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Fyfe raised his hand. "Does the one what finds her get to eat her?"
"No." Logan put his hands on the kitchen table and addressed the gathered men. "This lobster is of great importance to Madeline. Which means it's of great importance to me."
The words were the truth. He wasn't sure when it had happened, but he cared now. About Madeline and about her illustrations. This was more than a lobster. It was her dream. No one was going to take that from her--not Varleigh, not Rabbie, and not Logan.
"I need you to move swiftly and surely, lads. In all our years together on campaign, we never once left a soldier behind to die. We're not leaving this lobster, either."
Just before leaving the room, he pulled Maddie aside. "Dinna worry. You have my word. We'll find her in no time at all."
Hours passed.
Nothing.
While the men continued their search, Maddie went upstairs to change out of her gown. She would be of more help in practical clothing.
As she went, she scanned every niche and pocket in the stone. It seemed highly unlikely that a lobster would have managed to climb stairs, but she kept her eyes open anyway.
She went into her bedchamber and set about undoing the closures of her green silk, when her eye fell on something that caught and held her attention.
Not Fluffy.
Logan's black canvas knapsack.
He'd worn a small dress sporran to the ball tonight. But there on a hook hung his military-issue satchel for coins, spectacles, gloves . . . and, presumably, several years' worth of Maddie's embarrassing letters.
She abandoned her plan to undress and hurried to seize it in her hands. Those letters had to be in here. They just had to be. She'd searched everywhere else.
Her fingers trembled as she loosened the buckle holding the strap.
And then she paused.
What would she do with them if they were inside? She'd been planning to destroy them at first opportunity, but now she wondered. Would she truly be able to throw them in the fire?
Maddie didn't know. So much had changed.
She took a deep breath, opened the knapsack, and peeked inside.
Nothing.
Well, not nothing. There were the usual odds and ends inside, but no packet of letters. Drat.
"What are you looking for?"
Logan's voice.
She wheeled to face him. "Oh. Nothing. Well, I'm looking for Fluffy, of course. The knapsack was lying open, and I thought she might have crawled inside. It's . . . a little known fact that lobsters love the smell of canvas."
In a lifetime of telling stupid lies, Maddie knew she had just told her stupidest.
But Logan looked too fatigued to question her, or perhaps simply too weary to care. His eyes were red with exhaustion, and his jaw had grown over with stubble again.
Her heart softened. He'd been working so hard for her.
"No luck on your end, either?" she asked.
He shook his head. "But we're not giving up. Not if it takes all night and into morning."
"You should rest. It's just a lobster."
"She's not just a lobster. She's your dream, and that was our bargain. Your dream for mine."
"It's over, Logan. It's over. You saw the way Lord Varleigh treated me tonight. Even if he had introduced me to Mr. Dorning, it would have been for nothing. I'm a woman. That's already a strike against me in most people's eyes. And if I'm newly married? They'd never hire me for a long project. They'd assume I'll get pregnant at any moment and abandon the work."
"Why are you speaking as though we're married?"
"Because maybe we should be." She forced herself to meet his gaze.
"You don't want that."
"Don't I?"
"No. You don't."
"What makes you so sure?"
"Aside from the fact that you've been telling me so, in no uncertain terms, ever since I arrived?" Heavy footsteps carried him closer. "The letters, mo chridhe. You'd spun a tale of a Scottish officer and a home in the Highlands. But that was just a story. Your true dream was in the margins. All those moths and flowers and snails. I'm not letting you give that up just because Lord Varleigh is a bastard and one lobster crawled away. It means something to you."
Perhaps it did. But it meant everything to her that he understood.
"Maybe we could mean something to each other."
"Maddie . . ."
She reached to touch him, grasping the lapels of his coat to draw him close. Her heart was pounding in her chest, but she told herself to be brave.
He was ragged and weary, but she was weary, too. Exhausted from holding back this tide of affection and tenderness inside her. She couldn't control her emotions for another moment.
She wanted to hold him. She wanted him to hold her.
