Conall’s lips thinned and his head dropped. “I know it, Duncan. You are the better man,”
“You’re fuckin’ right, I am!” Duncan clenched his fists and shook them in the air with a growl of rage. “But what good does it do me now, eh, Conall? Tell me! I have nae place in me own home!”
Angus Buchanan took a step toward Duncan, a thin, trembling palm held open. “You have a place here, though,” he said in a quavering voice. “My sister’s son…My”—Angus wheezed—“my nephew.”
Duncan spun on Angus. “I doona want yer fuckin’ inheritance, old man—you are as much to blame as any!”
The twinge came to Evelyn’s stomach again and she winced.
Still on the floor, Lana MacKerrick held a hand to Duncan. “We’ll go home straight away, Duncan. ’Twill be fine, you’ll see.”
“I’ll go nowhere with you, you greedy, lying woman,” Duncan spat, then glanced at Evelyn, his eyes hooded as if ashamed. “I’m sorry for you, missus, and for the babe you carry. Truly, I am.”
Then he turned to Angus Buchanan. “If you have a mite of respect for your sister—for the woman who gave me life—you’ll accompany me through this door and secure me safe passage from your town.”
“Dunc, doona set out alone,” Conall said quietly.
“You,” Duncan said, disgust creeping around his words, “are nae me brother, nae me laird. You’re naught to me. All of you!” He looked to Angus once more. “What say you, old man? Do you grant me leave or do I fall beyond your door?”
Angus nodded, his features heavy with resignation. “Come,” he said and he shuffled to the door and passed through it, Duncan at his back.
Lana scrambled to her feet and made to follow, but Conall stayed her with a hand on her arm.
“Leave him, Mam,” he advised, more gently than Evelyn thought the woman deserved. “Duncan needs time. ’Tis the least we can offer to him.”
Lana turned into her only son’s chest with a wail as Angus reentered the longhouse alone. The old man all but collapsed in his chair.
The cramping came again, more intense this time, and insistent, like a giant, thorny fist. Evelyn hissed in air through her teeth.
The babe could not be coming. ’Twas too soon.
Then Conall had turned Lana aside and stepped to face Evelyn, his arms hanging at his sides, his face full of regret.
“Now you know, Eve,” he said and his amber eyes bored into hers.
“Now I know what?” she whispered as another strident wave gripped her.
Conall frowned. “Why I left the hut. I feared that because you werena Buchanan—the babe we’d created wasna Buchanan—that Minerva’s curse would find you, harm you. I wanted to get away from you to keep you both safe, until I could come to Angus myself.”
Evelyn felt a swelling of pain seize her heart more intense than the spasms in her belly. “You abandoned us to keep us safe?” she asked and then huffed a disbelieving laugh.
“I did.” Conall rushed to his knees before her. “I went to get Dunc and Mam. To explain what terrible things I’d done and what I had to do to right it—all of it. Then I was coming back for you!”
She shook her head for several moments, staring into those deep, amber eyes while her entire abdomen clenched. Only when it relented could she speak.
“I don’t believe you,” she whispered, and felt a tear break loose from her eye. “You deceived me from the start. You never cared for me. You only…you only wanted what you thought I could give you.”
“I love you, Eve,” Conall ground out between his teeth. “I would die for you. I will do anything you ask of me. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
Evelyn could not let Conall reach her. She refused to let him destroy her again.
And now she felt a wetness between her legs and a dull, throbbing ache.
“I don’t believe you,” she repeated. “And I want no part of you or your life. I do not love you. Leave me.”
“Eve, please,” Conall croaked, wincing and cocking his head so that his cheek lay nearly on her thigh. “Give me time to show you—”
“Leave me,” Evelyn repeated, looking to the door—anywhere but at those hurt, golden eyes. “You do it so well. Be gone.”
