The inviting arch of her body almost swayed him from his plan, but one did not seduce—a friend—for that is who she was. He wanted her as his wife to finally allow his heart to soar—a voice inside his head added, and to save you from loneliness.
“Why are you stopping?”
He removed her hand from his groin and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “I didn’t realize we were in such a rush. Anticipation heightens the desire.”
With a shrug she admitted, “I have no idea. This is my first tryst. Or seduction, or whatever it is you call this.”
He cupped her face between his two hands, gently drinking from her sweet lips. His possessive side loved that he was her first tryst. He didn’t like to think of her with any other man. His one regret was he did not get to be her first, but if he had his way, he would be her last.
That made him sit up straighter.
He cleared his throat. “I would willingly desirously make love to you tonight but I have to ask you something first.”
She wiggled excitedly in his arms. “Yes, I’ll respect you in the morning,” she giggled. More seriously, she added, “And I won’t expect anything more. I know you are going to announce your engagement, and I shall ask for nothing after this night.”
He nodded. “I am going to become betrothed at the King’s dinner. In fact, I’m hoping to announce our engagement.”
Chapter 5
He didn’t get the response he’d expected. Her face drained of color and she tried to clamber off his lap, but he held her tightly as she squirmed in his arms, trying to get away. Finally, she calmed.
“Is this some kind of cruel joke to you?” She said, her eyes welling with unshed tears.
He took both of her hands in his. “No. I am deadly serious. I have been thinking of this for nine long months and it keeps coming back to you.” He didn’t bother to say, it only came back to her since he heard her say she was barren.
He pressed on. “There is no doubting my desire for you. I have loved you for years, be it from afar. You are from one of Scotland’s best families. You are my best friend’s sister and it would align our families. We know each other—we are friends—well, I’d like to think we are. You like Connor and he likes you. We could make this work.”
“Work? I begged you eight years ago to marry me and you watched as I married another. You didn’t love me then, and you don’t love me now. This is too sudden. What are you up to?”
As she poured out her words, tears flowed down her cheeks, and it almost broke his heart.
“Not true. I have always loved you. That is why I set you free.”
“Free. I wasn’t free. Do you know how much I dreamed of becoming your wife? But that was a time gone by, before you had finished grieving for Connie. Before my father could not wait any longer and gave me to Iain.”
He swallowed back a curse. “I have not married before this because you are still in my heart, but I did not approach you because I was scared you would not forgive me for walking away all those years ago. It has suddenly come to my attention that if I don’t ask you, I may never know your answer and I may lose the opportunity forever.”
She looked over his shoulder as if staring at a ghost. “I swore my next marriage would be for love. I have had a marriage without love and it was very lonely. I’m not sure I could endure another. It would break my heart to be merely a token wife. If you took mistresses…”
“Why do you think I am being so particular? I vowed that when I marry I shall be true to my wedding vows. If you say yes, there will be no other women in my bed ever again.”
“Why now? Why tonight?”
He would fight with whatever he had to make her say yes. “Marrying you has always been something I thought was unattainable, especially after you married Iain. Almost instantly, I realized what a fool I had been. Now you are free,—”
—“I’ve been ‘free’ as you put it for three years. You are not being truthful.”
“Look at me.” She stared into his eyes. “If I have to marry, I only want to marry you. I love you.” That was not a lie. “You have always been my fantasy.”
“Fantasy,” she cried out. “This idea to wed me is pure fantasy.” Her eyes narrowed. “The King is forcing a marriage and I’m convenient. You think I’ll say yes because of our past.”
“No. Think about it. I’m a duke, a wealthy duke. I could walk out this door and be engaged in mere minutes if that is all I wanted.”
She shuddered but did not deny his boast. “It’s likely I can’t have children. The King wants you wed to beget an heir. I can’t give that to you. What will the King say to such a match?”
He would ensure the King did not learn of her situation until it was too late. “I shall tell him that any woman I select may not be able to have children. It’s in God’s hands.”
She shook her head, tears still falling. “But I was married for five years. I lost two babes and then had no more. The odds are against me.” She pushed him hard, trying to escape his hold. “No. I cannot marry you. I won’t do that to you.”
He tried to stop the stab of jealousy her words about sharing Iain’s bed created. “Then I will never marry. It’s you or no one.” How ironic. The very reason it was safe to give her his heart was the reason she used to decline his proposal.
She stopped struggling. “Don’t be ridiculous. You have to marry. You have to have an heir.”
“I have cousins. Many, many cousins.”
Her shoulders slumped. “You would defy the King? Why? Why are you doing this to me? Why does it have to be me? Tell me why and I might listen?”
Angus had said she would want honesty. Could he voice his fears? He’d never said this to another living sole. “I have loved you for years. I wanted to wed you. I truly did. It killed me to see you marry Iain, but I did it for you. I did it to protect you.”
“Protect me? Who from? Your father? He wanted the match.”
“To protect you from the fate that Connie met.”
