“I don’t know where Petra is,” she declared, her temper snapping. “All I know is that I want to leave this place before Griffin returns.” Emotion thickened her throat, bringing with it a damnable sob that burned the back of her throat. _She had to. _”I want to go home and forget everything.” She swiped a trembling hand through the air. “Forget all of this. This whole bloody journey!” And Griffin. She wished to forget Griffin. Forget loving him.
Heavy silence fell.
Osborn shifted his attention, looking over her shoulder.
A tremor skimmed her spine. The tiny hairs at her neck tingled.
Deep awareness settled in the pit of her stomach. Slowly, she turned.
“Griffin,” she breathed, heat rushing to her face as she realized he had her heard her every word.
He stood in the wide threshold, travel-worn, the hem of his cloak sodden from snow and mud, his hat hanging limply in his hand. Her heart ached at the sight of him, her gaze hungrily devouring him—this man she had thought never to see again.
She spared a quick glance for the reed-thin man at his side. The reverend no doubt. Here to wed him to Petra, the bride she had helped escape. Nervousness coursed through her. How would he react to the news that Petra had fled?
“Griffin!” MacFadden rounded the table. “Why did you not tell us you were leaving? With this wretched storm, I was plagued with worry.”
Griffin’s boots clicked over the stone floor, ringing with quiet command, eyes fixed on her as he removed his gloves. He motioned the reverend into one of the dining table’s high-backed chairs even as he remained standing, a dark brow arching as he eyed her.
She flexed her fingers around the handle of her valise, her palms growing slippery with perspiration.
His eyes drilled into her with an intensity she could not decipher, burning a hole straight through her. Surely he was not angry over her words, not when he intended to marry Petra. Why should he care if she left?
“No one seemed to give a damn about what I had to say.” Although he addressed his grandfathers, his eyes spoke to her, sharp with accusation, conveying that he thought she shared in that charge.
And he was correct. She had not considered him. Or Petra. Just as she had not considered or trusted Portia all those years ago.
And yet she had changed, had become a different woman in loving him. She helped Petra escape, after all.
Longing seized her, a deep yearning to confide to him that she had awakened at last. As though emerging from a dream. She understood it was not her place to make decisions for Griffin. Or anyone. The only person in the world whose happiness she could control was her own. And for the first time in memory, she actually believed she deserved happiness. Would not settle for less.
“What are you talking about?” Gallagher demanded with a puff of his barrel chest.
“I did not leave to fetch the reverend for me and Petra.” His gaze remained trained on her with unswerving focus.
Both his grandfathers exchanged befuddled looks.
“I fetched the reverend so that Petra might marry the man _she _ wants to marry.”
“You,” MacFadden quickly supplied with an impatient wave of his hand. “The lass agreed to marry you.”
_”Agreed,” _ Griffin echoed, nodding. “A bit different from want, is it not? She may have agreed to wed me, but she wanted to marry Andrew.”
“Andrew?” Gallagher scratched his thick beard. “Who the devil is Andrew?”
“You had no right,” Osborn bellowed. “Such a decision falls to me and _I _ say my daughter will not marry a servant.”
“Who is this Andrew?” MacFadden’s confused gaze shot back and forth between Griffin and Osborn.
“A good man who loves and _wants _ to marry Petra,” Astrid volunteered. “He doesn’t care what happened to her,” she added, hoping that conveyed just how honorable his intentions ran. Petra’s family should be relieved that such a man wanted to marry her, but Astrid knew enough about the ambitions of men to know that it would matter little…if at all. No doubt Griffin’s revelation would send the entire MacFadden clan thundering after Petra. Her shoulders slumped. She and Andrew would never reach Glasgow.
“I knew you had something to do with this,” Osborn exploded, slamming his fist into his palm as if he wished it were her.
Griffin looked at her strangely, head cocked. “You knew about Petra and Andrew?”
Raising her chin, she decided the time had arrived for Griffin to see she wasn’t the same woman he had met on a Scottish roadside. Someone afraid to live. Afraid to surrender her heart lest she become as lost and pitiable as her mother.
“I did. And I provided a distraction yesterday so that they could escape.”
“You deceitful witch!” Osborn cried.
Griffin watched her, approval glowing in his eyes. An approval she felt deep within herself, a lovely suffusing warmth.
“You knew, too. You fetched the reverend for them?” Her gaze dropped to the reverend, now sitting at the table with a pint of ale before him, watching the scene unfold as if it were a Drury Lane performance.
“Yes. I fetched the reverend for them.” Griffin stared at her one long moment before adding,
“And for me.”
“You?” she asked, confused. “But you said—”
His gaze dropped to her valise. “You’re leaving.” The statement hung between them, accusatory, and yet a question lingered in his eyes.
He had not fetched the reverend so that he could wed Petra. The bewildered thought tripped through her mind. What did he mean he had fetched the reverend for him? Unsure, she took a halting step toward him.
Osborn stepped between them, blocking Griffin from her eyes, filling her vision with his hate-filled countenance.
“I’ll know where my daughter has fled this instant.”
Griffin spoke, his voice dangerous and low. “Then perhaps you should ask me.”