"Don't you see?" She slid her hands inside his coat, skimming over the rippled surface of his abdomen and reaching to encircle him in her arms. "If we could have a marriage that was real . . . one that meant something . . . Lord Varleigh and Fluffy and the encyclopedia wouldn't matter. Nothing else would matter."
"Don't." His voice was hoarse. "Don't talk like this. We still have a great deal of castle to search."
"Let the men search. Stay here with me."
She sensed his will to resist weakening. His breathing grew ragged. She found the spot where his open collar gaped. She kissed the dark notch at the base of his throat.
"Stay with me, Logan." Stretching onto her toes, she kissed his jaw, then his cheek. "Make love to me."
She kissed him.
And any feeble, insincere protests Logan might have made were lost, washed away in the sweetness.
"Stay with me." She pulled him toward the bed, and he followed. "It's time to make this real."
Together they fell onto the mattress. At last, she was under him. Soft and warm and welcoming. Spreading her thighs to make a cradle for his hips and tugging at the hem of his shirt.
Belowstairs, he could still hear the men thundering from one room to the next, shouting directions to each other in their lobster search.
"You're . . ." When her hand slipped inside his shirt, he moaned against her mouth, "You're certain you want this now?"
"Yes. Now. Always." Her whispered words warmed his skin and inflamed his desire. "Make me feel like you did earlier, on the dressing table. Let me do the same for you." She pushed up the fabric of his shirt and ran her hands over his bared chest. "Logan, I want you."
Holy God. The words were like sparks dropped into whisky. In an instant, he was afire for her. Primed to explode.
She was a grown woman, he reminded himself. She understood what this meant, and she was making her own choice.
All he had to do was seize his prize.
She held him tighter, running her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. The edge of pleasure was keen. He clutched her to him, sinking into the kiss.
"Just do it," she urged, reaching between them to pull up her skirts. "Hurry. Make me yours before I can . . ."
Her voice trailed off.
But she didn't need to complete that statement. He knew what she'd almost said.
Make me yours before I can change my mind.
A whisper of guilt moved through him. He ignored it. Running headlong toward the fear, just as he'd always told his men to do in battle.
For a glorious moment, he believed he could conquer it.
And then . . .
In an instant, it simply became too much. There was no thought in his decision. No desire or conscious intent. Just the instinct: Pull away.
The flash of hurt in her eyes was immediate. And eviscerating.
He felt like he'd glimpsed paradise by peering between the bars just as the gates were closed on him forever.
"Before you can change your mind," he finished for her. "That's what you almost said, isn't it? You want me to take you here and now, before you come to your senses." He rolled onto one elbow, breathing hard. "I dinna like the sound of that."
She flung her arms overhead and sighed. The gesture did incredible things for her breasts. "Now you're suddenly full of scruples?"
"I don't know. Maybe I am."
"Logan. This is what you wanted. What you demanded and threatened to ruin me to get."
"You're only upset right now because of what happened back there. I know you're disappointed, mo chridhe."
She reached for him. "Then make it better. It would be no sacrifice to give up my work if this were a real marriage in every sense. One with love. A family. We could have that together, Logan."
Jesus. So now he had to promise he could be worth giving up everything for? He couldn't do that. He didn't know how to replace her career, a family, a community of colleagues and friends. It was impossible.
He wouldn't be enough. She'd grow to resent him.
And then she'd leave.
"We don't have to lie to anyone. We could make this all the truth. Tonight. Don't you care for me at all?"
Of course he cared for her, and more than a bit. The truth was, he cared for her too much. He just couldn't take her dreams away. Not like this.
"We'll find another way," he said.
It was the wrong thing to say.
"We've been through this, Logan. Or did you forget? You have rejected every one of my ideas. Including this one, mortifyingly enough." She rose to a sitting position and buried her face in her hands. "I feel like such a fool."
"I just can't give you what you're asking," he said. "I've told you that from the start. Love and romance . . . it's just not in me."
