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“That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?”
“I couldn’t care less about her. Are you really leaving for Virginia tomorrow?”
“Aye, I am. I have a wagon loaded and ready and a couple of good horses.”
“And what will you do when you get there?”
“Buy land. Build a house.”
“In Williamsburg?” she asked.
“I can’t bear a city, you know that. This Boston is too loud for me, and there are too many people. I like a place where I know everyone.”
“Like in Scotland,” she said softly.
He shrugged. “It’s what I know. And what about you? What do you want? Besides a man who doesn’t bore you, that is?”
“I don’t know.” She threw back the covers, got out of bed, and reached for a dressing gown on the chest by the foot of the bed. But she didn’t pick it up. No, she’d rather walk around in just her nightclothes in front of him. “When I was in England I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life, but here it’s different. I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s all the sunshine, or—”
“The sweltering heat,” he said. “I can hardly bear to wear clothes it’s so hot.”
“I hear that it’ll get hotter,” she said and took a step toward him. He was sitting in the chair and she was standing, with just her nightgown on, with not a stitch beneath it. “And it’s hotter in Virginia than it is here.”
“I imagine I’ll get used to it.”
She moved closer to him.
“What are you playing at?” He frowned at her. “I don’t think I should have come.”
“Angus...” she began. “I want to go with—”
“Don’t say it,” he said as he abruptly stood up. “Don’t ask of me what I canna give.”
“Please,” she said. “When I’m with you I feel alive and full of energy, as though I could plan things and accomplish them. Here in this house I feel my life is the same as it would have been in England.”
“And wasn’t it enough for you then?”
“Perfectly, but then I knew no better. I had no idea that there was more out there.” He had his back to the window and she took a step toward him.
“You don’t know what you’re saying. You lived in those boarding schools with other girls. You’ve not seen how it is with a man and woman when they live together.”
“I’d like to hear all about it,” she said. “You could tell me. Or show me.”
He put his hands on her shoulders and held her away from him. “Lass, please believe me when I tell you that what you think you want canna be. You want me to be something that I’m not.”
She shook his hands off her shoulders, and turned away from him. “So we’re back to that, are we? You’ve led a life of hardship while I’ve been pampered all my life.”
“More or less,” he said.
“Are you laughing at me again?”
“I usually do, don’t I?”
She smiled. “Yes, you do. And you make me laugh at myself.” She sat down hard on the edge of the bed. “Oh, Angus, what am I going to do with my life?
”
“Marry some nice man and have a hundred babies,” he said, even though a lump formed in his throat as he said it. They wouldn’t be his babies. She was sitting on the side of the bed, and all he’d have to do was gently push her backward. He ran his hand over his face. “I shouldn’t have come here tonight.”
