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“So we can speak reasonably,” he countered.
Alyce laughed caustically. “Reasonably you say when you know full well I wanted no part of marriage.”
“Give me—”
“The same chance you gave me?” she questioned sharply.
He tried to maintain his patience, but she was sorely tearing it to pieces. “This may be a—”
“Disaster for sure,” she claimed.
He was beginning to wonder the same, but then he looked past the storm brewing in her blue eyes and once again saw her heartache, and knew he was right. She loved him and somehow, some way he was going to make her see just how much he loved her.
“Disaster or not, we belong to each other,” he said.
For an instant he heard the catch in her breath and caught the hope in her eyes before she challenged, “You mean I belong to you.”
“No less than I belong to you.”
“You think me a fool?” she asked with a hint of uncertainty.
“Do you wish to be?” he asked, hoping she’d see the stark truth of his query.
“I will not go with you,” she said defensively and the women tightened the circle around her.
He expected her to protest and knew there was but one response. “You have no choice. You are my wife.”
“And must follow your orders,” she said as if she had just proven her argument.
“Again I ask that we talk in private,” Lachlan suggested.
“No,” Alyce said bluntly. “There is nothing more to be said between us.”
“I disagree,” he protested strongly.
“It matters not to me. I have nothing more to say.” With that she turned and walked away, the women holding fast to where they stood so that Lachlan could not penetrate their protective shield.
He watched her disappear into the common shelter and shook his head. This was going to prove much more difficult than he had anticipated, but then he wasn’t as familiar with Alyce as he had been with Terese.
He shook his head even harder and silently berated his own foolishness. There was no Terese; there was only Alyce. The woman who was finally allowed to emerge from her shell and be who she truly was, the woman he knew as Terese.
How did he get her to recognize herself and accept her true nature? How did he make her understand that she was the woman he loved, and her name was simply that, a name?
Time and patience were his only adversaries in this skirmish and he had an abundance of both. In time she would see the truth: that he loved her beyond reason and that was all that truly mattered.
Alyce collapsed in the chair at the table as soon as she entered the common room. She had feared her trembling legs would betray her long before that and was surprised and relieved to have kept a steady gait in spite of worries.
She rested her head in her hands, her elbows braced on the edge of the table. She could not, or perhaps she did not want to believe that she had been wed against her will. She had often wondered why she fought what she knew was her duty and the only answer that ever surfaced was that she knew that was not her destiny.
Her destiny was to live and love as she chose.
But isn’t that what she had gotten, the man of her choice? The man she loved. The man she missed? The man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with? The man whose child nestled safely in her stomach? The man who claimed to love her?
But if he did love her then he knew her and if he truly knew her, he would not have forced this marriage on her. He would have requested she wed him and left the choice to her.
The door creaked open and she knew the women would enter one by one and offer their support, but it would do little good. She was wed and would now have to obey her husband. The realization hit her hard and tears gathered in her eyes. She wiped angrily at them, annoyed that she grew teary-eyed much too easily lately. She had seldom shed tears; to her it was a waste of time, action proved much more satisfying. But what action could she take now; she was stuck.
She looked up, glad to be able to talk with the women who were like sisters to her and was shocked to see Lachlan standing there.
“I don’t want to speak with you now,” she said firmly, then stood and turned her back on him. She braced her hand on the rough-hewn mantel to help keep her legs steady. Damn, but she continued to feel weak-kneed around him and that annoyed her all the more.
“I understand why you lied.”
She rounded on him with wide glaring eyes that glistened with unshed tears. “You understand and then wed me without my permission?”