She sat blinking at him as if he was an idiot. Then her mouth formed a perfect O. “Childbirth. You were protecting me from dying in childbirth.” Her eyes welled with tears as she cupped his chin. “Oh, Dougray. Not all women die in childbirth. I’m healthy. You’d have the best physicians attend me. I’d never have to face what Connie did, left alone with no help… left alone to die.”
Guilt saw him close his eyes against the shameful memory of what his father had done. Finally he swallowed the choking fear and said, “I’m a large man. I’m bigger than most. The midwife who tried to help Connie told Angus the babe was too big, as all my bairns are likely to be. I loved you too much to lose you like that. It would have destroyed me. At least married to Iain, you were still in this world.”
She once again tried to clamber off his lap, but he held her tight. Her eyes flashed with anger. “So we could have married eight years ago. I could have been happy… we could have shared eight wonderful years together. You let me marry a man I did not love, all because of fear. I never took you for a coward. I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for this.”
This time when she struggled in his hold, he let her rise. He forced himself to remain calm. “My mother died in childbirth too, if you recall, and then Connie died in childbirth… I’m even bigger than my father. Can’t you understand? I could not risk your life! You don’t know what it’s like to feel responsible for the death of a person, let alone the woman you love.”
She stopped her pacing and turned to face him. “At least I finally understand why you did what you did all those years ago. You should have told me. I thought, I thought there was something wrong with me, something you did not like.” He saw tears well again. “So you think it’s safe to marry me now that I can’t bear you a child?” She gave a bitter laugh. “What really hurts is that you only want me because I’m damaged.”
“I have always wanted you. Why do you think I stayed away from you? It hurt to see you with him. I don’t care about having an heir.
Let my cousin take the title. It hasn’t made me happy, and my father’s pursuit of ‘pure bloodlines’ saw him leave a woman to die in agony, and he nearly cost me my son’s life. Nothing is worth that behavior.”
“I feel like I can’t breathe… My head is spinning.”
He stood and faced her. “Tell me one thing. Do you hate me for what I did?”
She was still pacing, but the flush of anger on her face was gone. “Honestly, I don’t know what to think, but I could never hate you.”
“Will you consider my offer of marriage then?”
She stopped pacing and looked at him. “I need to think. Denying me eight years ago set me down a different path. I’ve changed. My dreams, and wants, have changed. Did you know I was looking at remarrying?”
His heart missed a beat. “You have an offer?”
“No. I have only just decided I want to remarry. I’m still young and don’t want to spend my life alone. I have someone interested. There is a man who meets my criteria of what I desire in my next marriage.”
Flora could not believe that she was seriously considering walking out of this room without saying yes to Dougray’s proposal. A few years ago all she’d ever wanted was to be his wife, but not like this.
Not because he was afraid to have an heir. What would happen years later when he looked back and saw how stupid he had been, and that he would lose the title and estates? She might be angry with him now for what he did to her—to them—all those years ago, but Angus had always told her that Connie’s death changed Dougray. She had not understood how. The guilt he must feel… It had probably been festering all these years. If only she’d known.
“Who is he?” Dougray’s voice was tight.
She shook her head to clear it of any sympathy. She had to remain strong—for both of them. “That is none of your business. But what I will say is, you may think not being able to have a child is a blessing. Well, it has been my living hell. Giving birth to my child is something I want with all my heart.” She could not stop the quiver in her voice. “I feel like a part of me is missing.”
He frowned. “But you can’t have children even if you marry.”
“Perhaps, but I won’t know until I try. But there is a man who has three children under six, and if I were to marry him, I would have the children I crave. Not my flesh and blood, but I would love them as if they were.”
She watched him swallow and as his jaw tightened she wonder if it would break.
“Glengarry. I have noticed him sniffing at your skirts. He’s merely after a mother for his children.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Are you any nobler? What are you after? You want a wife who cannot have children. You both want me, but for different reasons, none of them involve love.”
“Not true. I love you so much I walked away.”
Did he? Or was he using their past to get what he needed now. A wife. A wife who could not bear a child so he might hold his fear at bay. She wanted a man to love her. He was saying all the right words, but how could she believe him? Suddenly, when the King insisted on marriage, he was here saying he’d loved her all this time. If that was true she just felt sad for all the wasted years.
She wanted to make him understand his mistake. “I would never have walked away from you, even if God himself told me you were the devil. That is how much I loved you.”
“But will Glengarry love you?”
She turned away and said, “I intend to take the time to find out.”
He swung her around to face him. “I have to announce my engagement in two days.”
“I’m sorry, Dougray, but I can’t give you an answer before then. I won’t be forced or rushed into making another marriage. The next time I marry, it will be to a man who loves me as much as I love him.”
It broke her heart, but she couldn’t say yes even if she wanted to. Then he’d be stuck with a woman who could not bear him an heir. She would not do that to him because she understood the craving to hold your own child in your arms. One day he would want that and then where would they be?
He tried to stop her leaving, but she brushed him off. “This is all just too convenient. If the King had not commanded you wed, I wonder if you would have approached me at all.”
