Page 20 of The Rise of the Highland King (The Last Celtic King #1)
THE BARGAIN
"I will not marry that man!"
Mara’s voice carried around her father’s study, as she slammed her hand down on his desk and shook her head. Though she did all she could to sound certain of herself, the words trembled as they came out of her mouth—perhaps because she knew that she had little choice in the matter, whether she liked it or not.
Her father, Laird Ewan Fraser, grimaced at her, his jaw tight. His dark hair seemed to be streaked with more gray than before, the wrinkles around his green eyes deeper than ever. In short, he looked exhausted, and, after the defeat that they had suffered against the MacLeods only the day before, she supposed it should not have surprised her. A clash between the warring clans had taken place on the road that led down to the local village of Cannich, and it had left several of her father’s men distinctly worse for wear—if they had made it out alive at all.
"Mara, you’ve no choice in the matter," Her brother, Callum, interjected from the other side of the table. She roved her gaze towards him, her eyes narrowing. His eyes, the same green as hers, glared back at her, as though daring her to argue more than she already had, and they both lifted their sharp chins, mirroring each other.
"That’s easy for you to say!" she exploded. "You’ve no’ got to marry some person you’ve never met, from a clan who?—"
"Aye, but if I had to, I would," he replied, glaring her down. Much as she wanted to argue with him on the matter, she knew he was telling the truth. If she knew anything about her brother, it was that he was loyal to his clan, almost to a fault. He would have done anything their father asked of him, if he thought it meant keeping the family safe.
Beside her, her cousin Catriona, who had just returned from tending to the injured men, reached over to give her hand a squeeze, taking a break from fiddling with her chestnut braids for a moment. She understood. She knew what it was for a woman to marry a man she had never met, for a woman to submit herself to the boot-heel of an enemy, no less. And, much as Mara wished to fight her father on this further, she could already sense that his mind had been made up, and there was nothing in the world she could have done to change it. The flecks of gold that were normally visible in her hazel eyes had vanished in this grayish light.
"Laird MacLeod has offered us a chance to end this conflict, fer good," her father continued. "Seal an alliance between our two clans, and end the bloodshed, once and for all."
"We need that, Mara," Callum reminded her, his voice laced with heaviness. "Our soldiers cannae take much more…"
She sighed, gazing down at Catriona’s hand squeezing hers beneath the table. They were right. Though she was no warrior herself, she had seen the bad shape that their men had been in when they had come back from the various trials and tribulations that the battles with the MacLeod clan had delivered to them, constant clashes that had left their small army depleted, and made her father look weak in the process.
"There must be some other way," she pleaded, lifting her gaze to meet her father again. "I-I ken how important this alliance is, but there has to be some other way to secure it…"
Her father shook his head slightly.
"If there was, I’d have found it," he replied, his voice softening. It was his way of telling her that if he could have rescued her from this fate, he would have, but he had considered all the alternatives, and had come up with nothing else that would even come close to delivering the answers they so desperately needed.
She glanced beyond her father, to the large oak tree that reached to just outside the window of his study. It had been there since she was a little girl, and she had watched it rotate through the seasons for two decades now. She had seen its leaves darken and redden and fall from the branches, as it was doing just now. But if she left…if she left, she wasn’t sure she would ever get to see that again. Suddenly, a lump leapt into her throat, and she bit it back with another surge of anger.
"You cannae expect me to put aside everything I know about the MacLeods, as though it’s nothing," she snapped, brushing Catriona’s hand aside. Much as she appreciated her cousin’s vote of support, she knew that all the small details that might tie her to this place would only make getting away even harder. She had to shake off all of the connections that kept her here. It was the only way she stood a chance of surviving whatever lay ahead.
"Aye, but ye’ll see a different side to them when the alliance has been secured," Callum pointed out. "Of course ye’ll no’ see anything worth marrying in them. But he’s a noble man, and I?—"
"And that means that I should just consent to being his wife, does it?" she shot back at her brother. His sense of duty put hers to shame, but even still, she could not just pretend that she had no issue with how all of this was unfolding. He bristled slightly, shooting a look towards their father for some kind of support.
"That’s no’ what I mean?—"
"What do you mean, then? That I should just go quietly and marry that man, who I have been raised to hate all these years?" she demanded, her voice rising.
"Mara, keep yer voice down?—"
"No!" Mara exclaimed, cutting off her father even as he spoke. "I want everyone to hear this. After all, if I’m to be married, then they’ll all find out about it soon enough, will they not?"
