CLAIMED BY A HIGHLANDER (THE DOUGLAS LEGACY Book 2) (34 page)

The Grant chief dismounted, and at his signal, all his men did the same. When the chief started up the steps, she came halfway down to meet him.

“
Mìle fàilte oirbh
,”
a thousand welcomes
, she said.

Her greeting—in fact, her very presence—seemed to sour the Grant chief’s already cheerless expression.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

Sybil was startled by his rudeness. She straightened to her full height, which still left her a head shorter than the Grant chieftain.

“I am the wife of the MacKenzie,” she said.

His brows shot up. After a long moment of stunned silence, he seemed to recall his manners and gave her a stiff bow. “I apologize for my discourtesy. I’d not heard that Rory had taken a wife.”

“I understand your surprise,” she said, though she was puzzled by how strongly he reacted to the news. “Our marriage is quite recent.”

“Aye, it would be,” he said. “Let me introduce my sons.”

The Grant chief motioned to the two warriors who looked like younger versions of himself, with their straight, dark hair, piercing gray eyes, muscular builds, and wicked-looking weapons. As his sons stepped forward to join him, several MacKenzie warriors moved to either side of Sybil, ready to draw their weapons. She gave them a warning glance and a slight shake of her head, but they remained at her side.

When the first of Grant’s sons swept her a deep bow as his father introduced him, she sensed the tension of her guards ease a fraction. The other brother followed suit. Sybil was distracted by the sound of thundering hooves approaching the gate and failed to catch his name.

“And this is my grandson,” the Grant chieftain said, stretching out his arm in the direction of the Grant warriors.

Sybil looked past them to see Rory and several of his men galloping through the gate.

“Come, lad,” Grant said, drawing her attention back to her guests.

Sybil caught a glimpse of a young boy with copper curls emerging from the Grant warriors, but quickly shifted her gaze back to Rory, who leaped off his horse, dropped the reins without waiting for the stable boy, and started running toward them. Everything about him signaled urgency. But why? Did he not trust her to greet their guests properly?

Remembering her manners, she smiled as the chieftain’s grandson, a boy of eight or nine, came forward. Her smile faltered as she found herself looking into familiar green eyes.

“This is Kenneth Grant MacKenzie.” The Grant chief raised his voice so that it carried throughout the courtyard. “He is your husband’s son and heir.”

The ground seemed to shift under her, and a small, high-pitched gasp escaped her throat. Sybil felt as if she was falling backward into a black, bottomless chasm as her gaze traveled over the child’s face. He had Rory’s dimple in his chin and the same wide, expressive mouth.

And still, her mind could not accept what the Grant chieftain said as true. Nay, Rory would not have kept something—rather, someone—so important a secret from her.

“Sybil—”

She raised her gaze from the boy to Rory, who had come to a halt behind him. The truth was written in the guilt on her husband’s face. She understood now why the guard had hurried to fetch Rory, why the other MacKenzie guards were so uneasy about her meeting their guests, and why Rory had raced back to the castle.

The Grant chieftain had told her the truth. This boy was Rory’s son.

She felt as if an iron clamp was tightening around her chest and struggled to draw breath. How could Rory have hidden the boy’s existence from her? She knew instinctively that every MacKenzie and every Grant here knew what Rory had failed to tell her, his wife.

She felt the sting of tears at the back of her eyes as she and Rory locked gazes over the boy’s head. It was bad enough that her husband had mistrusted and disrespected her—and that everyone knew it. She would not humiliate herself further by letting them see how very much the insult wounded her.

For once, she was grateful for the years she spent navigating her way through the slings and arrows of court life. She needed the lessons of every single day of it to maintain her composure. These Highlanders saw that Rory had made a fool of his ignorant Lowlander wife.

She refused to let them see that he had also ripped out her heart.

CHAPTER 35

Rory’s labored breaths filled his ears like an echo of the accusation he saw in Sybil’s eyes. As soon as he heard that the Grants had come to the castle, he turned his horse homeward at a gallop, in the hope that he could speak to her first.

But the time to tell her was long since passed.

One look into his wife’s face, and Rory understood the depths of the error he had made. She only let it show for a moment before a mask of calm shuttered her expression, but the naked pain he saw in that moment pierced his heart like a hot blade in the center of his chest.

Now, the slight tremor of her fingers against the skirt of her gown was all that betrayed the storm of emotions she was hiding. God in heaven, would she ever forgive him?

Grant cleared his throat with growl, reminding Rory that he faced not one, but two disasters.

“Kenneth has reached his eighth birthday, the age at which tradition dictates a child should leave his mother’s clan for his father’s.” Grant clamped a hand on his grandson’s shoulder. “Your son should be raised as a MacKenzie.”

Rory could strangle Grant for forcing the issue now. His timing had nothing to do with tradition and everything to do with Rory’s unexpected rise to clan chieftain.

“Ye shouldn’t have brought the lad,” Rory hissed in a low voice.

Tension flowed among Rory, Grant and Sybil like a surging river on the verge of breaching its banks and drowning them all.

“Nonsense,
mo chroí
,”
Sybil said with a smile on her lips and daggers in her eyes. “I would not have wanted to wait a moment longer to meet your son.”

“He’s no—” Rory started to say but bit his tongue. This was not the time or place, in front of the boy.

Sybil looked down at the lad then, and showed once again just how remarkable she was. Genuine warmth filled her eyes, and she took the lad’s hand and leaned down to speak to him.

“I can see you’re a wee bit worried by all of this, but ye needn’t be,” she said in a soft voice Rory had to strain to hear. “Ye see, I’ve left the comfort of my home and family to come live with these MacKenzies too, so I think you and I are going to become the very best of friends.”

