“Misjudged me?” She tensed. Had she done something? Said something to give away her birthright?
“I thought you were stubborn. Now I understand; ’tis determination.”
Heat crept up her cheeks. She’d allowed her fears to make her jump to a false conclusion. “I have been called both.”
In the moonlight, he glanced toward her. “I have nay doubt. ’Tis your determination that amazes me. Who are you, Alesia?”
The softness of his words did naught to ease the question’s unnerving impact. “A woman who is bound to duty, monsieur,” she said, her words more formal than she’d intended.
“Monsieur?” At her silence he arched a speculative brow. “ ’Tis more than duty.”
She longed to tell him the truth, but doing so would solve nothing and change everything. For once she wanted to be seen not as a king’sdaughter but as a woman. She hungered to know a man without questioning the sincerity of his words.
“Do not,” she said when he made to speak. The simple command severed the air between them like a dagger in the night.
Colyne’s eyes darkened with desire as he stepped toward her.
Tempted to retreat, Marie stood her ground. But she couldn’t dismiss the potency of his nearness or the need his presence inspired.
“Why do you withdraw when I mention your past? I care for you, wish to know you better. And, from the way you return my kisses, you have feelings for me as well.”
She started to turn away, but he cupped her chin. Fissures of warmth seeped through her where his fingers touched. His gaze seemed to penetrate her, to search her mind for answers. “Tell me what you are thinking.”
Shaken by the unsteadiness of her own voice, Marie turned away. “Does it matter?”
“I do nae want it to, but when it comes to you, aye.” Colyne breathed. “You make me feel desires I had believed lost.”
Did he speak of Elizabet?
“Alesia?”
Though whispered, his use of her second name screamed her deception. How could she care for Colyne and offer him lies? But she had no choice. Scotland’s fate depended on her reaching her father. “I find myself drawn to you as well.” She would give him that but naught more. To admit her growing feelings would add more heartache to an already painful separation.
“Drawn to me?” he asked, his annoyance clear.
“We must go. We have tarried here overlong.”
His jaw tightened. “You feel naught for me but mere attraction?”
She struggled to quell her frustration. “We are cold, wet, and tired from our journey. Now is not the place to discuss the depth of how we feel for the other.” His gaze fell to her mouth and heat slid through her body, unleashing words she’d meant to withhold. “You make me want you when I have no right.”
Desire flamed hot in his eyes and her heart ached. All her life she’d wanted a man who made her desire him. Now she’d found a man who’d given her that.
Was she wrong to want Colyne? To yearn for a man who wasn’t hers to have? And if she walked away without knowing true passion,would she regret her decision in the empty years ahead, married to a man she didn’t love?
Colyne skimmed the pad of his thumb against her lower lip. “At times, our emotions are nae something we can dictate.”
“As with Elizabet?” she threw out, ashamed but desperate to create much-needed distance between them.
Chapter 9
At the mention of Elizabet, Colyne braced himself for a barrage of emotions. With Alesia aware of his first love, he should have anticipated the question. Truth be told, with his heart broken since her marriage, he’d smothered his feelings and tried to avoid having time to think, or to feel.
Except, as he stared at her, the storm of expected grief never came. A sword’s wrath, how did the emotions he’d struggled to banish since she’d married suddenly vanish? Why did he nae ache at the mere thought of her?
Confused, he exhaled. “I have known Elizabet’s family since my youth. Somehow, over the years and without expecting to, I fell in love,” he said, surprised at the ease at which his thoughts unfurled. “Before I told her of my feelings, she married another.”
“I am sorry.”
