“I’m going to call the town council,” Graham stated, not giving up just because the two men he regarded as brothers had already done so. “In fact, I’m going to call an island tribunal. If we get a consensus then, as far as I’m concerned, legal or no’, that’s all the support I need to continue on and be done with this wild goose chase.”
“It’s no’ just a consensus, Graham,” Shay told him. “It has to be one hundred percent. They all have to say aye.”
Graham spun back around. “Really? So there is a solution! Why didn’t you say so? I’m certain I can and will have that. Who would say nay?”
“I can think of a few,” Roan said. “Like Dougal. And auld Branan, for certain.”
“They’re not the only elders who will hold out,” Shay agreed. “They love you, no doubt, but they’ll stick with tradition.”
“Even over what’s best for the island? If we let someone else, an outsider no less, come here and begin making decisions regarding our well-being—surely even the oldest resident wouldn’t chance that.”
Roan shrugged. “Perhaps they think you’ll persevere with your crop management whether you’re laird or no’.”
“What if I have no say in the matter? What if this”—he turned to Shay—“what’s the bloke’s name?”
“Iain McAuley.”
Graham turned back to Roan. “Iain. What if this Iain has other ideas about our little island industry? He’s never so much as set foot on our soil much less worked it with his own hands. Who knows what he’d decide to do. We can’t risk that.”
“He may not even want it,” Roan reminded him. “In fact, he probably won’t. Who would?” He looked to Shay and grinned. “We’re no’ exactly the Fortune 500 of inheritances, you know.”
“He’ll probably be begging you to take it over.” Shay agreed, then leaned back in his seat and folded his arms. “Besides, if he wants to be laird, he’ll have to honor the marriage pact law as well.”
Graham pumped an air fist. “Right! He’ll have to marry a MacLeod! I’m betting he won’t be any more enthusiastic about that than I am. Hell, for all we know, he’s already married.”
Shay shook his head. “He’s no’. He’s thirty-two, unwed, living in Edinburgh. Works for an investment firm. Quite the bright and shiny diamond, too, from what I’ve dug up.”
“Still—”
“There is a much longer list of eligible MacLeod lasses,” Roan pointed out. He shrugged when Graham shot him a dark look. “I’m only stating the truth here. I mean, aye, he could find the whole thing tiresome and a waste of his time, but what do we know? Maybe he’ll think it quite the lark. Shay said he already has more money than Croesus—from his job, as well as a few trusts and such from his mum’s side of the tree.”
“He could marry just to lay claim to the property and the title,” Shay said. “The wealthy generally don’t mind accruing more things.”
“This would hardly be a feather in his asset list.”
Shay shrugged, and Roan said, “I don’t think we should chance it,” before going back to his search.
Graham turned to Shay, who merely lifted a brow. “He’s right,” he added, as Graham began swearing under his breath.
“I’m still calling the island tribunal,” Graham insisted. “If I get the damn law overturned, there will be no title inheritance. Kinloch will remain under my governance as long as her people wish me to lead.”
“You’ll have forty days to campaign, get them all to agree,” Shay reminded him.
“And that’s the same forty days you’d also have to find a bride,” Roan added. “I dinnae think it’s a wise bet to divide your energies.”
“I need to try. Especially given that even if I was willing to follow the law, there doesn’t seem to be anyone eligible to marry anyway.”
Both of his friends sighed, then nodded, knowing, as they must have all along, that he wouldn’t go down without a fight. To that end, Graham turned on his heel, determined to do whatever it was going to take to set the proceedings in motion. His hand was on the knob, when Roan hooted.
“What do ye know. I think I’ve found her!”
Graham turned, knowing he had to at least ask. “Found who?”
“Your wife.”
“Roan—”
“I expanded my search to the mainland, and, well…I had to search a wee bit more widely, but I plugged the McAuley name into Facebook, then backtracked the names to the tree list that Shay has drawn up, and”—he turned his laptop around and gestured with a flourish—“voila! A connection to our own McAuley tree, albeit a wee bit distant one. But it only matters that the connection is there.”
Graham wasn’t about to take a single step closer, much less look at the poor woman Roan had targeted. He already felt trapped, bound, and tethered by an archaic clan law…and he’d grown up knowing about it. He couldn’t fathom broaching the subject with someone who knew nothing of him, nothing of Kinloch, much less of the ridiculous MacLeod-McAuley marriage pact.
Roan looked at him triumphantly. “It just took a little determination.”
“How do you know she’s linked with our McAuleys? Just becaue her surname—”
“That’s the beauty of Facebook, my friend. Her whole family history is documented, mostly as it pertains to their family industry, but there it is,” he added with a bit of dramatic flair, squinting back at the screen, tapping some keys, and scrolling some more. “Shay and I already drew up a lineage of everyone on Kinloch, going back several generations, so all I had to do was extend the branches out on those who have left the island over the past, say, fifty years. He spun the laptop back around again so the monitor faced Graham. “There’s a direct link. She’s the veritable needle in a haystack.” He grinned, quite self-satisfied. “And we found her.”
A knot fisted tightly in Graham’s gut. It felt a lot like a noose, tightening around his neck. “Even if I was willing to remotely consider the idiotic idea of pursuing the poor lass—and I’m most emphatically not—what on earth could I say to her that wouldn’t make me sound like an utter loon? I mean, consider it, Roan. Truly. I approach a total stranger, and propose marriage, and if that same well-documented family of hers has even the slightest bit of protectiveness, they’d have me in a white jacket, locked in the nearest tower. And I could hardly blame them.”
He turned to Shay, needing the voice of reason he would surely provide. “Tell him this is utter lunacy.”
Shay didn’t so much as glance at Roan. “You should at least consider it,” he said, leaving Graham momentarily speechless. He lifted his hand before Graham could regroup and lecture them both on the rest of the vast and varied reasons why considering it was the very last thing he was about to do. “Think of it as a contract, of sorts. In fact,” Shay said, his aristocratic features lighting up in a way they rarely did, “I’ll gladly draw up a legal agreement that you can propose with. Approach it like a business deal.”
“Because every woman dreams of being proposed to with a legal document,” Graham said darkly, unable to truly believe he was even having this conversation. “You two canno’ be serious.”
But it only took looking at them to prove that they couldn’t be more serious.
“You have to at least try,” Roan said. “I mean, we did find a candidate. That’s a start—more of a solution to all this than we had before.”
“You’ve both gone stark ravers. Mad as hatters.”
“If you don’t at least try,” Shay said,