She could hear footsteps scuffing outside of the study, probably a handful of the servants, trying to listen in to what was being said, no doubt they would be quick to pass this gossip around the cold halls of the Keep. Though she had never imagined that she would be the focus of it—at least, not under these circumstances.
"Alec MacLeod will make a fine husband for you," her father replied, voice cold with pragmatism. "And I’ll hear no more argument fae you on the matter. You should learn to soften yer tone, now that you’re to be a wife, no husband will want you if you talk back in such a fashion."
She twisted her hands in her lap; that was exactly what she was worried about. She knew that her personality, her fiery passion, would be stamped out of her the moment that she was married to that man, and she wished there was anything she could do, anything at all, to maintain it, to foster that little spark within herself.
"I’ll be in contact wi’ his father in the next few days to arrange the specifics," her father continued, pushing a hand through his hair and then clapping his hands together. "By the week’s end, the alliance will be sealed."
Sealed with my freedom, Mara thought to herself, as her chin slumped down to her chest.
She could feel Catriona staring at her, silently imploring her to glance over in her direction so she could say something, but she would not give her the look. She couldn’t stand the thought of her cousin trying to comfort her this time. Though Catriona might have been a healer of some repute, there was nothing she could say that would have salved the wounds Mara could feel opening up inside herself at that moment.
She pushed her chair back from the table with a loud screech, and rose to her feet. Outside, she could hear footsteps scattering, as those who had been trying to hear what was going on made a break for their freedom.
"Well, if the decision has been made, I dinnae see what else there is to talk about," she snapped at her father.
"Mara, sit," he ordered her. "We have to discuss the details?—"
"What details are there to discuss?" she demanded. "It sounds as though you have already put paid to all of them. I should be getting my rest and readying myself for my wedding, should I not?"
"Dinnae be childish," Callum ordered her. "Sit. Sit, so we can talk about?—"
"There’s nothing to speak of," she snarled back at her brother, and, with that, she turned and stalked off towards the door, refusing to stand around and listen to another moment of what would come from the mouths of her family. They had decided her fate already, and she would have been foolish to try and argue against it. She needed to take what little time she had left in this place and enjoy it while she still could. In a matter of days, everything she had known would be torn away from her, and she would have no choice to but to live a life that she had not chosen for herself.
A life that she would never have chosen at that. She had imagined getting married, of course she had—her and Catriona had played at being brides when they were just little girls, thinking of the man that they would one day get to call a husband, and she had pictured someone kind, someone loving, someone who would respect her and her family, who would never have expected her to give up on the life she had led before.
But that would not be the case, not with Alec. No, they would want to force all of it out of here, everything she had known before. The MacLeods had loathed the Frasers for as long as she had been alive, and that would not change just because they had decided to use one of their daughters as little more than a broodmare. They would force everything that made her a Fraser from her system, until there was nothing left but the husk of the woman she had once been.
She reached her bedchambers and stormed inside, throwing herself down on to her bed and trying to bite back the tears that threatened to overwhelm her. She hated crying. Hated showing any kind of weakness at all, if she could help it. But here, now, the weight of everything that had just happened soared up inside her, beyond the point of no return, and she felt the tears begin to flood down her cheeks as her chest heaved with pain.
She would be assimilated into the Fraser clan, crushed until there was nothing left of her. The thought of it felt like a stone pressing on her chest, until she could barely breathe. The Fraser woman she had been, the proud member of this clan, they would want her dead and gone and forgotten. They would want her written out of history, until she was nothing more than a willing wife for a man like Alec.
She shuddered at the thought. No. No, she would not allow it to happen like that. She could not, she would not let them undo the person that she had been for these past twenty years, they could not force it out of her. No matter what they asked of her, no matter how keenly they demanded her to change, she would not let it happen. She would find some way to rebel against them, to fight back against the onslaught of all that they would lay at her feet.
She pushed herself up on her bed, and glanced around the room, taking in the sight of it, breathing in the familiar air, the same air she had breathed her whole life. Yes, no matter how hard they tried, the MacLeods would not crush her spirit. They would not turn her against her family. She would nurse the flame of the person she always had been, deep within herself, and she would let nothing destroy it.
She balled the covers into fists in her hands, feeling the fabric between her fingers, reminding herself just what it felt like. She would commit every detail to memory, and hold it close within her.
And whatever Alec tried to force from her mind, from her personality, he would never be able to. No matter how hard he tried.