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by the local lords, and instead she’d had to become the sole pillar of stability in the MacNachtan clan. “Your poor mother,” he said experimentally.
    Her fingers shook a little as she unwrapped another package. “Yes. Well, Mother was frail to start with, and when the soldiers came, they upset her, and she took to her bed . . . look!” She cradled a delicate clay statue of a woman in a full skirt, naked from the waist up, clutching a snake in each hand. “From Crete. We think . . .” Her voice trailed off. She frowned at the bare-breasted creature, rubbing the feminine curves slowly with her fingertips. Then she looked up at Hadden. “You don’t want to know about this.”
    â€œAbout the fertility goddesses in all their bare glory?” Then, with obviously unwelcome shrewdness, “—Or about your family?”
    It told him volumes when she gulped and jerked back. ”Don’t be daft. About the goddesses, of course.” She tried to shove the goddess back into the trunk, but he rescued the painted figurine and placed her on the floor with the others. Andra scurried to the next trunk, if one could be said to scurry on her knees.
    â€œAndra.” Hadden laid his hand on her arm. “Tell me the truth.”
    Andra flung open the lid with such vigor, the aging wood cracked. “I’ll find it in here,” she said feverishly. “I’m sure will.”
    â€œFind? . . .”
    â€œThe marriage kilt.” The paper crackled as she peeled it away. “That is why you came, isn’t it?”
    It wasn’t. He knew it. She knew it. But the lass vibrated with unfettered emotion, frightened by what she knew and what he guessed. She couldn’t face him, couldn’t face the truth, and he supposed he understood that.
    Yet he didn’t like it, and his anger rose again.
    How dare she compare him to those other men? To the worthless milquetoasts in her family?
    And how dare she compare herself to her mother, a frail creature crushed by the loss of her husband and son? Andra was not frail; she was strong, facing life and all its trials without flinching. He had his suspicions, and if they were right, it was life’s dividends that she feared.
    â€œWould you like to hear the tale of it?” she asked.
    Recalled to the conversation, he asked, “Of what?”
    She huffed like a steam engine. “Of the marriage tartan!”
    She stilled when he approached, and waited until he picked up the sheepskin. “Tell me.” He gathered the goddesses and strategically distributed them throughout the room. Returning to the trunk he brought out more well-wrapped treasures. He smiled at the lusty treasures he found, and distributed them, too.
    A man could not be too thorough.
    â€œThe marriage kilt is the kilt worn by the first MacNachtan when he married.” She was dropping tartans in a pile beside her, searching with more vigor than grace. “He was an older man, a fierce warrior, and one reluctant to take a woman to wife, for he believed exposure to such softness would weaken him.”
    â€œSo he was wise.” He didn’t wait for her to respond to his provocation, but wandered away again, to drape the sheep-skin across an aged bench of solid oak.
    â€œWise as are all men,” she said tartly. “But one day he was forced to pay a visit to the MacDougalls, for they were stealing his cattle, and there, in their stronghold, he met a girl.”
    â€œI already foresee his downfall.” The evening sun had reached that point on the horizon when its beams shone directly into the chamber, burnishing it with the glory of light.
    â€œShe was a beauty, and he loved her at once, but she was proud and wanted nothing of him, not even when he washed and trimmed his hair and beard and came a-courtin’ like a youth smitten with his first sweetheart.” He heard her voice sweeten with the Scottish