The Sinner

Lady Catherine had left the table. Glynis remembered how much it had shaken her to see her former husband and couldn’t blame Catherine for wanting to avoid seeing Shaggy after what he’d done to her.

Shaggy’s shoulders shook as he paused to mop his face with a big handkerchief. He continued in this fashion, weeping and wailing, until he was a few feet in front of the chieftain’s high table.

Then, suddenly, he halted midstride. His mouth fell open, and his hand went to his heart. Glynis followed his wide-eyed stare and saw Catherine taking her place next to the Campbell chieftain.

Glynis heard Alex’s deep chuckle as Shaggy looked over his shoulder, evidently expecting the Campbell guards to converge on him.

“Will they kill him?” Glynis asked.

“The Campbells will observe the time-honored tradition of Highland hospitality,” Alex said, “and refrain from murdering Shaggy while he is a guest in their home.”

The Campbell chieftain gave one of the servants a slight nod, and the man guided Shaggy to a seat. While Shaggy looked ill, the Campbell siblings sat at the head table eating and drinking as if nothing was amiss. They were a cold-blooded lot.

“Sorcha is getting restless,” Alex said. “There will be nothing more to see tonight except for watching Shaggy sweat.”

Alex led Glynys out of the narrow corridor and up a back stairway.

“What will the Campbells do about Shaggy?” she asked.

“They’ll bide their time and toy with him,” Alex said. “Shaggy will never know what day they will strike. But one day he’ll be found dead with a dirk in his belly, and everyone will know it was a Campbell who put it there.”

Alex opened a door at the top of the stairs, and Glynis found herself outside the bedchamber she shared with Sorcha and Bessie.

“How is it that ye know about the peepholes and secret passageways in the Campbell stronghold?” she asked.

“People like to tell me secrets,” Alex said.

By people, he meant women. And in this particular instance, Lady Catherine Campbell.

Glynis helped Sorcha get ready for bed, and then Alex sat on the floor beside his daughter’s pallet and told her a long story, easily going back and forth from French to Gaelic. Though Glynis was familiar with the tale, Alex made it more exciting than her father’s seannachie ever had.

“She looks like a wee angel,” Glynis said when Sorcha had fallen asleep.

“’Tis early yet,” Alex said with a glint in his eyes that made her nervous.

“Bessie will be up soon,” she said.

Alex shook his head. “I believe your maid has found herself a man.”

“Bessie?” Glynis was shocked. “Ye must be joking.”

“Ye can trust me on that,” Alex said, as he stepped toward her. “We won’t be seeing her for at least a couple of hours.”

Glynis backed up until her heel clunked against the wooden door.

“All the same,” Alex said, as he reached behind her and slid the bar across, “we should make certain we won’t be interrupted.”

“Your daughter is asleep on the floor!”

“That’s what bed curtains are for,” he said. “Come, Glynis, let me take ye behind them and show ye how much I missed ye.”

“Isn’t Catherine waiting for ye?” she asked.

“So ye are jealous.” He chuckled deep in his chest. “I suspect Catherine and her brothers will be watching Shaggy for half the night.”

“I see. Ye have some time on your hands, is that it?”

“You’re the only one I’ve asked to be my wife,” he said.

She closed her eyes when he lowered his head and pressed his warm lips to the side of her throat.

“It is you I want, Glynis MacNeil,” he said against her skin. “Don’t send me looking for another wife.”

“I can’t do this,” she said, pushing him away. “We aren’t even wed yet, and ye have another woman expecting ye later.”

“But I don’t want her,” he said. “I want you.”

He looked so sincere that it would be easy to believe him. Still, he had not denied that Catherine was expecting him.

“For how long would ye want me?” she asked. “A week? A month? That won’t do for me.”

“What if I were to give ye my promise that I wouldn’t stray?” he said, sounding pained. “Will ye take me then? Sorcha and I need ye.”

“How could I trust ye?” she asked, though with Alex’s hands running over her, she was sorely tempted to. “Ye told me before that ye didn’t know yourself if ye could be faithful.”

“If I give my word,” he said with steel in his voice, “I’ll keep it.”