What? What did he understand? What could he possibly understand when she couldn’t understand anything at all? She slowly disengaged her hand from his. “Good-bye, milord.”
With jaw clenched, Payton nodded and stepped away from the cart as Liam sent the donkeys trotting, telling everyone with his booming voice that the first thing they’d purchase was a team of four grays. “And I’ll no’ brook any argument!” he loudly insisted. Her family laughed; Mared laughed, too, but her eyes were on Eilean Ros and Payton, who stood in the drive, his chin high, his hands clasped behind his back. His expression frighteningly unreadable.
Twenty-five
T hey argued over their sherry—the one bottle they had saved for this very occasion—as to whether or not they would allow Hugh to join them for dinner. The men were firmly of the opinion that the bounder could rot below. The women were less convinced.
“He did return the beastie,” Anna said to no one in particular. “I can’t see how we might possibly hold him prisoner.”
“He’s right fortunate he is no’ twisting in the wind from the highest tree,” Grif said as he laid his hand on Anna’s belly to feel the baby kick.
“But it’s awfully dark and cold down there,” Natalie said to Carson. “He might be very afraid.”
“There, there, leannan,” Liam said soothingly. “Let the lad rot.”
“Well I, for one, should like the courtesy of an explanation,” Mared said.
Liam sighed and looked at Grif. Grif groaned. “Very well then,” he groused and reached in his pocket to produce a key. “Will ye no’ fetch him, then, Mared, and escort him up? He may give ye his ridiculous version of events, but I canna possibly hear it again.”
“Natalie, darling, please find Dudley and have him add another setting for supper,” Aila said.
Hugh wasn’t really in a dungeon—certainly it had been one long ago, but now it was just a room, below ground, devoid of light and heat. Mared and her brothers had played there as children; for a time, the family had stored dry goods there. Holding a candle high, she walked down the worn narrow steps and paused at the edge of the darkened corridor.
There was a flicker of light from the cell where they kept Hugh. “Ho there, who comes to tend me body?” he called.
She stepped off the last step and into the corridor. Hugh MacAlister, as devilishly handsome as ever, was standing at the bars that went across the door, his arms hanging uselessly through them, his weight cocked on one hip.
“I canna see ye—come closer, then. Who is it? Mrs. Griffin Lockhart? Ah, Anna, bless ye, lass! I knew ye’d rescue me. I always believed it was me ye loved above that bloody scoundrel!”
“’Tis no’ Anna, Hugh,” Mared said and walked closer so that he could see her. “’Tis me…the reason ye doth exist. Remember?”
“Mared!” he cried joyously. “On me honor, I hoped ye would come. Can ye imagine how I’ve yearned for ye, then? I’ve wasted away in grief for having lost ye, I have.”
“Ye donna look wasted away to me,” she said, holding the candle above her head to see him clearly. “Ye look as well as a fatted calf. Tsk-tsk, Hugh MacAlister. After all ye’ve done and still a rogue.”
“I’m no’ a rogue!” he gamely insisted. “I’ve kept ye in me heart, Mared! Why do ye think I came back, then?”
“Grif said ye tried to steal the beastie and run away with an Irish lass.”
“Ah, how he seeks to hurt me!” Hugh cried, clapping a hand dramatically over his heart. “Why should he spread such vicious lies? No, no, leannan. Miss Brody stole yer beloved beastie, and I, being the true friend of Lockhart that I am, went after her to retrieve it. I almost lost me life in Ireland, mind—all so that I wouldna return to ye, m’annsachd, empty-handed.”
“How very gallant of ye,” she said. “And if I am truly yer beloved, did ye no’ think to write and tell me ye’d gone to Ireland?”
Hugh blinked. And then he smiled beatifically. “Mared, lass…I had no’ even a coin to me name. How might I have purchased paper and pen? No, leannan, I believed ye would trust me.”
She laughed roundly at that. “I wouldna trust ye if ye were the last man on God’s green earth, MacAlister,” she said, but fit the key in the lock and turned it, opening the door.
Hugh was instantly through it, his arms going around Mared without a care for the candle she held. “Diah, how is it that ye’ve grown even bonnier since I last laid eyes on ye?” he asked, attempting to nuzzle her neck. “I didna dream ye’d be so beautiful. Ah, lass, yell no’ regret rescuing me from this bloody pit,” he whispered wickedly in her ear.