Once Upon a Plaid Read Online Free PDF Page B

that time.
    Now she covered her face simply to keep from crying.
    “What happened to us, Kat?”
    Do ye love me no longer? The words hovered on his tongue, but he wouldn’t let himself voice them. A man shouldn’t need like that.
    She sighed and dropped her hands. Tears trembled on her lashes, but she didn’t let them fall.
    “I remember how it was, Will,” she said slowly, “but I think the proper question now is how it should be for us in the future.”
    “What do you mean?”
    She squared her shoulders, but didn’t meet his eyes. “After Epiphany, I mean to send a letter to Rome, asking for our marriage to be annulled. I’ve thought long and hard about it, ye see, and . . .”
    Will knew she was still talking because her lips moved, but he couldn’t understand the words coming from her mouth. Once in a while he caught a few snippets—something about asking the bishop to hand deliver the request and wondering if a generous donation to the local abbey might speed the proceedings—but the rest of her words made no sense to his brain.
    “Ye have no grounds for an annulment,” he finally said to stop her.
    “I’ll find one.”
    William didn’t see how. They weren’t closely related. Sometimes annulments were granted when a couple discovered they were cousins within a few degrees. But that couldn’t be the case with them since no one in the Douglas clan had ever taken a Glengarry bride before.
    The age of consent was another possible reason to rule a marriage invalid. They’d been betrothed as children, but they were both of age at their wedding. Sometimes birth records were spotty, and could be falsified, but no one who’d attended their ceremony would have mistaken Katherine and Will for children under the ages of twelve and fourteen.
    “Ye canna claim we’ve never consummated,” William said. “No one would believe it.”
    “People will believe anything if ye repeat it often enough.”
    “Not in this case,” he said softly. “We had the one.”
    “Stephan. His name is Stephan. Why can ye not—” Her voice cracked, but she pressed on. “Even now, ye canna say his name.”
    Will turned away and leaned on the parapet. Something in his chest went suddenly as cold and icebound as the loch. They hadn’t been allowed to name the child officially since he never drew breath, but Kat insisted on calling him after her father.
    The boy had been buried without ceremony in a bit of unconsecrated ground near the woods around Badenoch. They weren’t even supposed to mark the grave, but William knew to a finger width exactly where the child lay. Father Simon told them the baby’s soul was in limbo, but he assured them it would be released to heaven if only they prayed hard enough.
    Will hadn’t said a word to the Almighty since. Any deity who wouldn’t take his stillborn son straight to heaven wasn’t one with whom he cared to converse.
    “Some things dinna bear speaking of,” he said. She’d only work herself into more of an upset. “Besides, talking willna change a thing.”
    “Good. I’m glad ye see it too.”
    He suspected the subject had been changed while he was unaware of it. “See what?”
    “Our marriage will never be what it once was.” Katherine’s chin trembled, but her eyes were dry now. “So I release you.”
    “I dinna wish to be released. We can go back to the way we were, as if none of this ever happened.” He reached for her again, but she stepped back, out of the circle of his arms. The stricken look on her face told him he’d said exactly the wrong thing.
    “But it did happen. Stephan happened. We canna go back. ’Twill never be the same. Trust me, Will, ’tis better this way. Ye’ll be free to take a bride who can give ye the son and heir ye deserve and ye can pass that . . .” She paused, drawing her lips into a tight line. “. . . that scepter ye’re so proud of on to the next generation of Douglas males. In time, ye’ll thank me.” Then she fled from him,