"I refuse to believe that. I know that's not true." Her dark eyes flashed with anger. "You're the most caring, loyal man I've ever known. I see it in the way you treat your men, the tenants. Even my aunt. I'm the only one who can't seem to inspire your devotion."
"That's not fair. And you know it's untrue. I would protect you with my life."
"But I'll never have your heart. Will I?"
He didn't know how to answer her.
She rose from the bed and went to the dressing table. "I'm done with this. I'm done dreaming of you." She yanked at the tartan sash draped across her torso, pulling open the luckenbooth brooch and holding it in her outstretched palm. "I want the truth. Who was she, this A.D.?"
"I've told you. It's not important."
"It's important to me! I've been wearing this day in, day out. A heart-shaped lie on my chest for everyone to see. I accepted it as my due. A mark of shame that I'd brought on myself by deceiving everyone. But now I want to know the truth. Did you love her?"
"Maddie . . ."
"It's a simple question, Logan. No explanations necessary. Just one word will suffice. Yes or no. Did you love her?"
"Yes," he answered.
"A great deal?"
"As much as I knew how. It wasn't enough."
"So she left you."
He nodded.
"Clever woman."
Logan winced. "Perhaps she was. I was holding her back."
And he would be holding back Maddie, too. She had far more than sketches to offer the world. She had a gentle heart and abundant love. The wish to raise a family. All of these were things he couldn't bring himself to accept.
She would be wasted on him.
"So even though she left you, and even after all this time," she said, "you've never been able to forget her."
He shook his head in honest answer. "No."
She tossed the luckenbooth toward him, and it landed on the rumpled quilt. "Take it back. I don't want to wear it anymore. I'm leaving."
"Wait." He pushed to his feet. "It's scarcely a week until Beltane. Whatever arrangement we work out between us, I need you to be there that night."
"You just rejected me. What makes you think I have any interest in striking some kind of agreement with you?"
"Do I need to remind you about the letters?"
"Those stupid letters." She choked on a wild laugh. "They don't even matter anymore. Go ahead, send them to the scandal sheets. What do I have left to lose? I've no employment prospects to protect. No romantic prospects, either. I'm accustomed to public humiliation. Loneliness, too. I can't be any more isolated than I have been living here."
She flung open her closet and reached for an empty valise on the top shelf. It tumbled down on her, glancing off her head as it fell to the floor.
Ouch. Logan winced in sympathy.
"Just what this moment needed," she said numbly. "One more humiliation."
She opened the valise and placed it on the bed, then began pulling handfuls of linen and stockings from the closet and shoving them inside.
Logan grabbed the valise by one handle. "You canna leave. Not yet."
She took the other handle and tugged back. "I can. And I will. You can't stop me."
"What will you live on?"
"Anger, for the present. It feels as though I have enough to fuel me for some time."
Her eyes were as determined and brave as he'd ever seen them. This was just the fire he'd been wanting to see from her. The strength he knew she'd possessed all along.
And of course, it would come just as she'd resolved to leave him.
He pushed a hand through his hair. "Forget about me."
"Oh, believe me. I intend to."
"None of this has been for me. My men need a home, and you know that. I know you care about them, too. Think of Callum, Rabbie, Munro, Fyfe. Think of Grant."
"I will miss them all. Especially Grant." She paused, a clutch of striped woolen stockings in one hand. She pressed the stockings to her heart. "Grant is my favorite person. Do you know why? He made me feel beautiful on my wedding day. No matter how many times we're introduced, he's always impressed. He makes me laugh." She stuffed the stockings into her valise. "He thinks you're a lucky bastard to have me. What a poor, addled fool."
"Grant might be addled, but he's no kind of fool. And neither is he the only one who found you beautiful on our wedding day." He took her in his arms. "I canna let you leave."
"Why should I stay?"
"Because I . . ."
Logan knew what she wanted to hear. But somehow he just couldn't force the words. He didn't believe in those words. Not coming from anyone else, and not from his own lips, either. Sooner or later, they were always a lie.
