Highland Outlaw (Campbell Trilogy #2)(6)
But as much as she wanted what her friends had found, she had to accept that she could not wait any longer for something that might never happen.
It doesn't matter, she told herself, determined as always to make the best of every situation. I will make my own happiness. Arranged marriage or not.
“Is something wrong, mistress?”
Lost in thought, Lizzie hadn't realized that Alys had been watching her again. She lifted a brow. “I thought you were embroidering?”
This time Alys would not be put off. Curiosity, it seemed, had finally overridden discretion. “You keep staring at that letter as if it's an execution warrant.”
A wry smile curved Lizzie's mouth. “Nothing as dramatic as that, I'm afraid.” The earl would be angry, but not with her.
“Are you worried about the travel with all those horrid MacGregors scurrying about the countryside?” Alys leaned across and patted her knee. “There's nothing to worry about. My Donnan will see that we come to no harm.”
Alys's husband was captain of the earl's guardsmen at Castle Campbell, and she was fiercely proud of the formidable warrior.
“No, it's not the travel,” Lizzie assured her. They were well protected by a dozen guardsmen, and not even the outlawed MacGregors would dare attack the Earl of Argyll's carriage. Besides, they were still in the Lowlands, well away from the Lomond Hills, where the proscribed clan was reputed to have fled following the battle of Glenfruin.
Even as news of the atrocities committed by the MacGregors at Glenfruin spread through the Highlands, it was hard for Lizzie to reconcile the man who'd come to her aid with the band of ruthless outlaws who'd perpetrated a massacre on the field of Glenfruin. In this, however, she was alone in her family. Her cousin had been charged by King James to bring the MacGregors to justice for their crimes and for the past few years had made it his mission. A mission in which her brothers Jamie and Colin had joined. It was only a matter of time before the outlaws were all hunted down.
What would happen to her warrior? Knowing the answer, she tried not to think about it.
Lizzie met the other woman's gaze, seeing the concern brimming in her warm brown eyes. She sighed, knowing that Alys was truly worried about her.
She would have handed her the note, but Alys, a Highlander to the core, did not read Scots, only a smattering of the Highland tongue. Lizzie read the words aloud as the coach bumped along a particularly rocky patch of road, her voice reverberating with each jolt.
When she was finished, Alys frowned. “Why would you be upset about getting more land?”
“Don't you see? The land is only the bait. My cousin intends to find me another husband.”
Alys snorted. “ ’Tis about time, if you ask me.”
Having suspected that this would be the older woman's reaction, Lizzie had hoped to avoid the subject altogether. A wry smile turned her mouth. “Your sympathy is overwhelming.”
“Bah,” said the other woman with disgust. “ ’Tis not sympathy you need but a husband and bairns. You're a beautiful lass with a loving heart, and you've locked yourself away because of some arse …”
Lizzie gave her a sharp look.
“Because of some overstuffed peacock,” Alys continued. “I don't know what that man did to you, but he wasn't worth a halfpenny of the tears you spent on him.”
Lizzie knew it was useless to try to make her loyal maidservant understand. By no stretch of the word could Lizzie possibly be considered beautiful, but try explaining that to anyone in her family and they looked at her as if she were addled.
Her family just didn't see her the way other people did. To them she was a prize. A woman any man would be proud to have by his side.
They loved her too much to view her stammering as anything other than a minor inconvenience. Usually, they were right. Lizzie stammered only in large groups or when she was nervous or anxious, and now almost not at all. She supposed there was one reason to be grateful to John. The past two years, she'd devoted endless hours to speaking softly and slowly in the effort to further control her stammer, determined never to allow herself to be made the butt of anyone's mockery again.
“Perhaps not,” Lizzie agreed, anxious to avoid the subject.
“Then what is it? Are you worried that your cousin will betroth you to a man you cannot abide? The earl loves you too much to ever see you unhappy.”
“He would never do that,” Lizzie agreed. She was lucky. Not only did she have the love of her family, but they also respected her in a way that was hardly typical of the position of most women in today's world. She'd been educated by tutors alongside her brothers before they went to Tounis College, and was as knowledgeable about Highland politics as any man.
Indeed, it wasn't her cousin's choices in husbands that had proved the problem. John Montgomery had actually been her choice. The two men her cousin had picked for her would have been infinitely better choices, but circumstances beyond her control had forced them apart.
Her first betrothal, to James Grant, had been arranged when she was a child, but it had been broken by Duncan's treason.
Duncan. The brother she'd idolized, lost to her almost ten years ago. God, how she missed him. Despite the proof against him, Lizzie had never believed him guilty of the betrayal that had cost the Campbells the battle of Glenlivet and ultimately their father his life. She hoped one day to see him return to prove it. She'd begged him to do so many times in the occasional letter she managed to smuggle to him. Their communication was the one secret she kept from her family. But she was enormously proud of the name he'd made for himself on the continent after having it erroneously blackened at home.