Page 26 of Promised to the Forbidden Laird

He considered the contents of his bowl. “I am deciding whether this is food or punishment.”

She stared at him. “That recipe belonged tae me grandmother.”

“Then she was a formidable woman.”

“She was renowned for her hospitality.”

“Perhaps among enemies.”

A laugh escaped Donaldina before she could prevent it. The sound seemed too bright for the hall. Several heads turned. Roy looked at her. She lowered her eyes at once, suddenly fascinated by a piece of turnip.

“It is better with salt,” she said.

“It would be better with mercy.”

This time, his amusement was unmistakable, though it vanished almost as soon as it appeared. Their conversation should have ended there. Donaldina intended it to. She lifted her spoon and devoted herself to the stew with a concentration it had done little to deserve.

Then the musicians changed their tune. The first notes rose warmly beneath the rafters, winding between the low voices and the clatter of cups. Donaldina recognized the melody at once. It accompanied winter gatherings, harvest suppers and more than one celebration from which Lachlan had returned with a torn sleeve and no reasonable explanation for it.

Roy turned his head slightly toward the piper.

“Is that a MacNicol song?”

She nodded. “It is played here often.”

“I have heard it before.”

“Lachlan sang it.”

Roy’s expression changed. Donaldina’s hand stilled around her cup.

“He sang many things,” Roy revealed.

“Badly?”

“Heroically badly.”

Her smile came before grief could prevent it.

“He always claimed the musician played in the wrong key.”

“The musicians generally claimed Lachlan invented one of his own.”

Donaldina laughed softly as the vivid memory returned: Lachlan by the hearth, one boot on a bench, loudly singing a verse while the household tried to drown him out. He had no talent for singing and no humility about it.

“He changed the words,” she remembered. “Whenever he forgot them.”

“He changed them when he remembered them as well.”

“Ye encouraged him?”

“I attempted tae stop him once.”

“And?”

“He sang louder.”

She chuckled. “That sounds like him.”