Osborn swung to face him. “You? How would you know? She absconded after you left.”
“Yes, but the good reverend and I happened upon Petra and Andrew on our way back here.”
“You’ve seen Petra?”
“Yes.”
By now, Osborn’s eyes bulged in his flushed face. “And you did not force them to return with you?”
“No,” Griffin answered so evenly that even Astrid began to feel exasperated. “In fact,” he added,
“I wished them Godspeed on their way.”
“Where are they?” Osborn growled.
“On their way to Glasgow. Where they will board a ship bound for America.”
“America!”
“Yes.” Griffin nodded in satisfaction. “I had the good reverend marry them this very morning.
And as a wedding gift, I supplied them with the means for passage.”
Chapter 26
Griffin watched as all eyes swung to Mr. Walters, seeking confirmation. The reverend raised his tankard in a cheerful salute, his easy smile quickly slipping when he caught so many dark glowers cast his way.
“Griffin,” MacFadden began, “how could you aid your own kinswoman in…in,” his grandfather paused, sputtering for words, waving a broad hand as though he could catch the words on the air.
“Do you care so little for the lass that you would aid her in wedding someone so beneath her?
And then send her halfway across the world to God knows what fate?”
“Petra and her husband carry signed letters from me granting them management of my lands in Texas for a period of two years. If after that time, they are content with their life there, and I am satisfied with reports of their progress, I will sign over the deed.”
“Lands?” Osborn sneered. “You mean a farm. You’ve sentenced my daughter to life as a farmer’s wife in some primitive Godforsaken frontier.”
“Andrew’s accustomed to hard work. And Petra will thrive there…a place where people will not judge her for her rape or the mark on her face, but by the merit with which she lives.”
Silence met his announcement.
MacFadden’s dark brows drew together in an expression of deep contemplation.
Griffin looked to Astrid, the only person, he realized, whose opinion really mattered to him.
Her dark eyes glowed as they looked at him, her approval shining through. The precise look he had missed seeing in his father’s eyes. The look in her eyes wiped clean all the guilt he had harbored over the years.
And in that moment, he knew it was worth it. Helping Petra, giving up his lands, everything he had ever worked for, everything he had ever known, in order to remain here…it was all worth it.
She was worth it. They both were.
Griffin cleared his throat. “I will remain here.”
MacFadden lifted his head, losing the rather dazed expression on his face. “Aye. Well. That, at the least, is right.” He nodded, looking vastly pleased. “This is your home now.”
“Well, this is bloody convenient,” Osborn hissed, his voice sharp as cut glass. “Petra dispatched, forever lost to me. And Shaw here claims my inheritance as his due. But what of me?” he demanded, pounding his chest. “What am I left with?” His nostrils flared with a harsh release of breath. “Nothing, I tell you. I obtain nothing out of all this!”
“Hell, man,” Gallagher snorted. “Quit your bleating. You’re hurting my ears.”
Osborn flushed as Griffin’s grandfathers shared a chuckle.
Griffin said nothing, merely trained his attention on Astrid, wondering what had motivated her to help Petra elope when she had been so vocal about him marrying the girl, when she had been as irksome as everyone else, more so, assuming she knew what was best for him.
“Astrid,” he murmured, as if no one else was in the room, as if he spoke to her alone, with no prying ears—or eyes.
Her earlier words played in his mind like a tune he could not quit. All I know is that I want to leave…to go home. I’d like to forget everything.
Including him?
With his heart pounding fiercely against his chest, he glanced again at her well-worn valise.
“You truly mean to leave?”
Something flickered across her face, an emotion he could not name. But emotion nonetheless.
Not the inscrutable mask. Not the cool, unaffected expression. No. Her eyes gleamed. A feverish light glinted at the dark centers.
“No,” she whispered, shaking her fair head and taking several halting steps toward him.
He nodded, something lifting, easing within him as he gazed into her eyes.
“Reverend,” he called, gaze still fixed on her, devouring her. His fingers twitched at his sides, the urge to pull her to him and never let go overwhelming.
The reverend rose from where he sat, dabbing at his mouth, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed his bite of food. “Mr. Shaw?”
His heart swelled, beating fast and hard as a drum against his chest. “I’d like you to perform that other ceremony I mentioned. Now. If you please.”
“Certainly.” Mr. Walter’s gaze shifted to Astrid, along with everyone else’s in the hall.
“Lad,” MacFadden’s voice rumbled gruffly across the air. “You cannot mean to consider this Sassenach for your wife.”
“I can. I do.” His lips twitched. “I’ve grown quite fond of this Sassenach,” he added, adopting his grandfather’s thick burr.
“She’s a cold one,” Gallagher reminded.
Griffin smiled, recalling that he had thought the precise thing when he first met her. “I’ve never met a woman who makes my blood run hotter.”
Astrid’s cheeks pinkened.
“Och,” Gallagher mumbled, sagging back in his chair and clapping a hand over his brow. “She’s bewitched him.”
Osborn thrust his face near Astrid’s. “You’re naught but a troublesome harpy sent to wreak havoc in my life.”