Chapter Thirty-One

“I hoped we might speak together.”

Diarmad delivered the words from the doorway of the ladies’ chamber, a room in the Chief’s house where women gathered to do their needlework. Long ago, Diarmad’s mother had reigned here, and it had been a place of warmth, laughter, and sometimes silliness. Since her death, clanswomen still gathered, but the chamber had lost most its heart.

Now Una sat here with two companions, she working at her weaving. Most women spun wool or fashioned garments, but Una had always made tapestries depicting scenes from the clan’s history.

She looked up now and fixed Diarmad with a somber gaze. But she sounded warm when she answered, “Of course. Did you wish us to speak alone? We can walk out.”

But her two companions arose and, with an exchange of smiles, laid their work aside. Diarmad stepped in, and they went past him, out of the chamber.

“Come and sit,” Una invited. “It seems we need not walk out after all.”

He approached her slowly, unable to keep from admiring how lovely she looked. She had plaited her dark hair into a thick braid that trailed down her slender back, confined about the crown by a thin, silver band that very nearly matched her eyes. The light streaming into the room warmed her flawless complexion and made her blue gown glow like a jewel.

Nay, she could not be less like Mara MacIvor. Impossible to imagine Una riding him in a victorious show of desire or attacking a man with a blade in her hand, naked as God made her.

Una patted the bench beside her. “Of what do you wish to speak?”

And after all, he did not know how to begin. Mara could be mistaken; he might make a fool of himself. He looked instead at the tapestry. “On what are you working?”

“It is a scene depicting the landing of your ancestor, Raold Ramsen. You ken fine I mean to chronicle all the clan’s history before I am done. I will, in time, make a cloth showing the battle at Culloden—once the grief becomes bearable.”

Diarmad looked into her eyes and wondered about her grief. He saw no stain of sorrow, only the calm composure she usually presented.

“You must be devastated at Cainnech’s loss,” he said. ”After all, you were set to wed in autumn.”

“Aye.” Her hands stilled on the threads in her frame. “Difficult to imagine him as dead, with that great laugh of his stilled and all his kindness flown. Especially when…when I did no’ see his body. I keep expecting him to walk through that door even as he used to do, fresh from practice at arms, with the smell of sunshine in his hair.”

She did love him, Diarmad thought. And she missed him even as did Diarmad. He, too, had trouble believing all Cainnech’s strength and energy gone from the world. He had followed Cainnech so long. Should he follow him also in marriage to Una?

“Did you wish to speak of Cainnech?” Una asked.

“I would no’ grieve you by doing so.”

“Nay, but life maun continue on, Diarmad, as it always does. My tapestries argue that. You will be Chief here, and I stand in service to you.”

And what did that mean, just? Diarmad tried to remember how the betrothal between Una and Cainnech had come about. Their fathers had been close friends, and maybe the agreement was made in their extreme youth, for it always seemed to have been understood, a given for the future.

Indeed, had the Prince appeared in Scotland just a year later to raise the clans, they would have been already wed, and Una a widow.

Would that have changed anything?

“I fear I can never be the Chief my da was,” he said ruefully, “or that Cainnech would ha’ been.”

“You do no’ give yourself enough credit. You never have. Do you ken what Cainnech said about you? That you were a better man with the sword than he and had a heart for justice.”

“Och, nay.” Yet he had survived the battle while Cainnech had not. As for his heart—did justice lie in aught he had done? From the first his heart had protested the service into which his father pressed him, and he seemed to weigh his honor on a far different scale.

Cainnech had been meant to play the part of the Prince—had apparently agreed to it beforehand, a thing he, Diarmad, never would have done.

“Och, aye,” Una returned. “He was so pleased at the man you have become. And I am sure it comforted him at the last to think of you returning home and taking up the place of Chief here, with all its obligations.”

Diarmad once more met her gaze. “All of them?”

She gave a small smile. “Let us speak honestly together, Diarmad, as needs must. I know what you are asking, and I assure you, my hand is yours if you want it. My father betrothed me to the next Chief of Clan Ramsay. And…I am not loath.”

Shock poured through Diarmad, and his heart protested. Where was her grief now? Where her love for Cainnech, that she could so meekly accept such a substitution?

Was it possible she had always wanted him, Diarmad, after all? It seemed almost sacrilegious to believe she could choose him over Cainnech, yet what else was he to think?

What did he see in her eyes? Nothing, beyond a hint of sorrow. No rage against fate, no passion for Cainnech or himself. No love.

Diarmad drew a ragged breath. “I appreciate your…your fealty,” he faltered, “but there is no need to think of such things yet.”

“Ah, but I believe there is. You are now the last of your line. You need to beget an heir as soon as ever may be.”

And was that the only thing that mattered, begetting an heir? But should that not be done in love and desire? Una offered him neither, just duty wrapped in some fascination with the future and the past.

He thought about Mara arching her body into his as he came to her and gave her his seed—claiming him, holding him. A new thought appeared in his mind: what if Mara carried his child even as the landlady at the Horns of the Moon had believed? Was it not possible, given the wild abandon with which they had made love?

His heart stuttered in his chest. Would she leave him if she knew? But perhaps she did not know yet.

He tried to imagine such a child, fiery-haired and with its mother’s courage. His heart stuttered again.

How could he think about begetting an heir on this calm, passionless woman when he wanted Mara MacIvor beneath him? Yet he had always longed for Una. Now she came to him in honor bound.

Gently, he said to Una, “I am glad to know you are not averse. But I feel ’tis much too soon to make such a decision.”

“And I say there is no decision to be made. I think we should be wed at once. It will strengthen and reassure the clan.”

Did his success as Chief rest with him completing Cainnech’s marriage vows? Must he become Cainnech and live the rest of his days so? Aye, he had a duty here, and his father had taught that duty came before all.

But what of his heart? He knew without doubt it did not lie in the grasp of this woman but out on the hillside, in possession of the woman preparing to leave him.