“Who is Maura?”
“She was Ian’s daughter.”
“Was?” Grace asked, darting a look at Ian.
“She killed herself when she realized she’d disgraced her family and that the bastard MacBain would not have her,” Callum continued, drawing her attention again.
Grace snapped her gaze back to Ian. He was standing stone still, his features harsh, his muted-green eyes glazed with pain. She looked back at Callum. “If Michael loved Maura, why wouldn’t he have her?” she asked him.
It was Morgan who snorted. “You’re as naive as she was. MacBain didn’t love her. He just wanted to ruin her for the MacKeage.”
“Who is ‘the MacKeage’ you keep talking about?” Grace asked. “And where is he now?”
Morgan looked at her with a nasty smirk lifting one side of his angered face. “He’s standing beside you,”
he said, nodding at Grey. “Holding your hand.”
Grace pulled her hand away as if it were scorched. She turned and stared up at Grey. “You were engaged to this Maura? Ian’s daughter?” She looked at Ian, trying to judge his age. “How old was she?”
“My girl was sixteen at the time,” Ian told her. “She was supposed to be wed on her seventeenth birthday. Only she never reached it.”
Grace closed her eyes and covered her face with her hands. No wonder these men wanted Michael’s head on a platter. If, that is, what they were saying was true, that Michael had rejected Maura when he found out she was pregnant. A thought crossed her mind, and she turned to Grey.
“How old were you?”
He finally looked at her, and, unlike Ian’s, his eyes were completely devoid of emotion. “I was twenty-eight.”
Grace walked out of the room. There wasn’t a damn thing she had to say to any of them. She crossed the foyer and opened the front door, only to be confronted by the treacherous bridge. She grabbed both sides of the rails and closed her eyes and walked across it.
Damn Grey. The man had been engaged to a child!
Damn every one of them. They were all such…such…men, including Michael MacBain. They deserved to hate each other all the way to hell and back, for all she cared. She was going to the Bigelows’ and getting Baby, then she was going home, locking her door, and not letting any of them on her property again. And just as soon as this ice storm was over, she was getting into Mary’s old beatup truck and driving herself and Baby back to Virginia.
“Are ya not going after her?” Callum asked, looking at the still humming door that Grace had slammed on her way out.
“So I can bring her back to face your anger again?” Grey asked all three of them. “So you can further berate her for being a woman, with a woman’s heart that only wants to help all of her neighbors?”
He turned to the silent priest sitting by the hearth. “What do you think, old man? Should I go after her?”
Daar shook his head, looking tired from the battle he had just witnessed. “Not if you’re not ready to let go of your hatred for MacBain,” he said. “The girl feels a powerful duty to her sister, and your little tale has finally made her realize that she can’t be loyal to you without being disloyal to Mary.”
Grey stared at him for another minute, then turned to look at his men. How was he supposed to put into words what he wasn’t sure of himself? How could he tell a father that they were all to blame for Maura’s death, and not just MacBain, but Grey, Ian himself, and the very society they had lived in back then?
“Your daughter had no desire to marry your laird, Ian,” he began, picking his words carefully but putting the power of his title behind them. “I was twelve years older than she, and I scared her to death. Maura had been in love with MacBain since the summer festival the year before.”
“That’s not true,” Ian protested. “I would have known of such a thing.”
Grey shook his head at the suddenly desperate-looking man. “She was too afraid to tell you or her mother because she didn’t want to disappoint you. She knew how proud you were that your daughter was chosen to marry your laird,” he told him gently.
“That still doesn’t justify what he done, going behind my back like a jackal and seeing Maura without her father’s permission,” Ian said, his expression pained. “She killed herself because she was pregnant and MacBain tossed her away like rubbish.”
“Did he?” Grey asked. “Do we know that as fact, or has that been a convenient excuse all these years, to justify our own arrogance and neglect? Were we all not guilty back then, as men, for forgetting to ask our daughters what they wanted? How many marriages were arranged without their consent?”
“Dammit. That was how it was done then,” Callum said. “It was our duty to guide them and to protect them from their own soft hearts.”
“Why?” Grey asked all three of them. “When you see women like Mary and Grace Sutter, do you consider them inferior? Unable to think for themselves? Can you see any man today arranging a marriage for either one of them that she had no say in?”
“Of course not,” Callum said, frowning. “But that’s different. This is now, not eight hundred years ago.”
“Were our mothers and wives and daughters any less intelligent than Mary and Grace Sutter? Less capable? Less strong?” Grey asked.
“Dammit. MacBain ruined my little girl, and now she’s dead!” Ian shouted hoarsely, wiping at his eyes with the palms of his hands. He wasn’t liking what he was hearing, and Grey hated to see the old warrior in such a state. But this had needed saying for seven years now.
Grey wished he could go back, now that he saw things differently. The MacKeage clan would have been the most powerful in all the Highlands, because they would have had the strength of hundreds of strong, intelligent women behind them.
Ian looked up and glared at Grey. “I’ve kept from killing MacBain myself because that was your duty,”
he said, pointing at Grey, obviously still not willing to let go of his old beliefs. “One you refused to honor.”
“Ian’s right,” Callum interjected. “It doesn’t matter who is to blame, MacBain is still the most responsible for Maura’s death. It was his seed she was carrying that caused her to walk onto the rotten ice of Loc Firth. And now you’re asking us to help the man.”
“I’m not asking,” Grey told them softly. “I’m telling you that I am setting up that equipment tonight, and the choice is yours to help me or not.”
“Ya cannot mean to do it,” Morgan said.
Grey looked around the room. “I don’t see anyone with the authority to stop me. I’m still the laird of what’s left of this clan, and my word still carries the weight it used to.”
“But it’s wrong, what you’re asking of us. No warrior worth his salt aids his enemy,” Ian insisted.
“No, it’s you who are wrong. You’re wanting to continue a war that’s eight hundred years dead. None of it matters anymore. We live here now, the four of us and MacBain. We live in a world where disputes are settled by courts of law. We must adapt to this change in our circumstances and live like the Americans we’ve become. And that means helping out a neighbor, no matter who he is, when we can.”
“It’s Grace Sutter putting these thoughts in your head,” Ian complained, still refusing to let go of his anger.
“Ya want her, and she’s twisted your thinking into a knot.”
Grey shook his head at his disheartened warrior. “Have you not wondered why I never retaliated for MacBain’s role in this?” he asked him. “Not the three years we were still living at home?”
“I thought ya were waiting for a better means of revenge than merely killing him,” Ian said. “I thought ya were waiting for him to take a wife.”
Grey took a step back, appalled at the insult just given him. “You thought I would use a woman for revenge?” he asked in a hushed tone. “Some innocent like Mary Sutter, maybe? Should I have caused her such terror to get even with MacBain? Taken her by force? Or should I have killed her with my bare hands to rob MacBain of her love?” he ended harshly.