“I would have as soon as it sunk in about you not bearing a child. I don’t know why I hadn’t realized sooner. I can risk loving you without risking your life.”
“If you love me, you’ll let me go again. I can’t marry you knowing it will deny you the one thing you need and the one thing that in time you will suddenly want—an heir.”
His hand dropped to his side. “You leave me with a choice of defying my King or picking someone else. I will have to marry another woman who I will never love. You talk about how awful loveless marriages are and then condemn me to one.”
“I’m not condemning you. You are. Ask the King for more time and use it to find a woman you can love and face your fear. Look at Angus. He’s a giant of a man, yet Tessa has born him several children.”
“And I’ve watched as each time he has sat in his study with bottles of whisky, sick with fear for her. Each time he’s thinking will this be the birth that kills her.”
“But it doesn’t. You’re not God, Dougray. Only God knows when our time on this earth is up. I could die of a fever, or of an infected cut, or from a fall from my horse. Life is full of risks, but I’d risk my life gladly if it gave me a child. Look at Connor. Connie’s death gave you a magnificent gift.”
With that, she pulled open the door and walked out. It was the hardest thing she had ever done and her legs could barely carry her they trembled so much.
Chapter 6
Flora’s head was still spinning as she reentered the crowded ballroom. She wondered if everyone looking at her knew what Dougray had been planning. Did everyone know he wanted her because she was the woman who could not bear a child?
She spotted her brother ahead with Tessa at his side and made her way toward them.
“Sister, dear. We have been looking for you. Where have you been?”
“Just the retiring room.”
Tessa leaned close. “I don’t know if I’ll make it through the King’s visit. I’m exhausted and I’m out of polite conversation already.”
She wanted to blurt out what had happened. She wanted to talk with Tessa and get her advice. Flora wanted Tessa to say she wasn’t being stupid. That Dougray and her would be silly to wed, given her condition.
Tessa continued to talk, but Flora barely heard her as she tried to gather her thoughts. Just then, a prickle at her neck made her look over her shoulder. Dougray had entered the ballroom, and it was causing quite a stir. Already several ladies were vying for his attentions.
Her hands shook as he made his way toward them. Not here. Not in public. She could not face him. Her breathing tightened.
A hand landed on her arm. “Is everything all right, Flora? You’ve gone very pale.”
She forced her lips to curve in a smile. “It’s so hot in here. Shall we take some air?”
Tessa took one look at her face and slipped her arm through hers and led her toward the terrace, calling over her shoulder, “Angus, we will be on the terrace. We won’t be long. Flora needs some air.”
She didn’t look back; instead she focused on her breathing and tried to gather her somersaulting thoughts. Once they reached the terrace, she did not stop. She pulled Tessa along with her and they almost skipped down the steps into the garden itself, moving away from prying eyes and ears.
When they reached a small fountain area with a bench seat, she indicated that Tessa should sit while she paced up and down.
“Did you know that Dougray would ask me to marry him?”
Tessa jumped to her feet on a squeal. “Goodness, how exciting. How long have you two been secretly courting?” Her smiled died. “Wait, it can’t be that long he was with Lady Carissa, only the other…” She stopped with a hand on hips. “The Kings visit.”
“Exactly.�
�
Tessa sunk down on the seat. “But this is what you have always wanted. He obviously merely needed a prod to finally face the fact it’s long overdue for him to settle down.”
“So I’m a convenience? If only that were the whole of it.” At Tessa’s frown she added, “Dougray proposed, saying he has always loved me.”
Tessa’s eyes narrowed. “Always? Then where has he been for the past two years once you came out of mourning? I thought Dougray was an honorable man, but why is he lying to get you to agree. Surely he knows you love him and would marry him in a flash.”
She stood with her back to Tessa, shame and self-pity eating her soul. “He wants to marry me because he’s suddenly realized I’m barren. He wants me because I cannot have children.”
She heard Tessa rise and come and stand next to her. She slipped her hand in Flora’s. “I’m confused. You are not making sense. He needs an heir. Why would he marry you if he thought you barren?”
She let the tears fall once again. “He gave me up because he thinks any woman he gets with child will die in childbirth like Connie, and like his mother. He says he let me go to save my life, but now…”
“But now he thinks there is no risk, as you have never fallen enceinte.” She hugged Flora. “I feel sorry for him. He must have lived with this fear and guilt for years. It’s explains some stories I’ve heard about his sexual tendencies.”
“What stories?”
Tessa looked uncomfortable. “Let’s just say that there are many ways to pleasure a man and he is known to vary rarely make love to a woman. He prefers other methods.”
Flora sighed and shook her head. “You are right. I do feel sorry for him. I’m also so angry with him I could—hit him until I’m exhausted. I had to marry Iain because of his fear. But perhaps God has a plan for us and knew we were not suited because he needs an heir, even if he won’t admit it.”
“You don’t know that you can’t have a child with him.” Tessa, ever optimist said.
To Tempt A Highland Duke: A Scottish Romance Novella Page 4