To Marry A Scottish Laird Read Online Free PDF Page A

loved to be able to claim such a large family. But then she was alone. “You don’t get on with your kin?”
    “Oh aye,” he assured her. “ ’Tis just that me clan seems to think being blood means they can interfere in me life at every turn. ’Tis enough to make a man crazy at times.”
    Joan nodded with an understanding she didn’t really have. She’d never had that problem.
    “Actually, that interference is the only reason we met each other,” Cam said suddenly, a wry smile curving his lips.
    “How is that?” Joan asked.
    “Me family thinks I should marry again,” he added grimly.
    “And you don’t want to?” Joan guessed.
    “Aye. I mean aye, ye’re right and nay I do no’ want to,” he added and then shifted forward off the log so that he could sit on the ground and lean back against it. Eyes focused on the flames before them, he sighed and then said, “After me first wife . . .” He shook his head. “I do no’ want to go through that again.”
    “Your first marriage was so bad?” Joan asked, trying to understand.
    “Nay,” he answered at once. “She was pretty and smart, a good woman, and marriage was no’ so bad.”
    Joan raised her eyebrows. “Then why would you not want to marry again?”
    Dissatisfaction crossed his face, and he stared so long into the fire that she began to think he wouldn’t answer, but then he suddenly did. “We were married a year. ’Twas a good year. We got on well and it was a good match. But she got with child, and went into labor a year and a day after we married.”
    “She died in childbirth,” Joan guessed, understanding immediately filling her.
    “Aye,” Cam murmured, his expression full of regret.
    Joan nodded silently.
    “She was so small, and the babe was big,” he said grimly, and then added, “The midwife said the child was sideways.”
    “Did the midwife try to turn—”
    “Aye,” he interrupted. “She tried and tried, but said it would no’ turn.”
    Joan didn’t comment. What could she say? She had encountered the same thing herself a time or two. Usually she could shift the baby, but sometimes it was as if the baby was caught on something and—
    “It took her three days to die,” Cam said grimly. “For three days the whole castle listened to her scream as she fought to push our babe into the world. On the third day her screams were so weak . . . I kenned she was dyin’. My family tried to keep me out, but I forced me way into the room and . . .” He paled, his eyes closing. “There was so much blood.”
    Joan waited a minute and then asked, “The child?”
    “We buried them together,” he said heavily. They both stared into the fire now and then he straightened and said firmly. “I’ll no’ put another woman through that.”
    Joan didn’t comment. She understood. Witnessing something like that . . . well, it had made her decide not to have children. She could understand his not wanting to watch another woman go through it as his first wife had.
    “Me family are determined I should wed and give them the heirs they want though,” he added with a grimace. “Me mother especially is determined and once the snow melted, started filling Sinclair with any unmarried or widowed female she can find that she thinks might tempt me. By spring’s end I was tripping over women everywhere I turned. The woman was making me life a misery,” he said with disgust and shook his head. “I finally had to head out and find a battle to fight jest to get a rest and that’s where I’ve been all summer. Offering me services to those in need o’ a good sword hand. Well, offering me sword and that o’ a couple cousins who went with me.”
    “Where are your cousins now?” Joan asked.
    “We started out together, but stopped in Nottingham for a meal. The tavern wench was a pretty little thing, and very friendly,” he said with a grin. “I told me cousins to continue on without me and I’d follow later.”
    “I see,” Joan said