Page 40 of The Scot

So Mother had told her too. She’d shared the story with Roysa after Walter’s first visit. At the time, Roysa had thought her mother was being supportive of her love match—but now she wondered if she’d hoped to show Roysa that the affection she’d built up in her mind was naught but a wish. A dream.

It was not the kind of love to hang a marriage on.

“When did she tell you?”

Idalia exchanged a glance with her husband. “When she realized I was falling in love with a blacksmith.”

Terric drummed his fingers on the stem of his goblet. “It appears I’m the only one who doesn’t know the story.”

All too aware of her warming cheeks, Roysa explained, “She was supposed to marry my father, but she fell in love with a Scottish reiver. They married in secret, but of course my grandfather eventually learned of it. He never accepted her husband, even though they had . . .”

She looked to Idalia for help, but her sister did not seem inclined to finish her sentence. Indeed, she was grinning in a most unhelpful manner.

“Relations,” she finished lamely.

“Ahhh,” Terric said, his eyes twinkling in amusement as they met hers. “She was no longer a virgin.”

Roysa dearly wished she’d not taken a sip of wine to hide her embarrassment. Nearly spitting it out, she glared at Terric. The man knew he was mortifying her.

“Just so.”

Roysa sat up in her seat.

“Tragically, he died less than a year after their wedding. My father apparently knew of it, but he still wished to marry her.”

“Knew that she’d been married,” Terric asked, “or that his intended was no longer a virgin?”

Lance swatted his friend, and Roysa silently thanked him.

“You are a brute,” she said.

“I am,” Terric agreed good-naturedly. “’Tis quite a tale.”

Thankful for the bowl of pottage stew in front of her, she gave it her full attention.

“Almost as fantastical as the story of a lord’s daughter falling in love with a blacksmith,” he said, a smile in his voice.

Or of the lady’s other daughter falling for a Scotsman after being cast out by her dead husband’s brother.

Quite a tale, indeed. If she were falling for said Scotsman.

Which she most certainly was not.