Page 3 of Bound to a Scot
Out of the blue, he had received an offer from Laird Burchard Macfie. In exchange for the coin he needed to replenish his coffers and put back into his clan, Macfie wanted an alliance. He had somehow learned Maddox possessed a large, well-trained army of some of the fiercest warriors in all of Scotland and he wanted to have them at his back. Macfie sought an alliance. One he hoped to seal by wedding Maddox to his daughter Cecilia.
Maddox had been married once. He’d loved her, of course. It hadn’t been the sort of soul-shaking love the poets wrote about but he’d thought Ailsa a good woman and he’d been more than excited when she became with child. Maddox never thought he could be as happy as he was knowing they were bringing an heir into the world. Life had been good, and the blessings had been many. Or so he’d thought.
But then there had been complications with the pregnancy and things had changed. The midwives had done everything in their power to help his wife bring their child into the world, but nothing they had tried worked. He had stood by and watched his wife’s lifeblood—his child’s lifeblood—spilling from her body. And just before she’d passed, Ailsa had told him she needed to confess, that she didn’t want to leave the world with the weight of her sin upon her soul. His wife had been unfaithful to him and the child in her womb was not his.
Ailsa died shortly after she’d confessed to him. Maddox’s heart had been torn from his chest and his entire world had been turned on its head. Nothing he knew to be true had been. His entire life had been a farce, a lie.
“At least she got tae leave the bleedin’ world with a clean conscience,” he muttered bitterly.
“What did ye say, mate?”
Maddox turned to the man who’d spoken. He was older, with wispy white hair, a prominent nosed, and dark eyes that were red and rheumy. The man sat by himself a table away and appeared deep in his cups. Maddox shook his head.
“Naethin’ old timer,” Maddox said. “Just talkin’ tae meself.”
“Dae that enough and people will say ye’ve gone mad and lock ye away.”
He chuckled darkly and turned back to his cup. “Maybe they should.”
Ever since Ailsa had confessed her sin to him, Maddox had ceased to care about much of anything. His cousin and advisor, Adair, had finally had to knock some sense into him—literally. He’d slapped Maddox around until he’d pulled himself out of his cups long enough to listen to what he’d had to say. It had taken several days, but Adair had finally managed to sober him up enough to see the sorry state the clan was falling into because of him.
It had been Adair who’d suggested he meet with Laird Macfie, and it had been Adair who’d convinced him to hear the man out. Maddox had no interest in an alliance sealed by marriage, but ithad been Adair who’d told him that as the laird, he sometimes had to make sacrifices for the good of his people. And marrying Macfie’s daughter, Cecilia, was one of those necessary sacrifices. It would provide the clan with the coin it needed and would hopefully, in Adair’s words, help Maddox pull his head out of his backside. Maddox was skeptical of that.
Having been burned once already, Maddox had no desire to marry again. He’d argued there was no law forbidding a laird from not marrying. But deep down, Maddox remembered that his father had urged him to marry, telling him it would provide the clan with stability. And more than anything, a good marriage would provide him with an heir. Even still, given his experience, marrying again was not something he wanted. But he knew his clan needed the coin Macfie would provide, so he’d gone to Colonsay with the idea of persuading the laird to make an arrangement that did not require sealing it with a marriage.
“Where are ye from, lad?”
Maddox turned to see the old timer looking at him again, his eyes filled with curiosity. “How dae ye ken I’m nae from Colonsay?”
“Because I’ve lived here all me life and I ken everybody in Colonsay. And I can say fer sure I’ve never seen ye before in me life.”
Maddox chuckled. “I’m from Grayburgh.”
The man pursed his thin lips. “Grayburgh, eh? Where the bleedin’ hell is that?”
“A few days ride tae the north. Up along the coast.”
The man nodded. “Ahh. I see. And what brings ye down tae our fair isle?”
Maddox opened his mouth then closed it again, trying to figure out what to say. He’d traveled incognito, not giving any hint that he was the laird of a clan. It probably wasn’t necessary and revealing who he was would have probably earned him more deferential behavior from some of the people he’d come across, but truthfully, Maddox didn’t care about any of that. He never had. Maybe he was paranoid, but he just didn’t want people to know who he was.
“Ye ask a lot of questions, old timer. Ye the bleedin’ mayor?”
He chuckled. “Maybe I am.”
Maddox ground his teeth together, growing irritated by the interrogation. He was not a very open man on the best of days and this definitely wasn’t one of them. While he didn’t wish to be outright rude, he wanted to end the line of questioning.
“So? What brings ye down here, stranger?”
“Just business, old timer,” he finally said.
“Aye? What kind of business?”
“Me own business.”
Maddox’s voice was as cold as his gaze and the old man finally seemed to take the hint. He gave Maddox a nod, then stood up and carried his cup to the other side of the common room and took a seat with some other white hairs. Their small group cast dubious looks back at Maddox, but he ignored them and turned back to the fire and his own cup of mulled wine, quickly losing himself in his thoughts and memories once more.
But his mind was filled with images of the woman he’d seen before. And the more he tried to push them away, the more persistent they became. The thoughts unbidden, he recalled the swell of her breasts, the curve of her hips, and her full, heart-shaped lips. Just the image of her in his mind stirred something deep in his loins, making him swell uncomfortably beneath the table.
