A Laird for All Time by Angeline Fortin (room on the broom read aloud txt) 📗

“Why not say something then?  ‘Hey, wait, I’m not Heather!’ or just ‘I don’t want to marry you’?”  Emmy sat on the bed next to Dory and shook her head in disgust at the whole idea of arranged marriages.  Had any of them ever turned out well?

“I begged my father not to make me do it,” she confessed tearfully.  “I told him I would tell the truth or run away rather than marry Connor.  My father beat me and locked me in my room and set his valet to guard my door and I never had a chance to run.  They watched me all the way through the ceremony.  Father had threatened me against denying the vows during the ceremony.  Then it was done.  I was his wife.”

“And then they stopped guarding you thinking that you were out of choices,” Emmy concluded picturing how it all played out.

“When I was allowed to go to the countess’ chambers to prepare for my wedding night,” Dory explained, “I packed a small bag and ran away.”

“And left Connor to face his greatest humiliation on his own, in front of his father and yours, the Prince of Wales and a hundred other people, I suppose?” Emmy asked.

“Don’t look at me that way,” Dory begged.  “What would you have done if your father tried to force you into marriage?  I know you quite well at this point, Emmy; you would not have stood for it.”

“No, I wouldn’t have,” Emmy admitted, “but I would have found a way to cut it short before I was actually married.”

“It was never consummated!”

“And that makes it all better?” Emmy asked in disbelief.  “The least you could have done was not come back. Why did you?  For Ian?  To rub Connor’s face in your deception?”

Dory tried to push herself up in defense but lay quickly back down with a cry of pain.  Emmy tsked.  “Don’t be a twit.  Lay back down before you tear your stitches.”

“Please don’t think of me badly, Emmy.  Please,” Dory begged tearfully.  “You have become like a sister to me.  You are so much like her.  So much like Heather.”  Dory gripped her hand and sobbed.

Emmy felt herself softening from her righteous anger as Dory carried on.  What would she have done, indeed!  No force on earth could make her do something she didn’t want to do, so how could she really blame Dory for that?  She was a product of this age and her upbringing.  But to come back!

As if reading her thoughts, Dory continued.  “I never meant to come back.  I was determined to find a place to live far from Duart and my father.  I could not forgive him for what he had made me do.  I did all right in the beginning.  I even found a job waiting tables for a little while but was let go when I refused to entertain male customers.  After that I ran out of what little monies I had  quickly and soon was sleeping on the streets of Inverary or in barns along the road.  So I went, walked, back to my father’s house.  When I got there it was seven months later, Mother had perished from the influenza and Heather was near death.  Father was ill as well having suffered a failure of his heart after I fled.”  Dory cried genuinely now awash in grief and guilt over what she had lost.  “I stayed there as long as I could then I had no choice, with no other family all my father’s property went to a distant heir or to my husband.  I could have either returned in shame as his wife or come in mourning as his sister-in-law.  God forgive me, I chose the latter and for that my soul shall truly burn in Hell.”

“I’m sure your soul will be just fine,” Emmy consoled and patted the woman’s hand.

But Dory shook her head in denial.  “I arrived here in my father’s carriage while Connor was away…”

              “Looking for you.”

Chapter 41

The clearing of a deep male throat gave both women a start and they turned to find Ian framed in the doorway.  His eyes were nearly black with anger or pain, Emmy couldn’t be certain, but his body was tense.  “I would like to talk to my…Dorcas, if you please, Emmy.”

“Ian…” both women started in unison, but Ian held up a hand.

“If you please.”

Emmy gave a jerky nod at his tight words and cast Dory an apologetic look as she slipped out the door.  It shut with a soft click that was almost worse than a slamming door.  Cold rage or simple devastation?  She didn’t know which and wondered if she should fear for Dory uncertain whether Ian’s rage might translate to violence in an era where a man still had the right to beat his wife.  Besides she had just given birth and was in no condition for any major confrontation.

Worried, Emmy leaned back against the bedroom door wondering whether she should go back in and protect Dory or tell Connor everything.  Well, Dory was right about one thing.  Connor was going to kill her when he found out.  Hopefully it would be a figurative slaying. Surely an explanation was necessary.  He deserved to know but was it her place to break the news to him?  Should she have him come to speak with Dory?  Bring him to save Dory from Ian?  That would not be how she wanted him to learn of Dory’s deception, but if Dory were in danger from Ian, she would need Connor’s help.  She hope that he wouldn’t feel compelled to violence himself.

“What are you doing?”

Emmy shifted from foot to foot unsure what to say.  She was glad he was there but…“Connor, we have a problem.”

“Is it Dory?  Has something happened to her?” he paled as he asked the question.  Strange but he come to like the woman over the past couple weeks.

“She’s physically fine, but she was just