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The manor’s front door loomed ahead. She would pack her things and go on her way.
A smile extracted from her rigid lips, she thanked them and headed to her lady’s chambers.
From his study’s window, Taran watched as Aileen entered the manor. She came back. For the second time. She had no intention of abandoning him. An intelligent man would have got the message by now. She was Aileen, not Fiona.
Taran? He must be a pea-head for not understanding it.
He soured everything, did he not? The anguish he would cause at her departure and his own isolation flipped his guts and turned them to knots.
His rebellious feet took him upstairs without him making a conscious decision to do so.
Shoving the connecting door, her chambers greeted him with a trunk open on her bed. The view of her filling the travel gear attacked him like a flaming canon ball. The expression on her beautiful face would be burned in his memory for eternity. Serious, concentrated, yes. Also, pale. And sad. Like the sadness of nature when summer ended. Profound and resigned.
He did it.
His guilt seared down his guts as non-matured whisky.
Why would a man hurt the woman he loved?
Yes, loved. So acutely, the idea alone perforated his heart with a thousand daggers. He adored the whole of her stubborn, uncompliant self. The woman that did not back down from him, who gave him exactly what he needed, put boundaries, elicited respect, consideration. Fascination.
She turned to him blankly. “I will leave after packing.” She took him on his word, then. She had no reason to believe otherwise, did she? Her attention on the trunk anew.
“I am sorry.” Bluidy arduous to eat down his despicable pride. “I did not mean what I said.”
Mahogany flashlights on him, the sadness being replaced by something he did not identify. “Why would that be?”
One hand raked his already ruffled hair. The time came to clear it. “In my experience, a wife who leaves is a wife who abandons me.” Lips pressed, his jaw ticked.
Stare fiery and wide, fists on her trim waist, the hurricane reared. “Do you think I would leave a man like you for no reason?” She shouted unconstrained.
It was his turn to glare at her, completely thunderstruck. No reason? What was the diminutive witch about here? “You have reasons.” He asserted bluntly.
“Do I?” Her pleated brows defied his statement.
“I am an overbearing troglodyte, remember?” He stepped further into the room.
“Yes, one I will take on any time.” She devolved firmly.
No doubt, to infuriate and arouse him to a point he did not reckon which prevailed.
“I cannot— “ He inhaled heavily. “I cannot leave you… alone.” Not a chance to keep his hands—and other pieces of his anatomy—off her.
More steps towards her.
Vivid colour suffused her adorable skin. “If you do, I swear I will throttle you!”
Hell! The answer and the glint in her eyes made him hotter. “Even after I abducted you?”
She breathed a secret laugh. “I escaped, if memory serves.” Oh, yes! How would he forget? “And I accepted your marriage proposal of my free will.”
“When I stormed the McKendrick’s manor and affirmed I compromised you.” Which narrowed a woman’s choices.
He posted himself right before her. Amazing she did not back up from him. “And you think I married you because of a piece of meaningless skin?”
The woman followed no sensible rules. No dictatorial men’s rules, that is. A piece of skin which altered her status dramatically, for devil’s sake! One this troglodyte was proud had been his alone. A piece of skin which she had given him of her own will. Of course! It downed on his hard head like a stone column had fallen on it. This was the magic word. Free. She chose him, not the other way around; poor him if he thought differently.
He did not even want to, in fact.
