To Desire a Highlander by Sue-Ellen Welfonder Page B

followed didn’t matter. The Horn of Bliss was tradition and no MacGuire would deny its validity.
    Even Gillian couldn’t.
    The deed was done.

Chapter Eight

    Y ou fear your father would poison me?” Donell looked at Lady Gillian as he placed the emptied drinking horn on his new hall’s high table. He had no idea why she hadn’t wanted him to sample her father’s mead, but damned if he didn’t enjoy riling her.
    He liked the color that then stained her cheeks. “I didnae think you were that fond of me.”
    A smile curved his mouth. He couldn’t help it.
    He shouldn’t be amused at all, not seeing her agitation. But she drove him to feel and do things he couldn’t explain, as if she’d bewitched him.
    He looked away, then back to her. “I’m honored.”
    “You shouldn’t be.” She glanced at the discarded horn, her breath coming fast from her sprint around the table. “You have no idea what you’ve done!” Her green eyes flashed, blazing like jewels. “Drinking from the Horn of Bliss seals my clan’s handfasting ceremony, binding a pair as surely as a priest mumbling sacred vows.”
    Roag’s smile faded. “A handfast—”
    “Aye, that’s what this is. My clan has ever been known for them.”
    “Handfasting?” Roag stared at her.
    He couldn’t think. His mind whirled, a sick feeling spreading inside him. “My original offer…” He turned to her father, letting his words trail away, hoping the fiend would enlighten him.
    “As you wished, my boy, as you wished!” Mungo pulled a dirk from beneath his belt, began slicing a narrow strip from his plaid. “To be sure, I wasn’t for accepting a handfast back when you proposed it. The gel was too young.” He swelled his chest, cocky as a rooster. “Seeing as you’ve waited so long to claim her, I’m thinking you deserve her now.” He grabbed Lady Gillian’s arm, swiftly looping the tartan around her wrist, thrusting her hand in Roag’s direction. “No need to wait months for a wedding, no’ when she’s here, ready and willing to be yours.”
    “Indeed.” Roag forced a grin, cursing the rascally bastard in silence and his own rashness for landing in such a position.
    Refusing wasn’t an option.
    Not if he wasn’t to reveal his true identity and risk the King’s mission, earning his justifiable wrath. Fenris never failed. If they did, they didn’t live long enough to regret their mistake.
    “Then let us be on with it.” Seeing no choice, he grasped Lady Gillian’s hand, linking their fingers. He didn’t blink as her father bound their wrists with the plaid strip. He even ignored the urge to punch the grin off the older man’s ruddy, red-bearded face.
    Roag might love his King, but he appreciated breathing more.
    Life was too good, generally, to lose it because of the machinations of a wily Hebridean chief and his admittedly desirable daughter. Already the lout was reciting the ancient words, a sacred ceremony Roag had witnessed once or twice, never believing he’d fall prey to one.
    “… you are entering a hallowed bond, here within this circle of kith, kin, and friends, and blessed by all the powers of the Old Ones,” Mungo’s voice rose, drowning out the scraping of bench legs on stone, the shuffle of feet as Lady Gillian’s brothers gathered around them.
    Roag’s men joined in, their eyebrows nearly as high as the ceiling’s smoke-blackened rafters. Not one of them protested, no doubt knowing their own Fenris necks rested on their compliance, the damning pretense that Roag was Donell MacDonnell.
    “Do you enter this union freely?” Mungo slung another band of the cloth about their wrists. “Are you prepared to stand together always, on days of fair winds as in nights of hard rains?”
    Lady Gillian ignored her father, pinning Roag with a glare as sharp as emerald ice. “Aye,” she vowed, unblinking.
    At the edge of the circle of men, Big Hughie Alesone began to cough. Roag sent him a look and Big Hughie turned