Page 2 of Bound to a Scot (Sins in a Kilt #2)
CHAPTER TWO
M addox turned back to where the woman had been standing, disappointed to find that she was already gone. She was beautiful, the most beautiful woman Maddox had ever seen. When their eyes had met, he had felt his heart leap into his throat. Even now, just thinking about her, he felt his stomach turn over on itself.
“Another cup of wine?”
He turned to the barmaid and nodded. She gave him a flirtatious smile as she set another cup down on the table in front of him before taking the empty one and setting it on her tray.
“’Tis some weather out there, eh?” she asked.
Maddox nodded but said nothing as he tossed a couple of coppers onto her tray. He wasn’t interested in having a conversation with her. She was pretty enough and maybe there had been a time in his life when he would have bedded her for sport. But that time in his life was long over. He was no longer that sort of man. The barmaid, perhaps sensing his distinct lack of desire, turned and walked away.
As he stared into the flames, sipping his mulled wine, he pictured the woman in his mind’s eye. Half a foot shorter than him at least, she had a petite but curvy figure. Her long hair was the color of warm chocolate, and her eyes were as vibrantly green as a meadow of grass in springtime. He imagined brushing his fingers across her soft, alabaster-colored skin and shuddered. The woman had stirred something deep inside of him. Something he hadn’t felt in a long time.
He had no idea who she was, but Maddox knew that she was somebody. The fact that she’d come in with a dozen armed men wearing tunics with a sigil from a house he didn’t recognize was a testament to that. He thought she must have been some highborn lady who ordinarily wouldn’t stay in a place like the Three Crowns , but like most everybody else under that roof, she had been driven indoors to seek shelter from the storm raging outside.
Maddox himself would not be sitting in the Three Crowns , nor Colonsay at all, if it was not out of necessity. His clan was failing. Life in his lands was growing more difficult by the season. And though he cared for very little these days, he did not want his people to suffer for his indifference and neglect. The only reason he was in Colonsay was because he had a chance to fix things and thus make life better for his people.
Out of the blue, he had received an offer from Laird Burchard Macfie. In exchange for the coin he needed to replenish his coffers and put back into his clan, Macfie wanted an alliance. He had somehow learned Maddox possessed a large, well-trained army of some of the fiercest warriors in all of Scotland and he wanted to have them at his back. Macfie sought an alliance. One he hoped to seal by wedding Maddox to his daughter Cecilia.
Maddox had been married once. He’d loved her, of course. It hadn’t been the sort of soul-shaking love the poets wrote about but he’d thought Ailsa a good woman and he’d been more than excited when she became with child. Maddox never thought he could be as happy as he was knowing they were bringing an heir into the world. Life had been good, and the blessings had been many. Or so he’d thought.
But then there had been complications with the pregnancy and things had changed. The midwives had done everything in their power to help his wife bring their child into the world, but nothing they had tried worked. He had stood by and watched his wife’s lifeblood—his child’s lifeblood—spilling from her body. And just before she’d passed, Ailsa had told him she needed to confess, that she didn’t want to leave the world with the weight of her sin upon her soul. His wife had been unfaithful to him and the child in her womb was not his.
Ailsa died shortly after she’d confessed to him. Maddox’s heart had been torn from his chest and his entire world had been turned on its head. Nothing he knew to be true had been. His entire life had been a farce, a lie.
“At least she got tae leave the bleedin’ world with a clean conscience,” he muttered bitterly.
“What did ye say, mate?”
Maddox turned to the man who’d spoken. He was older, with wispy white hair, a prominent nosed, and dark eyes that were red and rheumy. The man sat by himself a table away and appeared deep in his cups. Maddox shook his head.
“Naethin’ old timer,” Maddox said. “Just talkin’ tae meself.”
“Dae that enough and people will say ye’ve gone mad and lock ye away.”
He chuckled darkly and turned back to his cup. “Maybe they should.”
Ever since Ailsa had confessed her sin to him, Maddox had ceased to care about much of anything. His cousin and advisor, Adair, had finally had to knock some sense into him—literally. He’d slapped Maddox around until he’d pulled himself out of his cups long enough to listen to what he’d had to say. It had taken several days, but Adair had finally managed to sober him up enough to see the sorry state the clan was falling into because of him.
It had been Adair who’d suggested he meet with Laird Macfie, and it had been Adair who’d convinced him to hear the man out. Maddox had no interest in an alliance sealed by marriage, but it had been Adair who’d told him that as the laird, he sometimes had to make sacrifices for the good of his people. And marrying Macfie’s daughter, Cecilia, was one of those necessary sacrifices. It would provide the clan with the coin it needed and would hopefully, in Adair’s words, help Maddox pull his head out of his backside. Maddox was skeptical of that.
Having been burned once already, Maddox had no desire to marry again. He’d argued there was no law forbidding a laird from not marrying. But deep down, Maddox remembered that his father had urged him to marry, telling him it would provide the clan with stability. And more than anything, a good marriage would provide him with an heir. Even still, given his experience, marrying again was not something he wanted. But he knew his clan needed the coin Macfie would provide, so he’d gone to Colonsay with the idea of persuading the laird to make an arrangement that did not require sealing it with a marriage.
“Where are ye from, lad?”
Maddox turned to see the old timer looking at him again, his eyes filled with curiosity. “How dae ye ken I’m nae from Colonsay?”
“Because I’ve lived here all me life and I ken everybody in Colonsay. And I can say fer sure I’ve never seen ye before in me life.”
Maddox chuckled. “I’m from Grayburgh.”
The man pursed his thin lips. “Grayburgh, eh? Where the bleedin’ hell is that?”
“A few days ride tae the north. Up along the coast.”
The man nodded. “Ahh. I see. And what brings ye down tae our fair isle?”
Maddox opened his mouth then closed it again, trying to figure out what to say. He’d traveled incognito, not giving any hint that he was the laird of a clan. It probably wasn’t necessary and revealing who he was would have probably earned him more deferential behavior from some of the people he’d come across, but truthfully, Maddox didn’t care about any of that. He never had. Maybe he was paranoid, but he just didn’t want people to know who he was.
“Ye ask a lot of questions, old timer. Ye the bleedin’ mayor?”
He chuckled. “Maybe I am.”
Maddox ground his teeth together, growing irritated by the interrogation. He was not a very open man on the best of days and this definitely wasn’t one of them. While he didn’t wish to be outright rude, he wanted to end the line of questioning.
“So? What brings ye down here, stranger?”
“Just business, old timer,” he finally said.
“Aye? What kind of business?”
“Me own business.”
Maddox’s voice was as cold as his gaze and the old man finally seemed to take the hint. He gave Maddox a nod, then stood up and carried his cup to the other side of the common room and took a seat with some other white hairs. Their small group cast dubious looks back at Maddox, but he ignored them and turned back to the fire and his own cup of mulled wine, quickly losing himself in his thoughts and memories once more.
But his mind was filled with images of the woman he’d seen before. And the more he tried to push them away, the more persistent they became. The thoughts unbidden, he recalled the swell of her breasts, the curve of her hips, and her full, heart-shaped lips. Just the image of her in his mind stirred something deep in his loins, making him swell uncomfortably beneath the table.
He cleared his throat and drained his cup, then signaled for another, desperately trying to banish the thoughts of the woman that were invading his mind. Maddox was certain he’d never met her before but there was something familiar about her all the same. He leaned back in his chair and tried to figure out what that was. Understanding eluded him, but he found himself wondering if he was ever going to see her again. Hoping to see her again.
He shook his head, knowing that train of thinking wouldn’t lead him anywhere good.