Wager with a Warrior - Emma Prince Page 0,36

the clan’s next Laird, and even living long enough to see her first grandbairn born, though she’d passed when Birdie had only been two summers old.

Though she couldn’t remember her grandmother, Eatha had ensured the stability and prosperity Birdie had enjoyed all her life.

And now it seemed it was Birdie’s turn. Peace, apparently, would be bought by a woman’s sacrifice yet again, this time hers to the Gunns.

She lifted stinging eyes to her father. “I will do what is best for the clan.”

She saw sadness in his hazel eyes—and regret for the position he was putting her in. He’d always been soft-hearted toward her, working to give her a freedom unknown to most other women in her station. Yet she also saw pride there—pride that he’d raised a daughter who valued the clan’s wellbeing as much as he did.

“Verra well,” he said, his voice grim with resignation. “I’ll send word to Argus Gunn. Naught is set in stone, mind ye. But… MacLeod is right.” He gave a grudging tilt of his head toward Gregor. “We must at least explore the possibility.”

“If that is all?” Birdie said tightly, rising to her feet.

“Aye.”

Thank God, for her composure was rapidly crumbling. She would not break down, not in front of Gregor.

She swept past him, willing her gaze to remain forward and her chin lifted, but her lower lip was already starting to tremble.

She needed to get out of here, away from him and the suffocation of the castle. She needed to be alone, somewhere she could release her iron grasp on control and let out the emotion that threatened to overtake her with each passing heartbeat.

Blinking back tears, she descended to the great hall and strode directly to the double doors. Distantly, she heard Tessa call out to her, but she kept walking, her pace speeding.

Outside, the gray morning skies warned of rain, but she didn’t care. She hurried down the hill, ignoring the shuffle of people around the outbuildings at the base of the castle.

Her feet found the footpath that led from the bluff down to the kyle’s edge. It wasn’t until she knew she would be out of sight of all, even the guards on top of the castle’s battlements, that she broke into a run, the tears streaming down her cheeks unchecked.

Chapter Thirteen

It took every ounce of strength Gregor had not to charge after Birdie the moment she slipped through the solar door.

Yet some last shred of reason reminded him of what Lamond had said earlier—that the Laird likely didn’t know about the connection growing between his eldest daughter and Gregor. Gregor still needed to be discreet, for Birdie’s benefit if not his own.

Even still, he only lasted a few long, painful heartbeats.

“If ye’ll excuse me,” Gregor murmured to the Laird.

Morgan waved a weary hand at Gregor, dismissing him. Gregor gave him a hasty dip of the head and then was out the door and after her.

He caught the swish of her bright green skirts just as she rushed out of the keep. Tessa, who’d called out to her sister from the raised dais, looked at him in confusion, but he didn’t slow. He followed Birdie down the rise upon which the castle sat, then to the bluff overlooking the kyle, where she descended a zig-zagging path leading to the water.

The kyle appeared sluggish and brown-gray under the cloud-laden sky. The faint tang of salt hung in the air, along with the promise of rain.

When Birdie reached the bottom of the path, she took off in a run, stumbling over the rocks as she went. She disappeared around a horn of land that jutted out into the kyle.

Gregor hastened his pace after her, but when he turned the corner around the spit of land, he froze in his tracks.

She’d crumpled in a pool of emerald fabric against the face of the bluff. Her hands covered her face, and her shoulders jerked with wracking sobs.

Gregor cursed himself to hell and back. He’d done that. He’d made her cry, the woman he cared for more than any other in his life.

The irrational urge to punch something, to beat the thing that had hurt her so into a bloody pulp, surged within him like a hot wave. But only he was to blame.

He hesitated, knowing that he was the cause of her pain, and yet desperate to go to her nonetheless. Of their own accord, his feet carried him nearer. When he was a dozen paces away, the clatter of his boots against