Page 40 of The Laird's Masked Desire
Annabel let out a breath she had clearly been holding. “Then we dae this properly.Carefully.”
Margaret looked back out over the loch, feeling resolve settling into place. “Thank ye.”
Annabel smiled. If she were relieved, she did not show it. “I suppose that if one is tae aid a future lady of the house, it may as well be fer love rather than scandal.”
Margaret laughed softly.
Aye, she thought.Love and loyalty.
Those were freedoms she would not surrender.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Domhnall found Margaret in the gardens, just past the southern wall, where the stone paths softened into clipped grass and late-summer roses bent beneath their own weight. The loch lay beyond, dark and deceptively calm, while its surface seemed to be broken only by the wind and the distant call of birds.
She was walking beside her maid, with her hands clasped behind her back like a woman accustomed to being observed and to enduring it. Her head was bare and her hair caught neatly at her nape. She wore a gown of subdued blue that marked her as neither guest nor servant, but something newly claimed and not yet settled.
Domhnall slowed before he reached them.
He had learned long ago that announcing oneself too loudly gave people time to brace, to rehearse, and most importantly, to lie. Margaret did none of those things. She sensed him before shesaw him, the way she had done before, which was far too attuned for a woman raised on courtesies alone.
She turned. Annabel dipped into a hasty curtsy. Margaret did not.
“Leave us,” Domhnall said to the maid.
Annabel hesitated, glancing once at Margaret. At her nod, she withdrew a few paces, lingering close enough to see but far enough to pretend she could not hear.
Margaret’s gaze sharpened.
He stepped closer, stopping at a distance that would have been proper, if propriety had not already been stretched thin between them.
“I have something I need tae talk tae ye about. Ye are nae tae leave the castle grounds,” he told her in words that once again, sounded like an order. He gritted his teeth at the thought.
The silence that followed was brief and lethal.
“I beg yer pardon?” Margaret gasped.
“It is nae a request.”
Her eyes flashed. “Ye dinnae get tae decide where I may or may nae walk.”
“I dae, lass,” he corrected. “Until the danger passes.”
Her hands clenched at her sides. “This is Inveraray, nae a battlefield.”
“Nae yet.”
She laughed once, sharply. “So ye intend tae keep me locked behind stone and men with blades, is that it?”
“I intend tae keep ye alive.”
“There it is,” she snapped. “The noble justification. How generous of ye.”
Domhnall did not rise to the bait. He had seen anger before, but it was men’s anger, hot and clumsy, which had a tendency to spill into violence. Hers was colder, honed, and far more dangerous for it.
“Kenneth MacGregor daes nae forget,” he told her something he was certain she already knew. “Nor daes he forgive. He has already lost what he believed was his by right. He will seek tae reclaim it.”
“I am nae land,” she shot back.
