“Aren’t you funny?” Her tone relayed sarcasm, but in her chest, her soul might as well be dancing. She loved this part of their budding relationship. They laughed all the time, teased, and dug, and bickered, but always with a smile.
Never in her life had she smiled so often as now.
“But get this…,” she continued, doing her best to keep her traitorous emotion out of her voice and focus on the job of entertaining her husband. “Before I left the States, I read in the papers that— Hey! What the hell you think you’re doing?”
In a smooth, strong motion, he’d taken her hand captive, secured it around his neck, and scooped her out of her chair, careful of her still healing leg.
“I decided this tale would be much more interesting if ye were naked.”
She always hated it when he was right, but she couldn’t disagree in the least. “What about my pistol?” It was as close to a maidenly protestation as he would get. “I can’t just leave it on the table, Mrs. McCabe will…”
“Let her curse it.” He grinned. “I’ll buy ye new ones.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Emotion was barely something Gavin had taught himself to identify, let alone trust. But if pressed to describe the general sense of what he’d experienced in the month he’d been married, he might be so bold as to give it a name.
Happiness.
Even as he thought the word, he wanted to shrink from it. Lest it bite him.
Lest it disappear.
If it did, he couldn’t go chasing after it just now, as he was confined to the oversized tub by the weight of his wee wife settled between his legs, her shoulder blades resting against his torso. Her head was tucked against his neck as she gently scrubbed at some of the stubborn grit from the grooves surrounding his fingernails, and he reveled in the almost innocent intimacy of the act.
Most men would happily give their right eye for a quiet woman, but it seemed that his bonny was especially silent today. Pensive. He should ask her if aught was amiss, but every time he thought to do so, he decided against it.
In case the answer was him.
It occurred to him that in spite of the fact that he was immensely gratified by their arrangement, she might not be. He cast the net of his memory back through the days since their wedding, looking for a place where he might have given offense.
Their days had fallen into an immeasurably pleasant routine rather quickly. He was pleased to find they both had a tendency to wake early, eager to set out for Erradale. His wife, he discovered, was a different person upon waking than he was used to. A bit surly, pale, withdrawn, and without appetite. She’d slip out of bed and make for the water closet at dawn, which usually roused him. Upon her return, he’d tease and grope at her mercilessly, which did little for her mood as they dressed, but amused him to no end as he learned a helpful array of American West curse words. Eventually, his harassment seemed to draw her spirit out of her, and by the time they mounted their horses and made for Erradale, she was either smiling or spitting mad, and he enjoyed her either way.
The work was hard and bitter cold, but she never complained. She ordered braw Highlanders about with the gravity and indefinable authority of Napoleon.
His own little dictator.
The men listened to her, as did he, because time and time again she proved her knowledge and skill. Erradale was beginning to resemble a right proper cattle operation.
Gavin had offered to allow her to stay home in the relative comfort of Inverthorne and keep his mother company, or take up whatever matronly hobby she desired. She’d immediately informed him that no one but she had the sense or the know-how to keep Erradale running correctly, and come the evening, he could go fuck himself instead of her.
She’d only been right on one account.
Because, of course, no matter how vigorously she bickered with him during the day, she met him with a matching spirit in bed at night. Well, not always in bed, he amended with a fond smirk. A few times they’d fucked against a tree when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other in time to make it home. Then there was that once in the study when she’d been too impatient to allow him to finish the payroll ledgers, and perhaps tonight in the bath if he could tempt her away from whatever distracted her at the moment.
“Did ye have an agreeable Christmas, bonny?” he ventured, smoothing his free hand down her long hair, and splaying it across the surface of the water in rippling, dark waves.
“I did,” she answered sedately. “Though I still feel bad that your present hasn’t yet arrived.”
“Think nothing of it. Ye’d lost everything ye had, and ye didna get yer annuity in time to send away for gifts. Ye gave me Erradale, and my mother gets another woman in the house, which I can tell pleases her to no end.”
“Still,” she worried. “You both ordered me such thoughtful gifts.” She motioned to the long sapphire silk robe his mother had commissioned for her, and the ornate box that held within it brand-new pearl-handled pistols ornately engraved with her initials, A.S.J.
Alison St. James.
The gift had delighted her, at first, and the kiss of uninhibited joy she’d gifted him with had kept him warm all the day long. So much so, in fact, that he’d barely been able to make it through Christmas dinner. He’d tried to take pleasure in Locryn and Calybrid’s hilarious banter and ancient, bardic solstice stories. He usually enjoyed the lively music performed by Eammon’s fiddle and Callum’s bodhran drum. But tonight, all he wanted was his wife.
Later, he’d caught her running her fingertips over the inscription on his gift, a sheen of moisture darkening her eyes from cobalt to midnight blue.
Happy tears, he’d thought at first. But upon closer inspection of her features, he wasn’t so sure. A bleakness bracketed full lips drawn tight, and a wrinkle of ever-present anxiety creased her forehead. Had she been more affected by recent events than she let on? She’d been so fond of her guns before, so proud of her skill, but perhaps getting shot put her off them.
