Margaret Mallory - The Guardian

She searched his face intently, as if trying to decide if she could believe him. The combination of her sober expression and the globs sliding down her face made it hard not to laugh, but he managed.

“My father was certain your new chieftain would want a marriage between our clans,” she said at last, “to show his goodwill—after the trouble caused by the MacDonald pirates.”

“Your father isn’t far wrong,” Alex said. “But my chieftain, who is also my cousin and good friend, knows my feelings about matrimony.”

Alex realized he’d been so caught up in his conversation with this unusual lass that he’d been ignoring her father and the rest of the table. When he turned to join their conversation, however, he found that no one else was talking. Every member of Glynis’s family was staring at them.

Alex guessed this was the first time Glynis had tried this particular method of thwarting a potential suitor.

Glynis nudged him. When he turned back to her, she nodded toward Duncan, who, as usual, was putting away astonishing quantities of food.

“What about your friend?” she asked in a low voice. “Is he in want of a wife?”

Duncan only wanted one woman. Unfortunately, that particular woman was living in Ireland with her husband.

“No, you’re safe from Duncan as well.”

Glynis dropped her shoulders and closed her eyes, as if he’d just told her that a loved one she’d feared dead had been found alive.

“ ’Tis a pleasure to talk with a woman who is almost as set against marriage as I am.” Alex lifted his cup to her. “To our escape from that blessèd union.”

Glynis couldn’t spare him a smile, but she did raise her cup to his.

“How could ye tell my gown was padded?” she asked.

“I pinched your behind.”

Her jaw dropped. “Ye wouldn’t dare.”

“Ach, of course I would,” he said, though he hadn’t. “And ye didn’t feel a thing.”

“How did ye know I didn’t feel it?” she asked.

“Well, it’s like this,” he said, leaning forward on his elbows. “A pinch earns a man either a slap or a wink, and ye gave me neither.”

She gave a laugh that was all the more lovely for being unexpected.

“Ye are a devil,” she said and poked his arm with her finger.

That long, slender finger made him wonder what the rest of her looked like without the padding. He was a man of considerable imagination.

“Which do ye get more often, a wink or a slap?” she asked.

“ ’Tis always a wink, lass.”

Glynis laughed again and missed the startled looks her father and sisters gave her.

“Ye are a vain man, to be sure.” She took a drumstick from the platter as she spoke, and Alex realized he hadn’t taken a bite himself since she sat down.

“It’s just that I know women,” Alex explained, as he took a slab of roasted mutton with his knife. “So I can tell the ones that would welcome a pinch.”

She pointed her drumstick at him. “Ye pinched me, and I didn’t want ye to.”

“Pinching your padding doesn’t count,” Alex said. “You’d wink if I pinched ye, Mistress Glynis. Ye may not know it yet, but I can tell.”

Instead of laughing and calling him vain again, as he’d hoped, her expression was tense. “I don’t like the way my father looks.”

“How does he look to ye?” Alex asked.

“Hopeful.”

Alex and Duncan slept on the floor of the hall with a score of snoring MacNeils. At dawn, Alex awoke to the sound of soft footfalls crossing the hall. He rolled to the side and leaped to his feet, leaving his host kicking into air where Alex had been lying.

“You’re quick,” the MacNeil said, with an approving nod. “I only meant to wake ye.”

“That could have gotten ye killed,” Alex said, as he slipped his dirk back into his belt. “And then I’d have no end of trouble leaving your fine home.”

Duncan was feigning sleep, but his hand was on the hilt of his dagger. If Alex gave the signal, Duncan would slit their host’s throat, and the two of them would be halfway to their boat before anyone else in the hall knew what had happened.

“Come for a stroll with me,” the MacNeil said. “I’ve something to show ye.”

“I could use some fresh air after all the whiskey ye gave me last night.”

It was difficult to discover a man’s intentions when he was sober, so Alex had matched the MacNeil drink for drink far into the night. No doubt the MacNeil chieftain had attempted to drink him under the table with the same goal in mind. Neither had succeeded.

“No one forced it down your throat,” the MacNeil said, as they left the hall.

“Ah, but ye knew I am a MacDonald,” Alex said. “We don’t like to lose, whether it be drinking games or battles.”

The MacNeil cocked an eyebrow. “Or women?”

Alex didn’t take the bait. His problem had never been losing women, but finding a graceful way to end it when the time came—which it always did.

Alex followed the MacNeil out the gate and onto the narrow causeway that connected the castle to the main island.

The MacNeil halted and pointed down the beach. “My daughter Glynis is there.”

Alex’s gaze was riveted to the slender figure walking barefoot along the shore with her back to them. Her long hair was blowing in the wind, and every few feet she stopped and leaned over to pick up something from the beach. Ach, she made a lovely sight. Alex had a weakness for a woman who liked to get her feet wet.

“Ye strike me as a curious man,” the MacNeil said. “Don’t ye want to know what she truly looks like?”

Alex did want to know. He narrowed his eyes at the MacNeil. He was more accustomed to having fathers hide their daughters from him. “Are ye not fond of your daughter?”

“Glynis is my only child by my first wife. She’s very much like her mother, as difficult a woman as was ever born.” The MacNeil sighed. “God, how I loved her.

“The other girls are sweet, biddable lasses who will tell their husbands they are wise and clever and always in the right, whether they are or no. But not Glynis.”

The younger sisters sounded too dull by half.

“I didn’t raise Glynis any different, she just is,” the chieftain said. “If we were attacked and I was killed, the other girls would weep and wail, helpless creatures that they are. But Glynis would pick up a sword and fight like a she-wolf to protect the others.”

“So why are ye so anxious to see Glynis wed?” Alex asked. She seemed the only one worth keeping to him.

“She and her stepmother are like dry kindling and a lit torch. Glynis needs her own home. She doesn’t like being under the thumb of another woman.”

“Or a man’s,” Alex said. “Judging from what I heard she did to her former husband.”

“Ach, he was a fool to tell the tale,” the MacNeil said with a wave of his hand. “What man with any pride would admit his wife got her blade into his hip? Ye know what she was aiming for, of course.”

Alex winced. He’d had women weep and occasionally toss things at him, but none had ever tried to cut off his manly parts.

But then, Alex had never married.

THE DISH

Where authors give you the inside scoop!

From the desk of Margaret Mallory

Dear Reader,

I was a late bloomer.

There, I’ve said it. That single fact defined my adolescence.

When I entered high school at thirteen-going-on-fourteen, I looked like a sixth grader. Was it the braces? The glasses? The flat chest? The short stature? Red hair and freckles did not lend sophistication to this deadly combination. I have a vivid memory of one of my mother’s friends looking at me that summer before high school and blurting out, “What a funny-looking kid.”