Page 122 of The Laird's Masked Desire
Her eyes widened.
“I will be patient,” he continued, his voice lowering slightly, though it did not lose its weight. “Until ye are ready tae share it, whatever it is, with me.”
Silence followed. Margaret’s breath hitched and her gaze dropped not as a sign of submission, but thought. Then she lifted it again. And this time, there was no deflection.
“Me faither was there,” she revealed.
Domhnall felt as if something had broken inside of him. It was hard not to move and to just sand there, listening.
“He found me,” she continued. “After a little lass led me away.”
His jaw tightened.
“She was nae harmed,” Margaret added quickly, as though she had anticipated the direction of his thought. “He used her only tae reach me.”
Only.
The word settled poorly. Domhnall said nothing. He let her continue.
“He told me I am tae meet him,” she divulged the demand. “In a week, alone.”
“And if ye dinnae?”
Her gaze did not waver. “He will go after Eleonor.”
That struck. Domhnall felt it like a blade drawn across bone.
“He kens where she is,” Margaret went on. “He told me. The exact place. There is nay doubt he has found them.”
Domhnall could feel his fury rising, chilling everything in its path, controlled by the sheer power of his will.
“If I dinnae go tae him, he will ensure that what follows will nae be…survivable.”
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. A father was threatening a daughter with the death of another daughter. Hehad seen monsters in his lifetime, but that… that was beyond anything he could have imagined.
He moved once across the room, then stopped with his hands braced briefly against the table as though grounding himself.
Fury was easy. Fury was instinct. But this required more.
He exhaled once, then turned back to her.
“Where?”
“By the abandoned coastal ruins in the west,” she told him.
It was the place where land gave way to the sea. Few went there willingly. Fewer returned with ease, because the ruins stood upon a low cliff, their stones darkened by years of salt and wind. What had once been a watchtower or perhaps a small stronghold had been reduced to fragments: one wall still standing in defiance, another half-collapsed, its stones scattered down the slope like the bones of something long dead.
It was a place forgotten or rather, a place meant to be forgotten. No village lay near it. No road passed cleanly by. It offered no comfort, no safety, no reason for presence beyond necessity, which made it perfect for meetings that were not meant to be witnessed, where a man might come to speak of threats and bargains, knowing that no one would stumble upon him by chance.
“He willnae touch Eleanor,” Domhnall said. “And he willnae take ye from me.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Margaret had never imagined that she would one day sit at a war table and be the subject of its design.
The chamber in which they met was not grand, though it bore the quiet authority of use rather than ornament. Cameron stood opposite him, steady and attentive as ever, while Margaret remained at Domhnall’s right, her presence neither incidental nor easily dismissed.
And yet, dismiss it he nearly did.
