“Shut up!”
Ian, his mouth opened to continue, immediately shut it. He opened one eye in a cautious slit, like one viewing a bomb momentarily expected to go off.
Bree glared from Ian to me. Even in the dim room, I could see the tight look of her mouth and the crimson rising in her cheeks. The tip of her nose was red, whether from the nippy air outside or from annoyance, I couldn’t tell.
“Did you know about this?” she demanded of me.
“Of course not!” I said. “For heaven’s sake, Bree—” Before I could finish, she had whirled on her heel and run out of the door. I could see the quick flash of her rusty skirts as she hurried up the slope leading to the stable.
I pulled off my apron and flung it hastily over the chair. “I’d better go after her.”
“I’ll go, too,” Ian offered, and I didn’t stop him. Reinforcements might be needed.
“What do you think she’ll do?” he asked, panting in my wake as I hastened up the steep slope.
“God knows,” I said. “But I’m afraid we’re going to find out.” I was entirely too familiar with the look of a Fraser roused to fury. Neither Bree nor Jamie lost their temper easily, but when they did, they lost it thoroughly.
“I’m glad she didna strike me,” Ian said thankfully. “I thought for a moment she was going to.” He pulled even with me, his long legs outstripping mine, hurrying though I was. I could hear uplifted voices from the open half-door of the stable.
“Why on earth would you put poor little Ian up to such a thing?” Brianna was saying, her voice high with indignation. “I’ve never heard of such a high-handed, arrogant—”
“Poor little Ian?” Ian said, vastly affronted. “What does she—”
“Oh, high-handed, am I?” Jamie’s voice interrupted. He sounded both impatient and irritable, though not yet angry. Perhaps I was in time to avert full-scale hostilities. I peeked through the stable door, to see them face-to-face, glaring at each other over a large pile of half-dried manure.
“And what better choice could I make, will ye tell me that?” he demanded. “Let me tell ye, lassie, I thought of every bachelor in fifty miles before I settled on Ian. I wouldna have ye wed to a cruel man or a drunkard, nor yet a poor man—nor one auld enough to be your grandsire, either.”
He shoved a hand through his hair, sure sign of mental agitation, but made a masterful effort to calm himself. He lowered his voice a bit, trying to be conciliatory.
“Why, I even put aside Tammas McDonald, for while he’s a fine stretch of land and a good temper, and he’s an age for you, he’s a bittie wee fellow forbye, and I thought ye wouldna care to stand up side by side with him before a priest. Believe me, Brianna, I’ve done my best to see ye well wed.”
Bree wasn’t having any; her own hair had come loose during her dash up the hill, and was floating round her face like the flames of a vengeful archangel.
“And what makes you think I want to be married to anybody at all?”
His mouth dropped open.
“Want?” he said incredulously. “And what has want to do with it?”
“Everything!” She stamped her foot.
“Now there you’re wrong, lassie,” he advised her, turning to pick up his fork. He eyed her stomach with a nod. “You’ve a bairn coming, who needs a name. Your time to be choosy is long since past, aye?”
He dug his fork into the pile of manure and heaved the load into the waiting barrow, then dug again, with a smooth economy of motion born of years of labor.
“Now, Ian’s a sweet-tempered lad, and a hard worker,” he said, eyes on his task. “He’s got his own land; he’ll have mine, too, in time, and that will—”
“I am not going to marry anybody!” Brianna drew herself up to her full height, fists balled at her sides, and spoke in a voice loud enough to disturb the bats in the corners of the ceiling. One small dark form detached itself from the shadows and flittered out into the gathering dusk, ignored by the combatants underneath.
“Well, then, make your own choice,” Jamie said shortly. “And I wish ye well of it!”
“You…are…not…listening!” Brianna said, grinding each word between her teeth. “I’ve made my choice. I said I won’t…marry…anyone!” She punctuated this with another stamp of her foot.
Jamie thrust the fork into the pile with a thump. He straightened up and eyed Brianna, rubbing his fist across his jaw.
“Aye, well. I seem to recall hearin’ a verra similar opinion expressed by your mother—the night before our wedding. I havena asked her lately does she regret bein’ forced to wed me or not, but I flatter myself she’s maybe not been miserable altogether. Perhaps ye should go and have a word wi’ her?”
“It’s not the same thing at all!” Brianna snapped.
“No, it’s not,” Jamie agreed, keeping a firm grip on his temper. The sun was low behind the hills, flooding the stable with a golden light in which the creeping tide of red in his skin was nonetheless quite visible. Still, he was making every attempt to be reasonable.
“Your mother wed me to save her life—and mine. It was a brave thing she did, and generous, too. I’ll grant it’s no a matter of life or death, but—have ye no idea what it is to live branded as a wanton—or as a fatherless bastard, come to that?”
Seeing her expression falter slightly at this, he pressed his advantage, stretching out a hand to her and speaking kindly.
“Come, lassie. Can ye not bring yourself to do it for the bairn’s sake?”
Her face tightened again and she stepped back.
“No,” she said, sounding strangled. “No. I can’t.”
He dropped his hand. I could see them both, despite the fading light, and saw the danger signs all too clearly, in the narrowing of his eyes and the set of his shoulders, squared for battle. “Is that how Frank Randall raised ye, lass, to have no regard for what’s right or wrong?”
Brianna was trembling all over, like a horse that’s run too far.
“My father always did what was right for me! And he would never have tried to pull something like this!” she said. “Never! He cared about me!”
At this, Jamie finally lost his temper, which went off with a bang.
“And I don’t?” he said. “I am not trying my best to do what’s right for ye? In spite of your being—”
“Jamie—” I turned toward him, saw his eyes gone black with anger, and turned toward her. “Bree—I know he didn’t—you have to understand—”
“Of all the reckless, thoughtless, selfish ways in which to behave!”
“You self-righteous, insensitive bastard!”
“Bastard! Ye’ll call me a bastard, and your belly swellin’ like a pumpkin with a child that ye mean to doom to finger-pointing and calumny for all its days, and—”
“Anybody points a finger at my child, and I’ll break it off and stuff it down their throat!”
“Ye senseless wee besom! Have ye no the faintest notion o’ how things are? Ye’ll be a scandal and a hissing! Folk will call ye whore to your face!”