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“Un-give it.” The order in a low voice.
“Sorry, but no.” She countered, chin tilted up to him. “I will leave at dawn.”
His scowl expressed his vexation with minute precision. “You leave, you do not come back.”
That hit her like a splash of boiling oil. She would not give him this kind of power. If she did, he would demand mo
re and more of her personal space and rights. In the end, she would become a shell of herself.
But it hurt. Damn, it hurt!
Mahogany eyes darting fire, fists on her waist. “Fine.” Turning, she walked briskly to the manor.
She did not fathom what she would do when she came back. Another place to go inexistent. She would figure something out.
To turn into a puppet of this infernal man? Never!
Taran watched her strut away. The woman backed at nothing! The legendary McKendrick stubbornness had nothing on her.
Something heavy lodged in his guts. He took mere minutes to identify it. Guilt.
He went too far threatening her with eviction.
Bluidy hell!
The old fear of being abandoned got the best of him again.
What he should do is run after her and apologise.
To do that, he would have to explain his reasons. And give her the power to demolish him by using this fear against him. Even a generous woman as she would not resist it, he was sure.
The stupid attitude brought him exactly what he dreaded. Abandonment. A self-fulfilling prophecy, to be sure.
He put his foot in it yet again. There seemed to be no turning back.
Isolated in his study, fears and unshared feelings made for deadly cold bed companions.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Three days later, Aileen jostled on the middle-aged couple’s cart trailing the way back from Nora’s. The visit had been cosy and amusing, despite Aileen’s heavy hurt heart.
The weather did not offer challenges, though it maintained low temperatures
It took nearly all day to reach the younger couple’s cottage. Nora lay on a sturdy bed, too weak to stand. Pale, the woman’s face lit up with the lady’s entrance. And said lady concluded she made the right choice.
She used the opportunity to check on Nora’s and the baby’s health as the healer she learned to be. Mother and baby received the care they needed, everyone’s gratitude and admiration shining through their smiles.
It afforded Aileen minutes when she forgot what awaited her when she came back. At that moment on the trip back, with Seamus and Gracie chatting gladly about their new grandchild, Aileen’s mind drifted away.
A pungent sadness spread in her threatening to morph into tears in a matter of seconds. She pondered she might spend the first weeks in a vacant cottage in the estate until she contacted her brothers and tried for a solution. She kept an amount of pin money which would allow her several months’ supply.
The idea of living without Taran cut like a sabre in a battle. The reason too obvious to hide.
Love.
How she came into love for the implacable giant would forever be a mystery. Fact being she did, without the possibility of undoing it. It seemed she would have to live without him because with him would be impossible. She would not become that meek, tame woman he wanted her to be. If she could not be herself with him, love him freely, totally, it was better nothing at all. Crumbs of love in a gilded cage did not satisfy her intense, deep feelings for her husband. A life of hunger for love not a deal she might accept.
“Here we are.” Seamus alerted, hauling her off her grim reveries.
