CHAPTER 12
You deserve a devoted wife who loves you with all her heart.How in the hell did the lass think it was a comfort to tell a man that? It was just a long way of saying nay.
“Now that we have that settled, I’d better catch us some breakfast so we can be on our way.” Rory braced his hands on his thighs and got to his feet.
He’d be glad when they reached MacKenzie lands and could stop running. They had a fortnight of hard travel before they got there. That should give him time enough to change her mind about being his wife.
“Rest while ye can,” he said when Sybil got up and began rolling up the blanket. “We’ve a long day ahead of us, and many more after that.”
“I can’t have your clansmen thinking of me as a useless Lowlander lady, now can I?” Sybil planted a hand on her nicely rounded hip. “Before we reach your home, I intend to learn to help ye in all the ways a Highland lass would.”
“Such as?” The help he desperately needed involved unrolling that blanket—or backing her up against the nearest tree. His mouth practically watered as his gaze drifted up and down her enticing form.
“I don’t know.” Sybil gave an impatient wave of her hand. “Build a fire, cook.”
Rory raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“Give me your flint,” she said, holding out her hand. “I’ll have a fire roaring by the time you’re back.”
“Let me show ye how.”
“No need,” she said. “It can’t be that hard, and I’ve seen ye do it.”
Rory admired her confidence, but making a fire from damp moss and twigs was harder than it looked. And he’d had plenty of practice. But he left her to it.
When he returned with a trout, Sybil was coughing from the smoke. Rory sighed inwardly at her pitiful attempt at a fire. The lass was as helpless as a newborn babe. He reminded himself that she had other qualities that were more valuable to him in a wife than her skill at building a fire. Besides her obvious physical appeal, the lass was witty and bright.
When she looked up, he could not help smiling at the smudges and determined expression on her face—and he was sorely tempted to kiss her. Sybil was not one to give up easily, another attribute he admired, though in her case it verged toward stubbornness.
“All right,” she said. “Show me how.”
She paid close attention as he shared the secrets of building a fire on a damp day.
“I was thinking about what you said earlier,” Sybil said later as she watched him clean the trout, “about me having the protection of your clan without us marrying.”
When he looked up, her expression was innocent, but something about the way she said it put him on his guard. Taking his time, he set the trout to cooking over the fire before saying, “Aye?”
“Well, it made me wonder,” she said, “aren’t your clansmen expecting ye to bring home a wife?”
“Nay.” Rory could not think of a good way to explain it to her, so he left it at that.
He felt her eyes drilling into him, and he did not believe it was because she was fascinated by his skill at cooking trout.
“Ye didn’t tell your clansmen the reason ye traveled all this way, did ye?” she said, resting her hand on her hip, which he was learning was not a good sign. “No one in your clan knows about the marriage contract.”
Rory turned the trout over while he tried to think of an explanation that would not offend her, but nothing came to him.
“Eight long years, and ye never showed it to a soul,” she said. “Why?”
***
Sybil had wondered why no one told Rory the marriage contract was signed by the wrong brother. Though Archie was the queen’s husband and the king’s stepfather, she had thought perhaps not everyone in that distant part of Scotland where Rory lived knew the Douglas chieftain’s name. Now she realized that no one told Rory the contract was faulty because he never shared it with anyone.
That did not explain, however, why he kept a marriage contract he believed was binding a secret.
“Why?” she repeated.
“As I told ye before, I expected your brother would find a way to avoid honoring the agreement,” Rory said. “I don’t like looking like a fool.”