But could that be? She wore her old pistol on her belt every day, was never without it, in fact.
Maybe the new ones displeased her, somehow, and she was loath to tell him.
He’d know if he could just scrape enough courage together to ask her, outright. Instead, he’d a bath drawn, as he knew of her fondness for them, and he’d intended to take his time undressing them both.
She’d refused to relax, and had avoided his touch, going so far as to undress herself and plop into the tub, drawing her knees into her chest.
The gesture made room for him, though, and he noticed that she hadn’t been able to resist watching him strip until he joined her.
Once he’d pulled her in close and settled her soft posterior against his lap, their physical connection had done just what he’d thought it might and, as always, she’d melted against him. He’d washed her hair and her body, and now that she was returning the favor, it was becoming increasingly difficult to remember that they needed to talk. However, he could sense none of her usual heat or desire, and intrinsically knew that to take her to bed now would be folly.
“Are ye … Is there aught bothering ye, bonny?”
She stilled mid-scrub. The tiny bristles needled his flesh, but he didn’t dare move, hoping his silence would draw her out.
“It’s nothing,” she said finally, resuming her ministrations with crisp efficiency.
“In my experience, if a lass says ‘’Tis nothing,’ then ’tis most definitely something.”
“I’m well aware of your infamously extensive experience with other women,” she snapped. “But when I say it’s nothing, it’s nothing.”
“Now ye’ve convinced me it’s something,” he murmured against her ear, licking at the delicate shell, hoping to disarm her a bit.
She plopped his hand back into the water. “Fine. It’s something I just … cannot discuss at the moment, how’s that?”
The words he’d harshly spoken to her on their wedding day came rushing b
ack to him. He’d firmly locked the door on a few very specific topics, and perhaps one of them needled at her on a holiday that was supposed to be about family.
“Ye want to share secrets, bonny?” He enfolded the bulk of his arms around her.
She took a moment to think about it, and then deflated with a breathy sigh. “No. It’s probably best we both keep our secrets for the time being.”
An odd reply, he thought. Taking a deep breath, he prepared himself to do something he’d not done in longer than a decade.
Trust someone.
“I told ye I wouldna discuss my back, my father, my brother, or Colleen…”
She took in an expectant breath, and that confirmed his suspicions.
“But … I was wrong to do that. To shut that door forever, was I not?”
She shrugged. “We barely knew—know—each other. You’re entitled to keep your past in the—”
“How will we get to know each other without personal revelations?” he interjected. “If ye have any questions about me, lass, ye can ask them. And no matter what they are, I promise I’ll answer them honestly.”
For a moment, they both didn’t breathe, though he was sure she could hear the pounding of his heart against the bare flesh of her back.
She finally inhaled. “I heard something a while back…”
“I’m certain ye’ve heard a great many things about me,” he murmured. “And since I’ve already proven that the rumors of my sexual prowess are all true, am I to assume this is something slanderous?”
“Yes?” She made a sound in her throat both reluctant and frustrated. “But not about you. Not really. I heard that … that Liam killed your father. Do you believe that to be true?”
Not-so-secret family secrets. Gavin grunted. It was time she learned what it was to be tied to Hamish Mackenzie. “I know it to be true,” he answered honestly. “It’s common knowledge, in fact.” There was no reason to ask where she heard the rumor, as it’d persisted among the Mackenzie since the moment Liam had come home from accepting his commission just long enough to gain a wife and lose a father.
“Is that the reason you hate your brother?” Her voice held neither surprise nor censure, merely cautious curiosity.
“That’s part of it. I wanted to do it, myself. Justice isna the only opportunity Liam robbed me of.”
“Is that why … why you had an affair with his wife?”
“Nay. I was with Colleen in spite of my brother, not because of him.”
“You … loved her?”
Here, Gavin paused. Would the truth hurt her? He wondered, because he was startled by the realization that if he heard of her love for another man … A strange ache pierced his chest, followed by flare of possessive fury.
“Aye.” He kept his vow to answer her honestly, but felt compelled to explain in a way he never had before. “We were courting before my father signed a betrothal contract between her and Liam. I often suspected that Hamish did it because he knew I wanted her.”
“Did Liam know you wanted her?”
“He claims not to have done.” Gavin thought back to the horrid night of the wedding. He’d refused to attend the festivities, and when the lights of Ravencroft had dimmed, he’d lain awake brutally tortured by thoughts of his brother with the woman he loved.
“You don’t believe him?” she asked quietly.
“Actually, I think I do,” he said after a time. “Because I doona think he would have married her and fathered two children had he known what I knew.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everyone in Colleen’s household thought she was besotted with a demon, and she was, in a way. Just like we all are. But her demon was nothing more or less than madness. She heard voices, upon occasion, and sometimes it was impossible to break her of certain obsessions. When she was at her worst, she’d convince herself of the strangest things, like that her cook was trying to poison her, or her lady’s maid was a spy.”
“How awful.”
“She’d already confided in me. I’d already seen evidence of her madness, and I told her it didna matter, that I’d help guide her through the bad days so we could spend the good ones together. Because when she was young, it wasn’t all that serious. When she was lucid, she was beautiful and softhearted and kind. And she loved me, too, as well as she could.”