She gave him a sad smile. "That's what I thought."
"Maddie."
A shrill, high-pitched scream propelled them two steps apart.
His protective instincts kicked into a gallop. But before he could gather his wits to investigate, Rabbie's head appeared in the doorway.
"Found her!" the breathless, red-faced soldier reported. "Or rather, she found Fyfe's finger. One lobster, alive and well."
"Excellent. Thank you so much, Rabbie." Maddie gave him a smile that faded just as soon as he'd left the room. To Logan, she added, "Just in time. Now she can leave with me."
"You'll finish your drawings elsewhere?"
"No. I'm going to do Fluffy the favor I should have done myself. I'm going to set her free."
Chapter Twenty-one
"Madling?" Aunt Thea poked her turbaned head through the door. "Becky told me you're packing your trunks. Is everything all right?"
"Aunt Thea, do sit down. We need to talk."
She steeled her nerves. It was time. Long past time.
This bog of lies had sucked her in further and further over the years. She had landed in it up to her neck, and this time she wasn't going to have any assistance from Logan.
It was up to Maddie to get herself free.
First rule of bogs: Dinna panic.
"What is it, Madling?" Aunt Thea asked.
Breathe, she told herself.
"I . . . I'm going to have a great deal to say. May I ask you to bear with me until I've said all of it?"
"Of course."
"When I was sixteen years old and came home from Brighton, I told you I'd met a Scottish officer by the seaside." Maddie swallowed hard. "I lied."
&nbs
p; There it was. The grand confession, in two syllables. Why they'd been so impossible to say aloud for so long, she could not fathom.
But now that she'd said them once, it seemed no trouble to say them again.
"I lied," she repeated. "I never met any gentleman. I spent the entire holiday alone. When I came home, everyone was expecting me to go to Town for my season. I felt panicked at the thought of society, so I invented this wild falsehood about a Captain MacKenzie. And then I just kept telling it. For years."
"But . . . unless I'm going demented in my old age, there is a man in this castle. One whose name is Captain MacKenzie. He looks quite real to me."
"He is real. But I'd never met him before." Maddie put her head down on her crossed arms. "I'm so sorry. I've been ashamed, and afraid of you learning the truth. I wanted to tell you years ago, but you were so fond of the idea of him . . . and I'm so fond of you."
"Oh, my Madling." Aunt Thea rubbed her back in soothing circles. The way she'd done when Maddie was a young girl. "I know."
"You know that I'm sorry? You can forgive me?"
"Not only that. I know everything. The lies, the letters. That your Captain MacKenzie was merely whimsy and imagination. I've always known."
Stunned, Maddie lifted her head. "What?"
"Please do not take offense at this, dear--but it wasn't a terribly plausible tale. In fact, it was rather preposterous, and you're not especially talented at deceit. Without me vouching for you, I don't think the story would have lasted a month with your father."
"I don't understand what you're telling me. Do you mean that you never believed me? All this time, you've known that my Captain MacKenzie was a complete fabrication, and you never said a word?"
"Well, we agreed that you seemed to need time."
"We? Who is 'we' in that sentence?"
"Lynforth and I, of course."
"My godfather knew I invented a suitor, too?" Maddie buried her face in her hands. "Oh, Lord. This is so embarrassing."
Embarrassing, but also oddly freeing. If this was true, at least she did not need to feel she'd inherited this castle under false pretenses.
"Naturally he did. And he understood. Because, my darling Madling, the two of us were close."
"Close."
"Lovers for twenty years, on and off. And he knew I'd once lied to avoid marrying, too."
Maddie thought her brain would twist from all these revelations. "You weren't debauched by the Comte de Montclair and ruined for all other men?"
"Oh, I went to bed with him. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't magical, either. And no, that night did not ruin me for other men. To the contrary, it made me realize that I was far too young to shackle myself to one man for the rest of my life simply because my parents deemed him suitable, only to learn on the wedding night that he might or might not possess an erotic obsession with feathers."
