To Tame A Highland Warrior
Page 80

“You mean you had this all planned out before you confronted her?” Elizabeth was amazed once again by the twists and turns of her husband’s brilliant scheming mind.
“It was one of several possible plans,” Gibraltar corrected. “A man must anticipate every possibility when the women he loves are concerned.”
“My hero.” Elizabeth fluttered her eyelashes.
Gibraltar covered her body with his. “I’ll show you a hero,” he growled.
Gibraltar hadn’t thought that even his cosseted Jillian could pout, sulk, and be nasty for three solid weeks.
She could.
Ever since the morning she’d slipped a note bearing one word, “Quinn,” under her parents’ bedroom door, she’d refused to speak to him in anything but single-word replies. Everyone else in the castle she harangued with the same questions: how many banns had been posted, when, and where.
“Were they posted in Durrkesh, Kaley?” Jillian fretted.
“Yes, Jillian.”
“What about Scurrington and Edinburgh?”
“Yes, Jillian.” Hatchard sighed, knowing it was futile to remind her he’d answered the same question the day before.
“And the smaller villages in the Highlands? When were they posted there?”
“Days ago, Jillian.” Gibraltar interrupted her interrogation.
Jillian sniffed and turned her back on her da.
“Why do you care where the banns have been posted?” Gibraltar provoked.
“Just curious,” Jillian said lightly as she strode regally from the room.
“He’ll come, Mama. I know he will.”
Elizabeth smiled and smoothed Jillian’s hair, but weeks passed and Grimm didn’t come.
Even Quinn started to get a little nervous.
“What will we do if he doesn’t show?” Quinn asked. He paced the study, moving his long legs silently. The wedding was tomorrow and no one had heard a word from Grimm Roderick.
Gibraltar poured them both a drink. “He has to come.”
Quinn picked up the goblet and sipped thoughtfully. “He must know the wedding is tomorrow. The only way he could possibly not know is if he is no longer in Scotland. We posted those blasted banns in every village of over fivescore inhabitants.”
Gibraltar and Quinn stared at the fire and drank for a time in silence.
“If he doesn’t come, I’ll go through with it.”
“Now, why would you be doing that, lad?” Gibraltar asked gently.
Quinn shrugged. “I love her. I always have.”
Gibraltar shook his head. “There’s love and then there’s love, Quinn. And if you’re not ready to kill Grimm simply for touching Jillian, then it’s not the marrying kind of love you’re feeling. She’s not for you.”
When Quinn made no reply, Gibraltar laughed aloud and slapped him on the thigh. “Oh, she’s definitely not for you. You didn’t even argue with me.”
“Grimm said something very similar. He asked me if I really loved her—if she made me crazy inside.”
Gibraltar smiled knowingly. “That’s because she does make him crazy inside.”
“I want her to be happy, Gibraltar,” Quinn said fervently. “Jillian is special. She’s generous and beautiful and so … och, so damned in love with Grimm!”
Gibraltar raised his goblet to Quinn’s and smiled. “That she is. If push comes to shove, I’ll stop the ceremony and give her a choice. But I won’t let her marry you without giving her that choice.” As he drank, he regarded Quinn thoughtfully. “Actually, I’m not sure I’d let her marry you even then.”
“You wound me,” Quinn protested.
“She’s my baby girl, Quinn. I want love for her. Real love. The kind that makes a man crazy inside.”
Jillian curled into a ball on the window ledge of the drum tower and stared, unseeing, into the night. Thousands of stars dimpled the sky, but she saw none of them. Staring into the night was like staring into a great vacuum—her future without Grimm.
How could she wed Quinn?
How could she refuse? Grimm obviously wasn’t coming.
The banns had been posted throughout the country. There was absolutely no way he could not know that tomorrow Jillian St. Clair was going to wed Quinn de Moncreiffe. The whole blasted country knew it.
Three weeks ago she might have run away.
But not tonight, not three weeks late for her monthly flow, not with no word from Grimm. Not after believing in him and being proven a lovesick fool.