“Then … why did she agree to marry your brother?” His wife sounded puzzled. “It’s not like this is the Dark Ages, can your father really still sign you away without your consent?”
“According to Colleen, she submitted because both she and her father feared what Hamish would do to their family if she defied his commands.”
“Yet another reason to hate your father.” His wife surprised him by threading her slim fingers through his beneath the water. “Did Liam love her, as well?”
Gavin shook his head, struck by how easy it was to unburden his past. For the first time, the gall of it didn’t choke his throat. “Until Mena, Liam loved nothing so much as the shedding of blood. He married Colleen because he needed a marchioness and an heir, and she was the highest-born lass hereabouts who was anything to look at.”
“Poor Colleen.” Her compassion unstitched him, and he closed his eyes against the strange welling of vivid emotion. “Was Liam cruel to her?”
“Not on purpose, but neither did he ken what to do with her madness. He was gone to war more often than he was home, and his abandonment only caused her distress, though neither of them much desired each other’s company. He thought that making her a mother would help, but it only seemed to exacerbate her condition. For years I did what I could. I spent a great deal of time at Ravencroft with her, but innocently, only to watch her deteriorate. One night, when things were particularly bad, she sent for me and…”
“And you went to her.”
“It was the only night we spent together … in that way. After, I pleaded with her to leave him. To come away with me. I was sure that I could make her better, that our love would somehow withstand my brother’s wrath and the confines of her mind. God, but I was young and eternally daft.”
“She didn’t run away with you.”
“She sent me ahead to prepare, wrote a confession to my brother, and threw herself from the Ravencroft battlements.”
“Holy God!” She gripped his hand tighter, and he squeezed back, feeling more unburdened than angry for the first time in more than a decade since the occurrence.
“Now ye see why there is a rift between Liam and me that will never mend.” He brought their joined hands to his lips and kissed her knuckles.
“Never is a long time…,” she said hopefully.
“Not long enough.” He made a short sound of melancholy amusement in his chest. “It’s all ancient history, anyhow. I spent the next decade becoming the dissolute and debauched ne’er-do-well ye’ve come to know and lo—” His throat caught on the word.
Love.
They’d never spoken of it, except to deny it. He’d promised himself he was forever incapable of opening himself to the emotion again. That the best they could hope for was to put up with each other to their mutual benefit.
He already knew it had gone way beyond that.
At least on his part.
“Do ye feel better knowing that, lass? Or worse?” He kept the anxiety out of his voice as he asked, wondering if his honesty had earned him her condemnation.
“Better,” she said instantly. “And worse.”
“Ye canna ken the guilt I’ve carried,” he confessed. “Ye canna know the regret.”
She twisted to face him, her lithe body sliding along his, her lovely features pursed with a mirroring apprehension. “This may sound strange … but I think I can.”
“Is that so?” He searched her face, suddenly struck by how little he knew about her. What sins could possibly haunt the past of a woman so young? “Confess yer sins, then, and I’ll absolve ye as ye have me.”
She pressed a soft kiss to his lips. “You didn’t n
eed absolution. You didn’t mean to hurt anyone … Thank you for telling me.” To his surprise, she pushed away from him and got out of the tub with rather jerky, ungainly movements for a woman with such usual grace. Remaining hunched over, she covered herself with a towel and padded across the room. Reaching for her robe, she hurriedly belted it around her.
Goddammit, he’d just gotten her naked, and laid himself bare. There was no way she was covering up now … nor was she avoiding his question.
Most especially now that he was certain she hid something from him. Something important.
The water nearly sloshed out of the tub as he swiftly rose and dried himself before stalking over to the bed upon which she attacked her hair with the brush.
Unabashedly nude, he gripped both of her wrists, putting a stop to her frenzied almost violent grooming, and pulled her to her feet.
“It’s yer turn, lass,” he said gently. “I know ye’ve been wounded, as well. And I want to know by whom.” Was it Grant? God, he’d never forget that name.
The man she might have married if not for him. The man who’d taken her virginity?
“I’m not wounded,” she said warily. “I—I’m broken. I’m ruined. And it’s no fault but my own.”
“Nay, lass,” he argued, forcing her arms to wrap around his middle, drawing her close until he splayed her hands over the scars on his back. “I see wounds in your eyes when ye forget to hide them from me. We share them, I think. The kind of wounds that never heal. But we doona let them break us, do we? They scar, but those scars create us. They remind us of what we can survive. Of the strength we have. Ye’re the strongest woman I’ve ever met. It’s one of the reasons I—”
“I’m weak,” she said, burying her crumpling face against his chest. “And I’m a coward.”
“Tell me why ye think that.”
“You don’t want to know,” she groaned.
“Ye’re wrong. I want to know everything about ye. I want to know what makes you desperate. What makes you despair. I want to know what brings ye joy.” The truth of his confession astounded them both, it seemed. But he meant it. Sliding a finger beneath her delicate chin, he gently forced her to look up at him. “I want to be yer husband, lass.”
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