He stilled against her. “Finley—”
“You belong here now,” she said, and she ignored the icy tendrils of doubt that were creeping around her heart. “Carson Town will prosper again, and it is because of you. The people love you.”
I love you, she wanted to say. But now the uncertainty was making her afraid. His silence was making her afraid.
“You knew when I came here that it was always my plan to go back to Town Blair,” he said in a low voice. “Nothing has changed.”
“They’ve not accepted you back,” she argued.
“I don’t have proof yet.”
“Even if you get that proof, they still might not take you.”
“They’ll have no choice,” Lachlan insisted. “It is my place by rights. By clan law.”
Finley pushed him away and sat up. Night had taken hold fully now, and the stars pricked the sky with twinkling mirth. As if they didn’t know how close Finley was to crying.
“I doona understand why it’s more important to you to be the Blair than it is to be happy,” she said in a low voice. “You are happy here, Lachlan.”
“I am happy here,” he admitted.
“Mam and Da, people in this town have accepted you as one of their own. Do you have any idea the victory that is for you? Or is your head so stuffed with thoughts of greatness that it has no room to recognize the good around you?”
“That’s not it,” Lachlan said, and there was a tinge of offense in his tone. “Doyouhave any idea what it will mean for the future peace of both our towns when I return to Town Blair as chief? I care for these people as my own as well, now. Never will there be another feud between the Carsons and Blairs.”
“If you cared so much for the people here, you wouldn’t leave, and the devil take the Blairs. They discarded you.”
If you cared that much, you wouldn’t leave me.
She had found his sore spot, evidenced by the way his voice hardened. “Have I not given enough?” he demanded. “What else do you want from me? To ruin you for any future chance of marriage? Is that what you want, Finley? Because, make no mistake, when Town Blair calls me back, I will go.”
Finley swallowed down the bitter disappointment lodged in her throat. She could think of nothing else to say to him. He had rejected her. Had rejected her town, just as his town had rejected him. And yet they both still yearned for the thing that had spurned them.
“I do want you,” he said and suddenly seized her shoulders, pulling her face close to his in the darkness, but Finley kept her eyes cast to the bay. “I shouldn’t, and I never intended to want you, but I do. And it’s because I care for you that I wouldna be so selfish as to act on it. I am bound to lead my clan. To clear my name, and perhaps my father’s name. It is a responsibility I will not shirk. Even for you.My friend.”
Finley shook him off and gained her feet, walking to the sand dune and starting up awkwardly through the deep, sandy hillock. His friend. Nothing more.
“Where are you going?”
“Home,” she said, allowing the tears to find their freedom on her cheeks in the night air, now that she was walking away from him. “A place you will never know.”
“Finley!” he called out.
She broke into a run through the gravelly dune, the seagrass whispering against her skirts like mourners. He may as well already be gone, for in her heart, Lachlan had left her that night.
She slowed to a walk as she came into the quiet alleys, the houses all empty and dark. The dirt beneath her bare feet was still warm, even as the cooling breeze brought out tall, prickly gooseflesh on her arms and legs, and she was glad to step through the door of her own home and close out the night.
She lit the lamp and looked around the room, saw the familiar walls and furnishings, smelled the familiar smells. This house had been her home as long as she’d been alive. She’d slept in the bedchamber every night since she was born. And when her parents became tired of the festivities on the beach, they, too, would return to the house, and go to sleep in the same chamber. Just as it had always been. Just as it would always be, until the ends of their lives.
And then Finley would be alone.
That was the future she’d wanted, though, wasn’t it, before she’d married Lachlan Blair? This farm, all to herself, with no husband to tell her what to do. She suddenly looked down at her hands, saw how smooth and clean they were now that she wasn’t doing more than half the rough work. She glanced up and saw the small piece of embroidery around the hem of a little wool gown she’d left on the table. It wasn’t art to behold, but she was getting better. And, truth be told, she was growing to enjoy it. The gown would be a fitting gift for the next woman in town to have a bairn.
Finley had briefly fancied she might be that woman.
Instead, her husband intended to disavow her and return to the people who had thrust him from his home, stripped him of the only family he had ever known, and sent him away disgraced. She ripped off her flower crown and flung it across the room. What a fool he was, she thought bitterly. Even the woman he was to have married had betrayed him.
The knock on the door startled Finley, and she spun around to stare at it, her heart pounding. Could it be Lachlan?
