In Praise of Younger Men Read Free Page B

happen that way. On the journey home, the idea of marriage had been a vague, in-the-future prospect, something he would get to
someday
—until the moment he and Geoffrey had arrived at Rascarrel House, and he saw Harriet racing down that walkway toward them with her skirts and radiant hair flying out behind her. All at once, like the melting off of the moor mist with the morning sun, Tristan had seen her—and he’d known.
    After too many years of foreign lands and foreign faces, Harriet was familiar, stirring his blood just as unexpectedly as the first glimpse of his Scottish homeland from the ship that had carried him and Geoffrey back from war. He had known her more than half his life, knew the sharpness of her mind, the fire of her wit, the infectious ring of her laughter. Harriet was life. Harriet was home. Harriet could be
his
home, if only she would say yes. Which she wasn’t doing.
    But she also wasn’t saying no.
    “Of course you’ll need time to consider . . .”
    And then she said it.
    “No.” Harriet looked at him, her expression filled with gloom. “Time will not change anything. I already know my answer. It is impossible, Tristan. I can never marry you.”
    Tristan felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. Hard. He blinked. “But did you not just say you needed to marry?”
    “Yes. I do need to marry, and as quickly as possible.”
    “So it is just me you don’t wish to marry.”
    Harriet looked at him, her eyes dark with torment. “I never said I
didn’t want
to marry you, Tristan. I said I
can’t
marry you. They are two very different things.”
    Tristan was falling fast into confusion. “You are saying you would like to marry me, but for some incomprehensible reason you cannot? That you’d rather wed a complete stranger than wed me? What sort of reason could be so compelling as to keep you from wedding the man you want?”
    “It”—Harriet stammered, glancing from Geoffrey to Devorgilla—“it is your age.”
    His age?
    Tristan stared at her, stunned. Of all the things she could have said, all the reasons she could have given, it was the very last thing he would have expected to hear. “What the hell does my age have to do with anything? I’m the same age as you.”
    “Yes, I know that. To the day. Nearly to the hour actually, except that you, like Geoffrey, were born before me. I remember you used to tease me about it when we were children. Which is precisely the problem.”
    “That I teased you? Oh, good God, we were children, Harriet—”
    “No, the problem isn’t that you teased me, Tristan. The problem is that you are older than me and nothing in the world can change that.”
    Tristan shook his head, gone beyond confusion now to absolute befuddlement. “I don’t understand. Is there some law that prevents a woman from marrying a man who was born the same day as she?”
    She shook her head. “Oh, Tristan, can’t you see? It is all because of this accursed red hair!”
    Tristan could only stare. “What in bloody hell does your hair have to do with this?”
    Devorgilla broke in, a calming presence amidst the simmering storm of bedlam. “It is a long story, Tristan.”
    “A very long story,” Geoffrey added.
    Looking around at the faces of the others, Tristan saw one thing clearly. Something was going on to which everyone else in the room was privy but him. “And I have all night to hear it.”
    Devorgilla looked at both Harriet and Geoffrey, then nodded solemnly. She took a sip of tea, then quietly started to speak.
    “It began more than four hundred years ago, on a small island off the western coast where my ancestors once ruled. The chieftain of the clan, Alain of Macquair, had a beautiful daughter, his only child and heir, known across the land as
Maighdean nan MacGuadhre
—the Maid of Macquair. She had hair the color of flame, eyes the deepest green of the Hebridean sea. When it came time for her to wed, Alain pronounced that only the best of warriors would do,