Page 79 of When the Laird Conquers

“You are awfully quiet,” her father noted that night at dinner. “Is all well?”

Agnes looked up from the plate of venison and potatoes that she had been pushing around absently. “Hmm? Oh… yes, all is well. Just a lot to think about. A lot still to do before the wedding.”

“Is your gown ready?”

She shrugged. “I believe so.”

“Aren’t you excited about it?” There was a wary note in his voice, his hazel eyes shining with a worry that wounded her.

“I am looking forward to the peace of knowing that Lizzy is safe, and… I think I will be happy enough here,” she replied, with as much honesty as she could muster. “Iona believes that after the wedding, people will be more inclined to come to the castle, and several English ladies are due to attend the cèilidh, so I am sure I will make friends.”

Her father nodded slowly. “Why is the castle so empty?”

“I do not know,” she answered truthfully.

Iona had mentioned disagreements and disgruntlement, but she had never gone into the specifics. Agnes had assumed it had something to do with the fact that the castle was pretty much entirely dedicated to training Gordon’s army, though now that she thought about it, she wondered if she was mistaken.

Unless Gordon is like you, Father, and sent everyone away when his son and his son’s mother died.

She had not considered that, though it did explain the permanently closed drapes and the tomb-like state that the castle had been in when she first arrived. A mausoleum to what Gordon had lost.

“I am sorry that I did not visit you at Tabitha’s,” her father said suddenly. “I am sorrier still that it has taken me this long to meet dear Lizzy. She is a charming little thing, and you have done so well to raise her.”

Agnes sipped her wine. “Someone had to, and I owed it to Christine.”

Her father flinched at her dead sister’s name. “I am sorry. I am sorry that I have not been much of a father since I lost your mother.”

“I understand,” Agnes replied, putting on a smile. “You loved her more than life itself. It is natural that you felt like your own life had ended when she was gone.”

He shook his head. “But I had the two of you to take care of, and I shirked my duties. I did the opposite of what my beloved Sophia would have wanted. She would have been furious with me if she had seen how I retreated, hiding away from the world and our daughters.”

“Oh, undoubtedly, she would have raged at you,” Agnes agreed, with a more genuine chuckle. “She would have scolded you again for doing the same thing after Christine died.”

His brow furrowed. “I know. That is, in some small part, why I came straight here after I received the invitation. I knew I would be early. I… wanted to be early, so I could… try to make amends.”

“Then I am glad you are here,” she told him, raising her glass. “To not making the same mistakes.”

With a funny, confused little smile, he raised his glass in turn. “To not making the same mistakes… and to a long and happy marriage for you and Gordon.”

Agnes did not repeat that last part back to her father, but sipped her wine instead, certain that her future was destined to be loveless and not at all happy. The very opposite of the example she had grown up with, until cruel fate had taken her mother away.

Perhaps that is worse. Indeed, perhaps I am the lucky one.

For as far as she could tell, love or the idea of it only seemed to lead to tragedy for her family.

“Although, dear girl, I must ask…” he father said, frowning.

“Yes, Father?” She braced herself for something that would be uncomfortable to answer.

He puffed out a troubled breath. “Is it quite normal here to keep a fox as a pet?”

At that, Agnes let out her first genuine laugh in days.

31

All too soon, time had run out. Agnes found herself alone in her room, staring at her wedding dress, sick with the thought that tomorrow she would walk down the aisle to a man she adored, a man she longed to be near to, who could never offer her more than what they had initially agreed to.

It would, in essence, be a lifetime betrothal that just happened to be an ordained marriage.