he was weary of discussing it. “I’ve said it before, lad, I’ll say it again. You must be the one to decide—I canna make the decision for you, aye?”
But hadn’t he made the decision for him? Hadn’t the decision been made the first time his father and mother approached him?
“Have you changed your mind, then?” his father asked.
Rabbie laughed with no small amount of derision. “Changed my mind? What, and leave Balhaire unprotected? Allow them to come in and dismantle it completely?” He shook his head. “No, Athair, I’ve no’ changed my mind. I’ll do as I must, I will.”
“It’s no’ ideal, no,” his father said.
A blatant understatement.
“Cailean has said she is bonny,” his father suggested. “That eases you a wee bit, aye?”
No, that pained Rabbie most of all. No one was as bonny to him as Seona MacBee had been, she with the dark red hair and deep brown eyes. A Diah, why hadn’t he married Seona before the war? If he had, she’d have fled to Norway with him. She’d be alive.
A sharp pain sliced behind his eyes and Rabbie squeezed them shut. “As if that matters to me now,” he muttered.
“Rabbie,” his father said. Rabbie could hear him coming to his feet, the labored drag of his bad leg and cane across the floor until he reached his son. He put his hand on Rabbie’s shoulder. “The lass is young. She’ll bend to your will, she will. She’ll become what you want of her.”
What Rabbie wanted of her was to become Seona, and that was impossible.
“See here,” his father said quietly. “Marry the lass. Put her in your marital bed and then take a mistress.”
Surprised, Rabbie turned to look at his father.
“Spend your time at Balhaire, or send her to England for long summers. You need no’ lock yourself away with her at Arrandale.” At Rabbie’s baffled look, Arran Mackenzie merely shrugged. “Desperate times demand desperate measures, do they no’? This is no’ what your mother and I want for you. Unfortunately, we’ve no other options. If there was an Englishman in want of a Highland wife—”
Rabbie instantly shook his head. It is one thing for him to marry into an English family, but he would never wish that on his free-spirited younger sister, Catriona. “No,” he said firmly. “It must be me, aye?”
“No’ if you donna want it.”
“I donna want it,” Rabbie said. “But I’ll no’ leave Balhaire without hope.”
His father smiled sadly, patted Rabbie’s shoulder and then, leaning heavily on his cane, started for the door. “Then we’ll seal the betrothal tonight.” He paused in his trek across the study and glanced back. “Unless you say the word, lad. You need only say it.”
There was no word Rabbie could say—he was trapped like a mouse behind a door with a cat waiting on the other side, no way out but death. If he didn’t marry this woman, her father, who had bought Killeaven from the crown after the Somerleds had deserted it, would buy up lands around Balhaire, including those that had been abandoned by Mackenzies that had fled. Lands his family could not afford to purchase from the crown, not with their sea trade cut in half, their smuggling brought to a halt by war and the fact that there was no one left to buy their goods.
If the land around Balhaire was bought, and sheep installed, there would not be enough land to sustain the Mackenzies that were left. No land for food, no land for livestock. They were struggling to rebuild after the rebellion and the destruction it had wrought across the Highlands. If Rabbie took this Sassenach girl to wife, and Killeaven with her, the Mackenzies could at least control the erosion of their livelihood.
He truly had no choice.
* * *
THE BRIDAL PARTY had arrived with quite a lot of commotion. Sixteen in all, Frang, the butler, said—servants, the girl’s parents, an uncle, he thought. And a governess.
“A governess,” Rabbie repeated disdainfully. “Is the lass no’ seventeen years of age? Is she still in need of a governess?”
“Not a governess, precisely,” his mother said, patting his arm. “I’d venture she is a governess turned lady’s maid for lack of a better occupation.”
“What, then, am I to feed her, too?”
His mother frowned and managed to look elegant while doing it, a feat that he’d never seen matched in another woman.
Rabbie and his parents were in the great hall. They’d taken their places on the old dais above the tables, where Mackenzie lairds and their families had sat for two centuries. They could hear the arrival of the Sassenach, could hear the voices chattering merrily at the entrance. They watched silently as Aulay led the English contingent into the hall.
At the head of the Sassenach party was a tall, slender man with a face powdered as white as snow and who, judging by his dress, was the Baron Kent. He paused to glance around, his expression one of amazement, as if he’d never seen the inside of a castle. When Cailean and his wife, Daisy, had come a few months ago with the news of their discussions with Baron Kent, Daisy reported that Bothing, the Kent home, was quite grand. “Three stories tall, with long wings,” she’d said. “Grander than Chatwick Hall.”
Rabbie had never seen Chatwick Hall, but he’d noted the way Daisy’s eyes had widened and had supposed the Bothing place must be very grand indeed. Perhaps Balhaire was more rustic than what he’d anticipated. He wondered what the baron might expect of Killeaven, the estate he’d purchased sight unseen.
Aulay walked briskly to the dais ahead of the group. His blond hair had grown too long, and the sun had browned his face after so many days at sea. He looked leaner than the last time Rabbie had seen him. He swept his hat off his head and bowed to his parents, then spoke in Gaelic, greeting them both, and then Rabbie.
“So then,” his father responded in Gaelic. “How do you find them?”
“No trouble,” Aulay said with a shrug, and looked at Rabbie. “The lass is meek.”
Rabbie said nothing. He didn’t want a meek lass. If he had to do this, he wanted a woman. He looked to the group for a glimpse of the lass in question, but the only woman he noticed in that gaggle of Sassenach was one standing slightly apart from the group, leaning insouciantly against the wall. She was tall, dark-haired and plainly dressed. She’d crossed her arms across her middle and her gaze was fixed on the hound sniffing around her hem. She looked a wee bit as if she was inconvenienced, which he thought was rather odd. If anyone here was inconvenienced, it was certainly not she.
Rabbie’s father stood. “My lord, Ceud mile failte—welcome to Balhaire.”
“Bit of an unusual place you have here,” the man who looked like a ghost said as he strolled forward. Behind him, another man waddled after him like a fatted pig. Both of their wigs were ridiculous. “How good of you to receive us. I understand Killeaven is a bit of a drive yet from here?”
“Four miles through the hills,” Arran Mackenzie said. He picked up his cane and began to make his way down from the dais. In spite of that cane, Rabbie’s father was still a commanding figure, and he dwarfed
