Page 9 of Anice’s Bargain

Her eyes burned into his, but he still could not read her expression.

“I have one other demand.” Laird Graham drew their attention with his declaration. “I request that my son and I remain at Werrick as guests until the wedding. To ensure ye canna back out of the arrangement once ye have yer stores replenished, aye? And I want the wedding to be proper, with the banns read. I dinna want ye sneaky bastards to find some way to have it annulled.”

The Earl of Werrick sat mute, his face slack with stunned shock at what had transpired. In truth, James felt much the way the man looked.

“Very well,” Anice replied. “So long as your men are gone today by the time the sun sets.”

“Consider it done. We’ll remove our men from yer lands and return to be shown to our chambers.” Laird Graham clapped his hands with the finality of a job done and departed.

James stared at the woman he would soon wed. Her fair brow furrowed in a pained expression. While he was a better choice than his father, James doubted this was a marriage she wanted.

She lifted her head and stepped off the dais toward him. “I have not been afforded the opportunity to make my own demands.”

A smile quirked on James’s lips. The lass had spirit, and he liked it.

“Ye are no’ in a position to ask for anything,” Laird Graham said from the doorway.

James put a hand up to stop his father. “Have a care how ye speak to my wife, da.” He threw a warning look over his shoulder prior to returning his attention to Anice and nodded. “Go on.”

She flicked her tongue over her lips, the only sign of nervousness she had exhibited thus far. “I want my dog back. And I’d like to know your name, please.”

“Nay,” the Earl of Werrick said suddenly, as though the grip of his shock had finally loosened. “You need not do this, Anice.”

Anice. It was such a lovely name, sweet and delicate, like the woman.

“It is my decision to make, Papa.” Anice lifted her arched brows at James in silent reminder that she still waited on his reply.

“I’ll have them fetch Piquette posthaste. And I am called James Graham.” He inclined his head. “Well met, Lady Anice.”

“Well met,” she murmured and offered a short curtsey.

The air between them congealed into something thick and uncomfortable.

“Damn it, Anice,” the earl hissed. “Do not do this.”

“It is done.” Anice’s tone and manner were strong with confidence. “My dog,” she said to James, giving him leave to sever the awkwardness burgeoning between them.

James was all too eager to accept her offer, ready to remove himself from the aged, shocked earl’s presence and that of the woman he was to wed.

Once outside, his chest swelled with an inhale of fresh, clean air to sweep away the stink of the castle’s desperation. It clung to him like a second skin and made his body itch with the need to bathe. The people had watched him intently, large eyed and hollow cheeked, hungry for food and safety and peace. His clan had done this to them, turned them into such miserable creatures they didn’t bother to shield their stares or shy from his path. They craved life as they were shadowed by death.

His father waited for him just beyond the castle gates, which had been thrown open in a show of peace. The old man leaned over with exhaustion from the show of force he’d exhibited in the bowels of Werrick Castle. James suppressed a shudder. He did not ever want to go back into that castle again, especially not in compliance with his father’s demands—that they remain until the wedding.

Laird Graham’s spine jutted from the thin fabric of his leine and he reached out blindly when James’s shadow fell over him. James caught his father’s withered hand in his and held fast. “No’ much farther now, da.”

“Ye’ve no’ thanked me yet.” His father’s body weight bore shakily against James through the heel of his palm. After a moment, the old man straightened upright with a wink. “I dinna ever have so fine a wife.”

James grunted.

His mother had been one of the laird’s wives, a woman known for her ability to heal. Regardless of all her skill and knowledge, she had not been able to save herself when the baby she carried had died in her womb.

James remembered her in bits of broken memories, blurred from the time passed since his boyhood when she’d died. The delicate notes of lavender that perfumed her embraces, the warm gentleness of her hands when she tended his many scraped knees and cuts, the way her silky brown hair tickled his cheeks when she bent over him to kiss his forehead. Her kind, green eyes had sparkled every time she looked upon him.

To James, she had been beautiful. Perfect. Too good for his father.

Laird Graham had remarried immediately after her death, never loving any of his wives.

They neared camp and Piquette barreled toward them at full tilt, not stopping until his body slammed into James’s thighs. The dog stared up with his sad brown eyes, as though imploring to be taken to his mistress.

James grimaced, knowing he had to return the dog to Lady Anice, that he had to face that castle, those people, and her again. His future wife, a woman too fine-looking for her own damn good. And certainly, for his own.