Highlanders Collection. Ann Lethbridge

call.

      Tavis waited until she entered the stone building and turned back to Duncan, believing that he would explain everything now that his wife was gone. Instead, the man who he counted as his mentor and his friend shrugged and left him standing there.

      This day grew stranger with every passing moment, so Tavis decided to carry out his duties and not worry over this strange behaviour from those not old enough yet to be daft, but old enough not to act so foolishly. In two days, Ciara would leave to meet her potential husband and his family and she would not be his concern at all.

      In reality, and although the choice was in her grasp, there was little chance of her not marrying young James Murray. She’d turned down three other proposals, but this time the laird and her parents supported the match. The Murrays supported the match. So, the next time he saw her, she would be marrying someone else.

      Though he could not admit it, nor could he explain it, that fact did not sit well with him.

      Not at all.

      Marian made her way to Jocelyn’s solar where her friends had gathered to discuss their plans. Though forbidden from trying to make a better match for her daughter than the one suggested by the laird, due to this stupid agreement with their husbands, she could at least know what her friends were doing. Duncan was not happy with her, for he knew she was about to interfere, and she would have blurted out the truth of it to Tavis if not for her husband’s interruptions.

      More than a year ago, the laird had discovered his wife’s matchmaking scheme and his surprise had turned into a challenge about whether he and his advisers—the men—could choose a better spouse for their children than his wife and her confidantes—the women—could. Neither side worried that the other would not choose carefully, they simply believed they could choose better. Unfortunately for Marian, her precious daughter was the first to come of age and be ready to marry.

      Now, as Jocelyn gathered them together to discuss their plan, Marian had to listen and not offer any suggestions or help.

      ‘He did not express any objections to her marrying young Jamie Murray,’ she finally blurted out when she could stand it no longer. ‘Not a word.’

      The silence that met her statement was followed by tsking and sighing, but no one offered any advice on how to make Tavis see the truth that each of the women gathered there had seen for years—he was the best man for Ciara. He’d shunned any attempt to get him to consider marriage again after his young wife died in childbirth four years before. Though men could be stoic and never admit to the softer feelings, they suspected that it had played a part in his resistance to finding another wife since that time.

      And through those difficult years since Saraid had passed, the only woman he did keep company with was Ciara. Their friendship had never waned since they’d met on her journey here from her home and clan. Nearing manhood, Tavis never shunned Ciara’s attentions or company, even though most young men that age would have. At least not until this last year, when something had clearly happened between them—something that had widened the gap.

      ‘I had such hopes of him acknowledging his feelings for her and saying so by now,’ Margriet, Rurik’s wife, said.

      ‘He watches her even when he does not realise it,’ Jocelyn offered. ‘But ’tis time for him to step forward and claim her.’

      ‘Before it is too late,’ Marian whispered, knowing that once Ciara left on her journey there would be little or no opportunity to stop the coming marriage.

      Or mayhap it was? Or they were wrong in their belief that he was the right match for Ciara? Her heart worried so much for her beloved daughter and for the things Ciara did not, and hopefully would never, know about her true parentage.

      Because of those secrets of the past, Ciara’s wealth had been inherited from a settlement made by Marian’s brother, the laird of the Robertsons. It was a powerful enticement for offers of marriage, as was her connection to the influential Robertsons and to the powerful MacLeries. There had been a number of offers, each met with polite uninterest on her daughter’s part.

      However, about two months before, Ciara had suddenly accepted the match with young Jamie Murray. Marian knew that something had happened to make her resigned to marry, but no amount of questioning got an explanation. Unwilling to force it from her, Marian accepted her silence on the matter and hoped for the best.

      Jocelyn stood then and lifted her cup, waiting for the rest of the women gathered there to do the same. Though she felt little hope that true love would win out in this situation, she raised hers and fought off the tears that threatened.

      ‘To the best husband for our beloved Ciara,’ Jocelyn offered.

      ‘To the best!’ the others chimed in, touching the rims of their cups and then drinking from them to seal the words.

      Marian drank the contents of her cup in one mouthful and shook her head. She did not have a good feeling about this or about Ciara’s happiness. ‘From your mouth to the Almighty’s ears,’ she said, offering up a prayer that He would pay attention to a mother’s earnest prayer for a beloved daughter.

       Chapter Three

      Ciara could not stop herself from seeking him out in the crowd. This feast was in her honour and she’d hoped against hope that Tavis would attend, but once more, she was foolish to harbour such desires. They’d not spoken since that humiliating night and she’d not had the courage to approach him since. Even if she wished to admit that he’d been right about her infatuation with him, she could not take the step to tell him so. Now though, as she prepared to take this next huge step in her life and begin to move from this clan to another, she wanted to speak of it—to remove it from plaguing her thoughts and her heart as she left the MacLeries.

      Elizabeth sat at her side and Ciara smiled when her friend touched her hand in silent acknowledgement of her sadness. It was a sign of her faithfulness as a friend, even when she knew not the whole truth of the matter.

      ‘You need only tell your parents you do not wish this match to go ahead and they will find a way out of it, Ciara,’ she whispered.

      ‘I know that. My parents would not force me into a marriage I did not want, Elizabeth. But Tavis was right when he said I must grow up and seek an appropriate marriage.’

      The words sounded calm and very mature, but they burned her tongue with their bitterness. Doing the adult thing and accepting and liking it were two different matters and she feared the second would come much more slowly than the first had. Worse, her parents’ efforts to find her a suitable husband had not slowed one bit, despite her efforts to break three betrothals. The feeling that she was being pushed away grew, even though she knew they loved her.

      However, a Robertson girl raised by the MacLerie clan was never really part of either family. That fact was hard to ignore.

      ‘This match has much to offer both clans,’ she repeated the line she’d used before, this time as much for herself as for Elizabeth.

      Elizabeth squeezed her hand and smiled. ‘If you are certain, then?’

      ‘I needed only to see that my feelings were just the ones from my days as a bairn,’ Ciara explained as she tamped down any reaction to Tavis’s entrance into the hall. ‘’Twas never true love.’

      Her heart pounded so hard she was certain Elizabeth and anyone within ten feet of her could hear it, but they did not react to it as she did. Ciara had mastered the skill of forcing her wayward and inexperienced heart to ignore Tavis, but as he caught her gaze and nodded at her, her stomach joined in, revealing how much he did yet affect her, tightening and threatening to expel the few morsels of her dinner that she had eaten.

      She could have, and she would have, regained control if he had walked in the opposite direction or if he’d called out to someone across the large room. But