The Sinner

But beneath her crown of flowers, Glynis’s face was strained. Her wide gray eyes had the same look of panic Alex had seen in a wounded doe’s as it lay on the ground with an arrow in its side. Glynis hesitated at every step, looking as if she might bolt if someone made a loud noise. It seemed to take her forever to cross the length of the hall. Finally, she stood before him.

Glynis had not changed her mind. But it had been close.

*  *  *

Alex was breathtakingly handsome, tall and striking in his saffron shirt and plaid with greens that matched his eyes. Most of the people gathered in the hall—particularly her own clansmen—must be wondering how such a skinny, difficult lass had come to be the one that Alex chose to wed.

Glynis darted glances left and right as she traversed the endless hall, a different question dragging her steps. How many women in the room had Alex slept with? Two? Three? A dozen?

“Ye look beautiful,” Alex said, playing the part of bridegroom, when she finally reached the end of the gauntlet. “I believe we sign the contract first.”

By we, he meant her father, of course. All the same, Alex took her with him to the small table where the contract had been laid out. She had learned to read, but she was too overwrought to make sense of any of the words.

“Is it acceptable to ye?” Alex asked, which was kind, but pointless, since her father had already signed it.

She could not get a word through her throat, so she nodded. When Alex signed, his signature was big and bold with a flare, just like he was. She felt like a skinny, brown mouse next to him.

After she and Alex returned to their places, the two chieftains made speeches about a glorious union, fertility, and such. She saw no priest, so it appeared Alex had not succeeded in finding one on short notice. Glynis ignored the speeches and closed her eyes to say her own prayer.

Please, God, give me a few months with him before he breaks my heart.

“Glynis!” When she heard her father say her name, she opened her eyes to find both chieftains staring at her. “Say your pledge,” her father hissed.

Her heart hammered so loudly she thought they must hear it.

“I…” Her throat was too dry, and she had to stop to swallow. It took her three tries, but she got the words out. She fixed her gaze on the floor as she waited for Alex to say his vows.

He was silent. The longer Alex did not speak, the more his silence seemed to expand and fill the hall. When Glynis risked a sideways glance at him, he was staring at her with a fiercely grim expression on his face.

Alex grabbed her by the wrist. She had to struggle to keep her feet under her as he proceeded to haul her out of the hall with his long-legged strides.

“O shluagh!” she whispered. What had she done to deserve this?

CHAPTER 35

Alex dragged Glynis into a large bedchamber that she assumed must be the chieftain’s because it adjoined the hall, though it was plainly furnished and the walls had no decoration at all. After sitting her down in a chair, Alex pulled another up opposite so that they sat face-to-face with no more than a foot between them.

“Glynis, I cannot go ahead with this marriage when ye look as if you’re going to your own hanging,” Alex said. “We’ll end this right now if it makes ye this unhappy to be my wife.”

She was too shocked to speak. After doing everything he could to persuade her to wed him, now he wanted to release her from her pledge?

“I hoped ye would come to see me as a man ye could be content with and reconcile yourself to the marriage,” he said. “But it appears ye cannot, and I will no raise my daughter in a house filled with anger and unhappiness.”

Glynis’s heart was pounding so hard that her chest hurt.

“It won’t be easy convincing your father that I haven’t taken ye to bed and given him cause to force the marriage,” he said with a resigned sigh, “but I will.”

She did not want to return to her father’s house to be put on display for an endless stream of unsavory suitors again. “What about all those people waiting out there for us?”

Alex dismissed them all with a wave of his hand. “I know I pressed ye hard to do this, but you’re a stubborn lass who knows her own mind. So tell me, why did ye agree to wed me?”

Glynis paused to lick her lips. She was unsure whether to tell him the truth, but she had nothing else to say. “Because I feared ye would wed Catherine, and I believed she would harm Sorcha.”

Instead of dismissing her accusation as foolishness or demanding proof, Alex simply looked at her steadily and waited for her to explain herself.

“Because Sorcha is silent, she senses things that others miss.”

“Aye, I’ve noticed that,” Alex said.

“I found Catherine taking Sorcha out in the loch where no one could see,” Glynis said. “I could tell that Sorcha was frightened to death of her.” She told him the rest of what happened, though there was not much more to tell.

“One brings danger,” he muttered as he ran his hands through his hair. “I had no notion Catherine would want to harm Sorcha.”

Glynis was used to her father—and everyone else—dismissing her judgment. It touched her that Alex did not question her perception of what had happened at the loch that day.

“Well, I was right about one thing,” Alex said with a sad smile. “Ye would be a good mother to Sorcha.”

“A child alone cannot bind us,” Glynis said, blinking hard to keep back tears. “As ye said, being a wife is more