“Sorcha can sleep with us and our two babes,” Sìleas said, holding her hand out to Sorcha. “The twins are already upstairs with their nursemaid.”
“Sorcha isn’t used to strangers—,” Glynis started to say before Sorcha bounded to her feet and took Sìleas’s hand.
“It’s your wedding night,” Sileas said with a soft smile. “Sorcha will enjoy being with the twins.”
Glynis felt bereft without her. Alex’s mother came to sit beside her, which was unlikely to cheer her up. His mother must have been beautiful before lines of disappointment etched the skin around her eyes and mouth.
“Alex has a good heart,” his mother said, patting Glynis’s hand. “Unfortunately, he has bad blood from his father.”
His mother was slurring her words. Were all the MacDonalds drunkards?
“To the one man who could tame my wild daughter!” her father shouted across the room, as he lifted his cup high—proving that the MacDonalds had nothing on the MacNeils when it came to drink.
Glynis closed her eyes and wished she were anywhere but at her wedding.
Glynis could tell that the drunker the men became, the more colorful were their stories. Memories of her first wedding swirled through her head and weighed down on her chest. Magnus was not the sort of man to be sensitive about a lass’s first time, and drunk he was worse.
Glynis stood, intent on slipping out of the hall and up the stairs to the bedchamber Ilysa had prepared for them—and barring the door when she got there.
But before she took two steps, one of the men shouted, “Alex, your bride is tired of waiting for ye. Time for the bedding!”
CHAPTER 37
Alex did not remember his wedding night.
God help him, he was a bastard. A useless man. A poor excuse for a husband. And his head hurt like the devil. Oh, Jesus, take me now. What had he been thinking?
His mouth was dry, he had sand in his eyes, and he was still drunk, but he had this blinding headache. And worst of all was the sinking feeling in his stomach that came from knowing he had fooked up badly. As awful as he felt, he rolled over toward his bride, intending to make up for his lack of attention with a bout of morning lovemaking.
He stretched his arm out and felt around. But his bride was not in the bed.
Alex crawled out of bed and poured the pitcher of water into the basin. He splashed water on his face, and when that did not do the job, he stuck his head in the basin and closed his eyes. God’s bones, he felt ill. And it was going to get worse.
Alex spent the next hour searching the castle high and low for Glynis—while trying to avoid telling anyone that he had already lost his wife. He finally found her in one of the boats pulled up on the shore. She was sitting as straight as an arrow with her arms crossed over her chest, a grim look on her face, and her eyes fixed on the sea.
Glynis did not turn to look at him as he climbed into the boat.
“What are ye doing here?” he asked after a while.
“I’m waiting to leave,” she said. “I want to put our wedding night behind me as soon as possible.”
He had slept through his wedding night. God help him, because the bedding was the only part about being a husband that Alex had been certain he could do well.
Glynis just sat there with her arms folded and her mouth clamped shut again. At least she didn’t shout and throw things like his mother. He considered pointing out to her that their true wedding night had been after they had made their vows alone to each other—and he’d acquitted himself quite well. But he thought better of it.
Just when he thought she might never speak again, Glynis said, “Ye never told me where we will live.”
“Well, that is something I wanted to discuss with ye.”
“Don’t pretend I have a choice, and ye haven’t already decided,” she said with her gaze still fixed on the horizon.
He drew in a deep breath and reminded himself that she was used to having her opinions ignored. Perhaps this gave him an opportunity to make up lost ground.
“My father’s lands will be mine one day, so there is good reason for us to live there.” Alex thought her back went stiffer, though he didn’t see how that was possible. “But Connor needs a man to go to North Uist, where our clansmen have been living at the mercy of his pirating uncles.”
Alex wanted to go there. Fighting the pirates appealed to him, of course, and living with either of his parents was his own vision of hell. But even more than that, he wanted to take on the responsibility of securing North Uist for his clan.
“Before I left, I told Connor that when I returned I would go live on North Uist and bring order to the island,” he said. “But that was before I had a wife and daughter to consider. ’Tis far more dangerous there than on my father’s lands, so I’m inclined to ask Connor to send Duncan instead.”