Page 15 of A Match Made in Heather

“I’m getting estimates for repairs to the house.”

Her shoulders relaxed visibly. “I saw you . . . You were very patient with the boys.” She smiled, but a melancholy stole the pink from her cheeks. “You’re going to make a wonderful father.”

His chest tightened. “I hope so.”

“I know so.” Then, much softer, she added, “I’ve always known that.”

A hard pinch low in his gut ripped his breath away. The pull of her was too strong to ignore, even now. “And I always wanted to have children with you, Arabel.”

She looked away, blinking hard against the breeze that stirred her ginger curls gently against her cheeks. “I wanted that, too.”

He replied quietly, plunging a knife into both their hearts, “But not enough to choose me over your family.”

For one heartbeat, he felt her freeze. All of her stiffened, and even her breath hitched. Only the stray curls moved, dancing against her face on the warm breeze.

She whispered, “That’s why you want to take Highburn away from me, isn’t it? So you can get your revenge against my family.” Her voice lingered softly on the afternoon air, but each word was a piercing accusation. “And against me.”

“Yes,” he admitted. After all, thatwaswhy he was still here rather relinquishing the property as he should. Wash his hands clean of it. And of his past with Arabel.

But he couldn’t. He was still drawn to her, even now. Like a moth consumed by the very flame it craved.

“I won’t let you have it,” she told him with quiet determination.

He shrugged a shoulder, feigning indifference. “I don’t think you have a choice.”

When she turned back to look at him, the glistening of unshed tears in her eyes struck him like a punch to the gut. “Just as I didn’t have one ten years ago,” she said softly. “I couldn’t leave my family when they needed me. Not even for you, Garrick.”

He clenched his jaw. She’d opened a dam with her turn of conversation, and he welcomed it. It was ten years in the making, and now that she’d opened the floodgates, he refused to hold back. “It was then or never, you knew that. The only chance we had to start our future together.” He advanced slowly until he stood so close that he could smell the sweet scent of her lingering on the soft summer air, that fragrance of heather and the highlands that filled his senses. So painfully close but not daring to touch her. “But you refused me.”

“I refused to elope that night,” she countered. “I never refused you.”

He bit back a bitter laugh. “No difference.”

“Everydifference,” she corrected.

“Damnation, Arabel!” The words were forced out between teeth clenched so tightly that the muscle in his neck jumped. “What you and your family did to me—”

“Ten years!” she cried, drawing her hands into fists at her sides. “Not once did you try to contact me to find out how I was, to let me know how you were, or where.Not once—” She choked on the angry words.

Garrick stared at her, her pained anger cascading into him and mixing with his own. He should have cursed at her or yelled at her. At the very least laughed at what she was suggesting—that he should have contacted her, the woman who had rejected him and the future he wanted to give her.

But when he saw pain in her eyes equal to his own, he couldn’t bring himself to attack.

“What good would it have done?” he asked instead, unable to keep the resignation from his voice. “By the time I was in a position to contact you, a year had passed. I was certain that by then your family would have arranged your marriage to Ian Campbell.” Bitterness mixed with hot jealousy inside him. “The man they’d wanted for you all along.”

She blinked rapidly but couldn’t stop the tears visibly threatening at her lashes. “I could have told you that I didn’t marry. You could have returned to Scotland.” She hesitated before adding in a whisper, “And to me.”

“A groom turned penniless soldier with no prospects except dying in battle. A man your family would never have accepted. A man everyone knew wasn’t good enough for you.”The man who would always come in second to your family.With a defeated shake of his head, he repeated quietly, all the fight leaving him, “What good would it have done?”

She didn’t answer—couldn’tanswer. After a moment’s pause, she turned away and walked slowly backed toward the house.

But Garrick was certain that the anguish he saw in her tear-filled eyes would haunt him until the day he died.

Day Eight

Arabel pressed her heels against her horse’s side, urging it into a slow canter. The soft summer air caressed her cheeks, and her heart raced with pleasure. More—withfreedom.

She laughed in exhilaration. She loved to ride, and this afternoon’s outing was even sweeter. It was an escape from the house which seemed to be falling down at a rapid rate and needed repairs that she wasn’t certain she could afford, and whose size was now deceptively small for all the rooms that had been shut off. So small, in fact, that she kept coming across Garrick without warning whenever Aunt Matilda sent her on an errand. Every time Arabel fetched whatever it was that Auntie wanted—always, as luck would have it, from the same room where Garrick was—Matilda forgot all about it by the time she returned.