Page 39 of A Virgin for the Icy Laird
“I had some hope, since they didnae say he was dead. I wanted to search for him, but finding out that five days had already passed before Fergus came to find me stayed me hand,” he sighed. “They had only called me back to assume the lairdship. The betrayal stung, but me incompetence stood out even more. If I had been trustworthy, they would have instantly called me back, awaiting me orders.”
“Ye daenae mean that,” she said softly.
“Aye, I do,” he insisted. “I assumed the lairdship while feeling like a fraud because I refused to believe he was dead. Me disbelief was purely hope, as I refused to accept that a man like me faither had lost his life as early as he did so ingloriously. There was no honor in his death—the legacy every man strived for. I drowned in despair and almost ruined the clan in me grief.”
Now he knew the truth. There was some solace in that.
“He wouldnae have died if he didnae stop to save me family.”
“I daenae believe he regrets it, and I daenae harbor resentment toward ye, if that is what ye fear,” he assured her. “Seeing that pattern and hearing that his pendant was with ye has helped me more than ye could imagine.”
He rose. What was this overwhelming urge to take her in his arms?
She appeared to him like something fragile, breakable, a thing that should never have been left unguarded in a world this cruel. And the urge to shield her hit him hard, hot and immediate, settling low in his chest like a brand.
The knowledge that she’d endured what he had scraped him raw. It sparked an irrational, blinding rage he couldn’t name and couldn’t tame. It wasn’t logical. It wasn’t fair. But he hated that she’d been hurt, hated that no one had been there to stop it.
He wanted to be that person now. To stand between her and every shadow from her past, and to make sure nothing like it ever touched her again.
He bent one knee in front of her and glanced at where her sleeve hid the burn mark. “Do ye still fear me?”
“I never did.”
Her fingers trembled in his hands, and he studied her face to see if his touch was causing that.
They had had this conversation before. She had cowered beneath his touch, and when he had asked, she had been unable to define her emotions. Now she looked at him with the same intensity, without the resolve to hide herself.
He wanted her to put a name to her feelings.
“What do ye feel when ye look at me like that?”
She looked down as he placed his pendant in her hands. The gem was warm, heated by his own fire.
She closed her fingers around it and smiled. Looking into his eyes, she answered, “I feel safe.”
10
The next morning, Emily went to Elize’s room with a secret she did not own.
Behind the door was a sound she could not place. It sounded like something between a cackle and a screech. She sighed in relief, recognizing her sister’s voice.
She stepped into the room without knocking.
Something blurred past her. It was a flash of green, a hunched, ogre-like creature that appeared in the mirror above the vanity. Then she realized the ogre was her sister.
Whatever Elize was doing, it made a scratching sound on the wooden dresser.
Emily furrowed her brow as she watched her.
Elize’s hands moved in a wide wading gesture, as if she were gathering a bunch of dry leaves. Her arms formed a cradle when her loot was successfully collected, and she looked over her shoulder with a mischievous smile.
“Good morning, Sister. Right now might nae be the right time.” She expelled a harsh breath. She had just run across the room, after all.
Of all the things Emily had seen this early in the morning, her sister was the weirdest of them all.
First, she’d passed Callum on the way over, looking quite pleased with himself. While he was usually animated—in contrast to his brother, who only lent himself to three expressions—he was rarely, if ever, smug. He had not heard the greeting she’d punctuated with her practiced curtsy, his nose stuck in the air, his hands clasped behind his back. Or, as the old saying went, head in the clouds.
Then Fergus, complacent in his surefootedness, had twisted his ankle in front of her. When she’d rushed to his side with the intention of lending help, he’d held up his hand, stopping her. She’d chalked it up to embarrassment at the time, but then she had caught him peeking from behind the grey wall that connected her corridor to Adair’s, watching her as if he had been sent.
