He crossed his arms. Matching her clipped tone, he said, “Then let us start with what you know. Why did you run away?”
“I told you I want to go to Amleth Hall.”
“Why?”
She hated how with one word he could make her feel she had no choice but to answer…and how vulnerable he made her feelwhen she did so. As Dunmore Harrell’s daughter she’d rarely explained herself to anyone.
“Amleth Hall is my mother’s family seat. She was the laird’s daughter and a famed beauty. They called her ‘the jewel of the Davidson clan,’ and she was expected to marry well. Instead, when she was younger than I, she eloped with my father who then was nothing more than a shepherd. It was a terrible scandal and her father disinherited her. She never regretted her decision to marry Papa because she loved him with her whole heart. But I know that up until the day of her death, she always missed Amleth Hall and Scotland.”
And Lyssa missed her mother.
“Why didn’t you just ask your father to take you to Scotland? Why this running away nonsense?”
“Ididask him, years ago. Right after Mother died.” Lyssa shook her head. “He’s washed his hands of Scotland. He doesn’t even like people to think he is Scottish—especially now that he has his ‘duchess.’ He refused to take me.”
The Irishman paced a step to the right, then stopped. “Wait a moment. There is more here. Pirate Harrell is known to never refuse his daughter anything.”
“How would you know that?” she demanded.
“Rumors on the street. When a chit is worth her weight in gold, people notice everything.”
Lyssa had always been uncomfortable with the speculation her father’s money brought her. Coldly, she said, “My father isno different than any other. He wants his daughter to do exactly as he says, and when she doesn’t behave—”
“Such as marrying the man he has chosen for her?”
“Such as marrying the man he has chosen for her,” she confirmed, “then like any other father, he can resort to harsh measures.”
The Irishman actually laughed. “Measures like what? Bread and water for an hour? Confined to your bedroom with servants to wait on you hand and foot for the day?”
His mockery hit home—especially because his jests were true. And she saw herself through his eyes: a vain, pampered creature who had taken off for Scotland in a snit and was now deeply in trouble.
“You may laugh, Irishman,” she returned tightly. “You know little of my life.”
“Ah, but I can dream,” he said.
Her temper broke. “Dream about what? About being just barely tolerated in Society because your father has wealth? About being forced on people who do not want to have anything to do with you? I smell of Trade, Irishman, and there are those amongst thetonwho will never let me forget it. My father doesn’t mind forcing his way through, but I do. And Ihatethe idea that I am to be married to a man I have not one thing in common with, just because of his title. I am being treated like little more than a broodmare. Once my husband has an heir from me, he won’t want to talk to me again. He’ll have my fortune and my child and I will be nothing.”
“Such is the lot of most women,” the Irishman observed. “I’m not saying it is right,” he hurried to add, “but it is the way of the law.”
“It wasnotmy mother’s lot. She married for love. She defied all convention andchoseher life and her mate.”
He frowned. “Don’t tell me you are going to be looking for a mate in Scotland?”
“No,” she said firmly, suspecting he was teasing her and almost hating him for it. “I’m going to Amleth Hall because even though I have everything I want—all that money can buy—what I desire most eludes me.”
“And what is that, Miss Harrell?”
“Acceptance, Irishman.Welcomedacceptance. I’m tired of being the outsider. The one they poke little jibes at as if I have no intelligence or feelings and am certainly beneath notice. I hope to find a place amongst my mother’s family and at her home. She’s been gone so long and yet, inside me—” She tapped her breast right above her heart. “—I have a need to be there, close to where she was. A need I can’t explain with reason.”
She’d said too much. She knew it by the sudden silence between them and she wished she had been more circumspect. Her temper and her tongue had betrayed her again!
Of course, there was something about the Irishman that provoked her into speaking her mind. That is why she’d foolishly revealed more to him in the last five minutes than she’d ever had to anyone in her whole lifetime.
Now she stood in front of him completely defenseless.
And she hated the sudden silence between them.
Shifting her weight from one foot to the next, she crossed her arms protectively over her chest. “Well?” she challenged. “Don’t you have anything to say? Some comment about how ridiculous I am?”
