Page 45 of Never Fall for a Highlander

Lenora gave a curt nod.“’Tis no’thig I’m unused to.”

Robin stopped and turned her toward him.“He has hit ye before?”

The woman began to laugh and after a few minutes he realized she was crying, along with the laughter.“Aye, Laird Mackay, he has hit me before, as did my husband.‘Tis the way of life for a woman.”

“Nay.”He shook his head.“’Tis no’ the way of a woman.In my clan no one is allowed to put his fists to a woman or a bairn.Anyone who does is brought up before me and punished.”

The lass wiped her eyes with the heel of her hands and stared at him.“Truly?”

He nodded and began to walk again, her following him.“What about Knox?Although no’ much older than ye, he is still yer uncle.Does he step in when yer brother is being rough with ye?”

She sighed.“Knox is away more than he is here.I doona ken if it is on purpose or accident, but he ne’er seems to be here when Gunn loses his temper with me.”

They walked for several more minutes while Robin attempted to understand what Lenora had just told him.

“I am supposed to seduce ye while we are out here,” she said, her voice soft and almost humorous.

‘Twould be nice if that was a surprise to him, but Robin had learned that The Gunn was determined in his quest for him and his sister to marry.“Tell me about yer marriage.”

Lenora looked into the distance and began her story in a soft voice.“I was six and ten summers when my brother married me to a mon he owed a great deal of coin to.”

“What about yer da?”

“He and my mam both drowned when the wagon they were riding in fell off a bridge into a stormy waterway.Neither of them could swim.”She stopped as they reached the wall that surrounded the garden.“My brother raised me since I was only two years when I lost my parents.”She looked up at him.“He is my half brother.We had different mothers.”

Since there were no stone benches or anything at all to sit on, they turned and headed back the way they came.

“Has Gunn always been rough with ye?”

“Nay.I dinna see much of him when I was growing up.Once I turned six and ten summers, he started to look at me in a different way.”She shrugged.“Soon after that, he told me I was to marry a mon he’d owed a favor.”

“From what ye said before, I assume yer husband dinna treat ye well?”

“Nay.He had a temper and when he took too much whisky, he would begin to complain that I had cost him too much.If I was unable to get out of his way fast enough, he would beat me.”She crossed her arms over her middle and ran her hands up and down her arms.“He always made it sound as though it was my fault that he had to hit me.”Lenora looked up at him.“When he died falling off a horse while drunk, I decided I was finished with men and marriage.I wanted to join the abbey in Inverness”

“It sounds a though yer brother has other ideas for ye.”

She nodded.“Aye.”The lass took a deep breath.“He told me if I dinna convince ye to marry me, he would marry me to Laird Kerr, near the border.The mon has already gone through two wives who died by accident.”

Robin’s stomach cramped.If he refused to sign the betrothal, this poor woman would be married to another mon who would beat her and maybe kill her.

“Does Gunn ken this?”

“Aye.The whole keep kens it.A woman who visited here last year was a sister to the second wife.She told me in confidence that she believed Kerr killed her sister.Somehow the information was passed around to the staff and soon it was well known what the mon was accused of doing.”

He couldna believe a mon would send his sister to a most likely miserable life and possible death.The Gunn was truly an evil man.But then, where did that leave him?

She turned to him and took his large warm hand between her two cold ones.“If ye leave without signing the betrothal, I willna allow myself to be sold into marriage again.”She dropped his hand and began to walk.

After taking a deep breath, she said, “I intend to leap from the same bridge where my parents died.The waters are swollen once again.”

She sped up and looked over her shoulder at him.“I canno’ swim either.”

Chapter Twenty

Helena refused to pack, but arranged her things in such a way that it wouldn’t take long when the time came.She knew in her heart that she loved Robin Mackay.She wasn’t quite sure how strong his feelings were for her, but there were two issues keeping them apart, no matter how strong their feelings were.

Aunt Dorathia was depending on her to return to Dornoch so the poor woman could step back from her healing duties.Robin was being pressed by the council to marry Lady Lenora, who he was visiting right now at the competition.