Page 29 of Scandalous Scot
One taste would not be enough.
Colban’s nod drew him back into the present moment. Consumed with thoughts of Màiri, he had almost missed his chance to bag the deer. Colban lowered his bow, signaling the shot was his to make.
Impress Màiri’s father. Bring him to our side.
He waited for the red stag to turn ever so slightly. When it did, Ian let the arrow loose. His prey didn’t stand a chance. The animal went down cleanly. Standing, he accepted the others’ cheers, grateful for at least one aspect of being a medieval nobleman: he didn’t have to fetch and clean the deer. He and his dad, and whatever brother went with them, had always had to drag deer from the thick of the Louisiana woods back to their truck.
Soon, he was mounted and riding back toward the castle, his mood more jovial than it had been all day. Fresh meat for all. That salted crap that obviously wasn’t refrigerated wasn’t his favorite part of the thirteenth century.
“Well done,” said the very man he’d hoped to speak to on this hunt, riding alongside him. “You’ve hunted many times before.”
“Aye.” He sounded ridiculous, but Laird Kelbrue didn’t flinch. It was a start. “I’d like to apologize, my lord, for my actions that led to this day.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d apologized to the man, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.
Kelbrue grunted. “I’ve no doubt Màiri will be provided for.”
The laird clearly wasn’t letting him off the hook, but he’d call it progress and take the compliment.
“She will indeed,” he said, although it wouldn’t be in the way her father expected. The only way to leave without infuriating the man was to fake his own death. She’d be his widow, treated as family by the MacKinnishes, and everyone would say Grey and Marian had left Hightower in grief. Only one person would know the truth: Màiri. Indeed, the sooner Ian told her the truth, the better. In an ideal world, they could explain the situation to her father too, to avoid the ruse, but too many people already knew, and no one understood the implications of their actions here in the past.
“Ross has told me that you’ve spent more time on the road than in one place?”
This is where he’d have to skate away from the truth a little, no matter how hard it was for him, anddeflect, deflect, deflect.
“Aye, he is correct. But you . . . you’ve been here for three generations?”
Thankfully, the laird didn’t seem to take offense to the change in topic. Hearing riders approaching, Ian turned to see Grey and Ross closing in. When he turned back in his seat, he took in the magnificent sight of snowcapped mountains in the distance. This place was unlike any he’d ever seen, and suddenly he felt sad for his mother. To be taken from such beauty, dumped in a different time . . .
“My grandfather came here from the north.”
As if they weren’t north enough. Imagine the weather.
“Were you always allied to my family?”
“Aye. Though we’ve disagreed many times too. Good men, MacKinnish.”
He didn’t say it, butnot like Clan Dernwas just on the tip of Ian’s tongue. That wasn’t where he needed to steer their conversation, though—he had to focus on talking up Bruce, not talking down Ambrose.
“Ross says it’s important to keep your allies close, now more than ever. These are interesting times we’re in.”
He got only a grunt in response.
“You don’t agree?”
Màiri’s father scowled in response. A tough nut to crack indeed.
“When they’re loyal,” he finally said.
So that was his Achilles’ heel: he believed in loyalty. It was something they could agree on.
“There is no greater quality in a man,” he said, firmly and with conviction.
More silence. At which point most would jump to fill the gap with conversation. But Ian had been trained, both in public relations and in sports, to do otherwise. To read body language. To listen. Not to fill the silence with his own words.
“’Tis a shame not all agree with you,” Kelbrue said.
Please let him be talking about Bruce.
