to hear,” Adam warned.
“Do go on, Angus,” Letty encouraged with a grin.
“Well, he rode up to the front door of the MacDougal castle and asked to speak to the fair, fiery Nellie. We all expected him to return home with a black eye or a sore jaw.”
“What happened?”
“He was alone with the lass for nigh on an hour. None of us know what happened, but the next week, Nellie married that Lennox lad, and nine months later the clan feud was ended when their bairn was born. Nellie named the child Adam.” Angus chuckled as Letty stared at him, stunned.
“You mean . . .”
“Aye, lass,” Angus laughed.
Adam drank his wine again and glowered at Angus.
Tyburn cleared his throat. “I think Letty has had enough of yer tales, Angus. The hour is late, and we all ought to be in bed.”
“Agreed.” Baird and his father rose from the table, and then they stared at Angus, who grumbled and stood as well.
“Goodnight, lassie,” Tyburn said to her and nodded at his nephew before Adam and Letty were left alone.
For a long moment, Letty and Adam sat in silence. Then Letty said, “What really happened in that hour you spent alone with Miss MacDougal?”
Her husband took another sip of his wine. “You don’t think that I seduced her and fathered the next laird of the MacDougal clan?”
Letty hesitated, but not because she thought he had. “No, I don’t. It does not seem like something you would do. Not that you aren’t capable of seductions,” she offered. “You’re quite dangerous at it, but I know you. That young woman’s virtue was safe, I am sure of it.”
Adam offered a soft, bittersweet smile. “How well you know me, lady wife. Yes, I went to Nellie’s house that day in order to stop Angus and Baird from teasing me. They can be quite relentless when they set their minds to something.”
“I can see that. Still, they adore you and Caroline,” Letty replied. He needed to know how much he was loved, in case he didn’t feel it clearly himself.
“I forget how blessed I am. Even after all that Caroline and I lost, we are more fortunate than many others.”
“So you went to see Nellie . . . ?” Letty prompted.
“I took tea with her, and we spoke about love, but not in the way she had expected. She had expected me to try to seduce herlike the other young men who lived nearby. Instead, I asked her about where her heart lay. She told me about her young man, and how she was afraid to seek her father’s permission to marry him. I then asked for an audience with her father, the laird himself. He had not been aware of my visit with Nellie.”
“What happened?”
“I told him that she wished to marry the Lennox boy. She was right about him—he wouldn’t allow it. I then explained that his entire household had been aware of my rather lengthy, private meeting with Nellie and that it was in her father’s best interest to approve her marriage to the man she loved or else I might let it slip that I had been with Nellie. Of course, should such a thing happen, I would do the honorable thing and marry her.”
Letty was stunned. Adam had risked marriage to a woman he didn’t love just to help her marry another? “How did you know that he would agree and not actually make you marry her?”
Adam grinned. “Because Scots will always band together against an Englishman, especially one acting as smug and superior as I was that day. MacDougal would rather have his daughter marry a Lennox than a bloody Englishman.”
Letty giggled. “Oh, Adam, how wonderfully clever. You are perfectly splendid.You know that, don’t you?” She got up and came around the table to slide onto his lap.
He held her waist and gazed at her. “You think so?” There was a vulnerability in this powerful, brave man, and she loved that he showed that soft side only to her.
“I do. It makes you rather irresistible.” Letty massaged his shoulders with care.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said.
She leaned in to nuzzle his throat and inhale his scent.“Do what?”
“Treat me as though I might break. I’m not fragile.” He tightened his hold on her waist until that familiar thrill surged through her. She embraced the rising passion inside her.
“I do not think you are fragile,” she promised him as she nibbled on his earlobe. He groaned, the sound momentarily drowning out