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“Well, if you walked in as my new employer, I would jump fairly fast as well.”
“Ye would?”
“You are intimidating, Dom.” Her mouth quirked in a tease as she pulled a clean plate and a fork and knife from the sideboard and sat down at the table. “You do remember that, don’t you?”
A scoff expelled from his lips as he copied her motions and sat down at the end of the table adjacent to her. “I forget, sometimes. Especially when I’ve been surrounded by the men for a long time. Or when I’m at Vinehill. Everyone there is far past being intimidated by me.”
He cut into the roasted grouse and set a large chunk of the meat, dripping with steaming juices, onto her plate. “You haven’t eaten anything today, so you need to catch up.”
“You were watching that as well?”
His gaze caught hers, the dark blue of his eyes almost shifting into grey in the light. “I was.”
Of course he was.
Domnall crushed her heart years ago, but he would still be the most attentive man she’d ever known. Infuriating.
Her attention went to the roasted potatoes and she scooped a heaping pile onto her plate. Not looking at him, she fiddled with cutting her meat. “You need to stop that, Dom.”
“Stop what?”
“Paying me any mind. As soon as Maggie is well and the snow has cleared, we will be out of your way and back to the dower house. I already regret this imposition upon you.”
“You regret saving Maggie’s life?”
She looked up at him. “I regret that of all the places in the world, you were here last night, in the one place I never would have expected you. I regret that it didn’t take me but five minutes in your presence and I was right back in the place I was six years ago. I regret that you—you make me feel alive. Whole. You always have. But I cannot go back there. Feel that. Not now.” She heaved a breath. “And I regret that I’ve hated you for the last six years—and that the hatred that I’ve harbored for so long started to dissipate within moments of being next to you.”
“You hated me?”
Her shoulders lifted. “I thought…I thought I did…”
She cut her own words off before she said more. Before she admitted that what she regretted most was what she’d become—and how that would keep them apart more than anything. She didn’t dare to even imagine how Domnall would look at her once he knew the truth.
Her forehead dipped forward and she jabbed a piece of the grouse, stuffing it into her mouth to curb her tongue. She’d already said far too much.
His fault for always listening so attentively to her.
Another chunk of meat went into her mouth. And another. And another. She’d eaten half the food on her plate, ignoring Domnall’s stare, before she reached for the glass of wine he’d poured for her when he sat down.
He hadn’t even picked up his fork.
Three long sips and she went back to the food on her plate. For all that she was accustomed to eating alone, his silence unnerved her. She wasn’t alone. He was sitting a breath away. The only man she’d ever loved.
But she could never allow herself to think on that again. Think of him like that again.
Her shoulders pulled back and she looked at him. “Whatever you hope to achieve with your silence, Dom, it will not work. As I said, I’m accustomed to eating alone and this is no different.”
He nodded, setting his elbows on the table and clasping his large hands together under his chin. His dark blue eyes sliced into her. “Is it?”
“I can easily pretend you’re not here.”
“My size alone would beg to differ.”
“Your size never intimidated me, Dom. It took me aback the first time I met you, yes, but after that initial moment, you have always been just you.” She jabbed a potato chunk with her fork. “So yes, I can eat in silent peace and not acknowledge you exist.”
He leaned forward and lifted his goblet of claret, taking a long sip, then picked up his fork. “So you remember the first time we met?”
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Of course I do. It was at the stables at Vinehill. You were in a stall, pitchfork in your hand. You were showing my father and the marquess the mares that would be good options for breeding with the stud my father had just won Newmarket with. My father and the marquess had walked away and I had stopped to stroke the neck of one of the mares…”
