Page 39 of A Match Made in Heather

He shook his head. “How do I marry a woman who’s engaged to another?”

“An’ what proof have you given that ye’ll marry her once she breaks off with the banker?” she answered with a shrewd gleam in her eye. “After all, you left her once before.”

“I didn’t leave,” he half-growled. “Your family sent me away.”

“Makes no difference t’ Arabel. All her heart kens is that she dinna have ye with her when she needed to be loved. She needs you again now. An’ this time she thinks yer drivin’ her ’way. Just for petty revenge.”

His chest burned.Petty.The hell her family put him through was far from that! He’d barely survived it. Yet part of him felt duly chastised by Lady Rowland’s words, because he’d not only survived but emerged stronger.

“Dinna ye wonder why my husband left half the estate to ye, rather than giving it all to Arabel, as was her due?”

“The incident with the carriage,” he answered. “He was grateful I’d saved his life.”

She cackled a laugh. “Yer a highlander! Ye ken any Scot who’d value his life o’er his clan?”

“Then why?” he demanded bluntly. He’d had the feeling since he and Arabel arrived that Lady Rowland was prodding them in the direction she wanted them to go, but he had no idea where. Or why.

A shamefaced expression darkened her wrinkled visage. “’Cause my husband an’ me were the reason you two were torn apart all them years past.”

His heart stuttered, and in that beat all of him turned to ice. “How?”

“There’s nothin’ that went on in this house that we didn’t know about, includin’ that ye planned to marry Arabel. When we’d heard what her brother had done, we thought it our duty to keep any more scandal from the family an’ tasked MacTavish wi’ it. Including stopping the elopement.” Guilt passed over her face. “We had no idea how much she truly loved you—still does. We watched as her grief over losin’ you nearly ate her up. The light went out o’ her then.” She fixed a hard gaze on him. “Only came back a month ago. When ye returned.”

“That wasn’t the light of love you saw,” he countered, turning back to the coat of arms, too furious at what she and her husband had done to look at her. “That was hatred.”

“Not so thick a wall dividin’ ’em, by all counts.”

He blew out a harsh breath. “Lady Rowland—”

“So we saw this opportunity to set to right the wrongs we did, to force the two o’ ye together for a second chance.” Her mouth twisted with bitter disappointment. “An’ now ye’ve gone an’ ruined it.”

The harsh accusation stopped him cold. “Iam not ruin—”

“You’re a damned fool!” She poked him in the chest with a bony finger, and he pressed his lips together grimly, making no move to stop her. “I’m old, an’ I’ve watched more people than I can count go to their graves. The one thing I’ve learned is that when a body dies whate’er wrongs they did need to die, too. So let them go. It’s time.”

Arabel had said nearly the same thing. To let the past go. But how could he? Hadn’t he been trying to do exactly that for the last decade, only to end up right back here where all the pain started? “Some wrongs can never be forgiven.”

“I never said forgive! I saidlet go.Bury the dead, lad, an’ bury yer vengeance.” Her cap slid lower on her wrinkled forehead as she shook her head. “All dead the men are who wronged ye, or in America an’ good as dead.” She laid her hand affectionately against his cheek for a brief moment. “All that hatred in yer heart takes up too much room t’ let other things in. Like yer love for that lass.”

He wanted to believe her, but too much had happened. How could he let go of the past when it kept rearing its head? Arabel was right. Nothing had changed for them.

“Ye can’t have both Arabel an’ yer revenge.”

He nearly laughed. As if he didn’t know that! Wasn’t that why he was here in the entrance hall in the first place, staring up at a symbol of all that he hated most in the world and all that she held most dear?

Lady Rowland was wrong. It wasn’t a matter of giving up one or the other. It was a matter of surviving once he had, of figuring out how to go on when half of who he was had been abandoned to the past.

“Now ye can finally destroy the Rowlands once an’ fer all, or ye can claim the woman ye love.” Her eyes flashed as bright as brimstone as they pinned his, shining like the devil’s own over a wager to take his soul. “So which do ye choose?”

Day Twenty-Eight

Arabel’s wedding day

Arabel watched wide-eyed as Ewan marched out of the house.

“Well,” Aunt Matilda laughed, “he certainly took that well!”

Taken it well?Heavens, he hadn’t uttered a word! Not one word during her explanation for why she wouldn’t marry him. That silence had been more damning than if he’d cursed her, which she’d fully expected for waiting until this morning to call off the wedding. Waiting had been cowardly of her, but to defy her mother’s wishes . . . terrifying.