Page 54 of Devil Black

“Why will you not listen?” She walked round him and stared up into his face. “Much as you would deny MacNab the victory of gaining possession of me, I deny the possibility of you losing your lands and all you hold dear, just to keep me. These lands are your life’s blood, while you have not known me a month. Rather would I act to put an end to this conflict.”

“You cannot. The devil himself could not resolve what lies between MacNab and me. Is that what you truly think, that I would steal victory from MacNab by keeping you?”

“Yes.”

He searched her face. “Nay, Wife, but I would spare you the agony, torture, and abuse that befalls any female who comes to his—or his cur of a son’s—hands.”

“Aisla,” she said.

Pain flickered in his eyes. “Aye, Aisla.”

“What did he do to her? She was Bertram’s wi—”

“I do not wish to speak of it.”

“No.” The echoes of his pain gripped Isobel’s heart. “Yet the love you once felt for her finds its reflection in the hate you feel now for MacNab. Judging by the depth of your hatred, your love must have been deep indeed.”

Dougal fairly howled, “I have said I do not wish to speak of it!”

“And I say we must, since what you felt then affects us now. I am caught in this. Do you not think I have a right to know exactly what MacNab did to Aisla—and thence to you—that killed your ability to love?”

Dougal became very still, like the surface of the ocean before a storm. Like the ocean, Isobel could feel currents stirring, violent and terrifying. When he glared at her, she saw vicious rejection in his eyes.

“Love is a lie,” he told her, “a fool’s cruel delusion. It is weakness rather than strength, a myth that begets vulnerability. A claim of love changes nothing. It saves nothing! And I do not want to hear the word spoken between these walls again.”

“Then perhaps I should leave you. Maybe when my father arrives I should pack up the nothing with which I came and just leave with him. Because I will not live with a man who supposes he can tell me how to speak, think, and feel.”

Dougal’s voice dropped to a harsh whisper. “Surely you did not expect me to love you.”

Isobel took the blow without flinching, at least outwardly. “Of course not. It is a ridiculous premise. What, after all, is there about me to love? And why should my life take such a turn, in a direction it never before headed? Obviously I am not worthy of any such fine emotion. I might as well slink home behind my father and live out my days in disgraced obscurity.”

He took a step nearer her, lifted one hand toward her face but stopped short of touching her. “You deserve better than a lie, Isobel. I value you—the devil knows, I desire you! I admire your courage and would be glad to see you bear my sons. But I cannot offer you more than that. Should there not at least be honesty between us?”

Isobel’s heart, struggling beneath her breast, admitted she did not want him to lie. She wished the words to tumble from his lips, soft declarations and promises. Yet this man would never give her that, and she began to see his harsh demeanor revealed a stark honor.

If she told him how she felt, confessed the wild, tumultuous feeling possessing her, he would scoff, call her deluded, declare her feelings unfounded. And she could not bear the pain of that—not now, and possibly not ever.

For the first time, her eyes dropped from his. “Honesty.” She repeated the word as if she fathomed not its meaning.

“Aye.” His hand at last touched her cheek, cupped it almost tenderly, sending through her a shiver of involuntary response. Traitorous flesh, that wanted him so! “’Tis all I can offer you, Isobel—that and my promise, as your husband, to hold to you and no other.”

“So, you offer your disbelief in love to me, alone. It is a grand compliment!” She drew a ragged breath. “You speak over and over again of honesty, yet you refuse to say, honestly, what happened between you and MacNab.”

“Do not ask that of me. Anything else.”

“Yet it is what I need to know.”

“It is not.” His thumb brushed across her lips, causing her to part them and draw a breath—causing desire to flare low down in her belly. What would she not do for this man? Yet what he demanded of her—to live with him without love—must prove hardest.

“All you need to know, Wife, is I will fight with the last of my strength to keep you.” He laughed harshly. “Poor reassurance as that may be.”

Somehow, Isobel found the strength to pull free of his grasp. “And if I ask Meg for the truth?”

“Do not do that,” he said. “I warn you—do not, if you wish to retain any semblance of harmony between us.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

“A party of riders approaches, Laird! A large party, and flying MacNab’s banners.”