While he and Grant postured, Sybil showed her generosity of spirit by recognizing the lad’s fears. She had as much pride as any of them and more reason to feel affronted. And yet, out of kindness, she welcomed the child into her home and family as if his arrival was a gift she had long hoped for. Rory loved her even more for it, and he knew he did not deserve her.

“What do ye say, Kenneth,” she said, “shall we be friends and mind each other’s backs among these wild MacKenzies?”

After studying her face, the lad gave her a solemn nod.

“I’d wager that a growing young man like you must be hungry after your long ride.”

The lad nodded, more vigorously this time. Sybil straightened and bestowed her smile on the rest of the Grants—but definitely not on Rory.

“Again, welcome to our home,” she told them. “We’d be honored if you would join us for dinner.”

The lad held tightly to Sybil’s hand as she led them up the steps of the keep. Just before the guard opened the door and she swept inside, she gave Rory a look over her shoulder that could have frozen a loch.

***

It was a wonder Rory did not get frostbite sitting between Grant and Sybil. And Grant was the warmer of the two. While Sybil engaged in a lively conversation with everyone else at the table, each attempt he made to converse with her was met with a
hmmph
or nothing at all. She refused to even look at him.

He wished he could take her upstairs at once and explain everything to her, but relations with the Grants were already at the breaking point without insulting them by leaving the table.

Sybil was all charm and smiles to their uninvited guests, especially Grant’s grandson, whom she had seated on her other side. Placing the lad in an honored position above his uncles at the high table, as if he were Rory’s heir, was
not
helpful. Rory could not move the lad to a more appropriate seat without creating still more trouble with the Grant chieftain, and she damn well knew it.

“You’ve never been to Castle Leod before?” he heard her ask.

The lad, who had stuffed a large piece of roasted pork in his mouth, shook his head.

“But surely ye must have spent some time with your father?” she said. “Was it at one of the other MacKenzie castles or perhaps at your grandfather’s?”

“Nay,” the lad said around the food in his cheek. When he noticed Rory was watching him, his cheeks turned pink and his gaze dropped to the table.

Though Sybil’s face was turned away from him, Rory could feel her indignation. She was judging him, though she knew nothing of the circumstances.

He had his reasons for not seeing the lad. Good reasons. But he should have told her long before now.

The moment the meal was finished, Sybil stood to leave.

“It was a delight to meet you all, especially Kenneth.” Sybil squeezed the lad’s shoulder, and the two beamed at each other. “Now I’m sure you men have matters ye wish to discuss.”

“We most certainly do,” Grant said, his eyes burning holes into Rory.

Without sparing Rory a glance, she left the table. He watched her straight back as she walked toward the stairs.

The outside doors to the hall banged open, jolting his attention as a young woman burst inside. Her hair was loose and tangled, and her eyes red from weeping.

“Why have ye taken wee Kenneth, Father?” she cried out.

Rory dropped his head onto his arms on the table.

Jesu!
This was Grant’s daughter, the lass he was supposed to marry.

***

Sybil stood frozen, transfixed by the young woman’s startling appearance. She looked like a distraught Viking princess, tall and striking and uncontrolled. The violence of her emotions was evident in her red-rimmed eyes, dirt-smudged face, and unruly tangle of blond hair.

“Why are ye here, Daughter,” the Grant chieftain ground out, “and not at home where ye ought to be?”

“As soon as I found out ye took him,” she said between gasps for breath, “I had to come.”

“By all that is holy,” Grant shouted, “tell me, Flora Grant, that ye did not ride all the way here by yourself?”

“I did,” his daughter said.

From the state she was in, she had ridden hard to get here.

“Ye bring shame upon me and our clan.” Her father’s face was growing dangerously purple. “Wait for me outside in the courtyard.”

“I must know why ye brought Kenneth here,” the lass persisted, clenching her hands. “I’ll not let ye leave him
here with no one to protect him.”

God help her, was this Kenneth’s mother? And Rory’s lover? Sybil felt faint.

There was talk of a marriage between me and a chieftain’s daughter.
The pieces fell together, like blocks of stone. No wonder Grant was angry upon learning that Sybil was Rory’s wife. This lass was the chieftain’s daughter that Rory was meant to marry.

The woman he
would
have married, if he’d known his marriage contract with Sybil was false.

Sybil had managed to keep her composure through the shock of learning he’d kept the existence of his son and heir from her. But this was too much. And yet she remained at the bottom of the stairs, unable to leave until she heard the rest.

“Why would the lad need protection in the MacKenzie castle?” Rory’s voice was low and dangerous, and his eye twitched. “Are ye suggesting I would harm a bairn?”

“Ye don’t want him,” the lass said, “or ye would have claimed him.”

“I haven’t claimed him,” Rory said between clenched teeth, “because I don’t believe he’s mine.”

How could Rory say that to the mother of his child? And in front of the child, for God’s sake. Sybil’s gaze caught on Kenneth. The poor boy was struggling against one of his uncles, who was preventing him from running to his mother.

“How dare ye insult my dead daughter!” the Grant chieftain roared.

Dead daughter?
Sybil had no time to absorb this information.

Swords were about to be drawn. Sybil had to stop this before blood was spilled.

***

Too late, Rory realized that he’d let his temper get away from him and gravely offended his guest. He needed to make amends with the Grants and keep them as allies, not cross swords with their chieftain.

“Stop this at once!” Sybil shouted, drawing everyone’s attention. “Can’t ye see you’re frightening young Kenneth? And if there’s to be a fight, it will
not
be inside my hall.”

Before they recovered from their shock at her bold words, she crossed the hall to the high table and pointed at Grant’s son, who was holding the lad.