier this morn to talk to my uncle. He says that Gregor has relatives in Ledard, a village not too far from here. Perhaps they know something about Gregor or his parents. I will go and speak to them today.”
“I will come with ye,” she said solemnly. “Who knows what danger I would be in here without ye to protect me?”
He grimaced. “My uncle is my war chief. I imagine he can keep you safe.”
“He’s getting old.”
He exhaled. “Very well. Can you be ready in an hour? It’s several hours’ journey.”
“I’ll ask Mrs. Robertson to see to provisions for us.”
He stood up and began to gather their breakfast.
“I’ll do that,” she said. “You go see to the horses.”
He was looking at her with such intensity that her breath caught. She tried to remain composed, but it was difficult. At last he nodded and left her alone, and she could breathe easier again. Somehow she would find a way to deal with him and not let her emotions show.
If he knew she’d fallen in love with him, he’d have even more ways to manipulate her into marriage.
CHAPTER18
It was a rare cloudless day in the summer, and the blue sky was like a tent stretching from mountaintop to mountaintop. Maggie breathed deeply once the castle was no longer in sight, and she realized how oppressive it had felt, knowing people hated her being there. She rode easily on the mare’s back, and Fergus and another clansman lingered far enough behind Owen and her that if they wanted to talk, they wouldn’t be overheard.
“I cannot fathom why you look so content,” Owen said, riding beside her.
She squinted at him in the sun. “Because I haven’t left that castle in almost three weeks. I feel like I can breathe again.”
“You despise my home so much?”
“Ye ken that’s not what I mean,” she said impatiently. “I feel a rising dread there, Owen, every time ye speak about marrying me.”
“If you’re so worried about me dying, then you must feel something.”
“I don’t want your death on my conscience.”
He looked straight ahead at that, and his expression smoothed right out. She eyed him curiously. Was he, perhaps, thinking that the chance of him becoming wounded was greater, now that the threats against her were escalating?
“You haven’t brought me any books that you’re studying lately,” Owen said.
Changing the subject. Interesting. “There hasn’t been time, what with the festival and my family’s visit.”
“There are so many things we could discuss. I wanted to tell you about an invention I saw demonstrated in London, a diving bell for breathing under water. They lower it into the water, and when the swimmer stays beneath it, the air is trapped so he can breathe. They even replenish the air with weighted barrels of air sent down from the surface.”
“Are ye wishing to breathe under water, Owen?” she asked quietly, feeling the first touch of sympathy for him over Emily’s drowning. Had it affected him more than he let on?
He gave her a confused look. “It is simply a fascinating device.”
“Emily drowned. And now someone’s threatened me with drowning. And ye bring up the diving bell.”
“You’re reading too much into my curiosity, Maggie.” And he faced forward again.
She knew a dismissal when she experienced it. She let him mull her words.
At Ledard, a small collection of stone cottages at the edge of a hill roamed by cattle, Owen tried to keep their arrival low-key, but when they had to ask for Gregor’s relatives, word spread. By the time they were heading to a small home on the outskirts, Maggie turned around and saw at least a dozen people gathered together on the central green, talking and watching them. Once she would have made a joke about his celebrity, but she held back now.
Owen dismounted and came to help her, but she slid down before he could. The less touching, the better, she thought. He knocked on the door, and an elderly woman’s voice could be heard, calling for patience. It was a long minute before she opened the door, her back hunched beneath a rounded hump, her hand braced on a cane.
