“There is one more thing I wish to promise you, Em. No matter what happens in the next year, I will always be faithful to you. This may be a handfast and not binding before the law, but I will never dishonor you or humiliate you by straying.”
Dominic’s last pledge struck Emelie silent. She hadn’t expected it. She assumed he would do as he pleased. Even a widower had desires. She hadn’t thought about whether she would arrive at Kilchurn to find a leman waiting for him. She would never be so brazen as to ask a husband if he had a mistress. She understood she had no right to expect fidelity. It was the woman who became chattel, not the other way around. She felt a wave of certainty that Henry would have kept a mistress, even if they married. She never got that sense with Dominic.
“I believe you,” Emelie confessed. “I don’t know yet if it’s just you or the way of Highlanders, but I believe you when you make a promise. I can sense your honor is at the core of who you are. It’s why I trust you.”
Dominic gazed into the blue-hazel eyes he was coming to know so well. Emelie’s expression was open and honest, and he prayed he would be worthy of the bride who stood before him. But her mention of honor was a like a stab to his chest. It was the sense of honor that made him feel so disgraced and wretched after bringing Colina into his clan. She’d betrayed not only him by having an affair with his half-brother, but she’d betrayed the entire clan by sharing secrets with her clan of birth, the MacLeans, and the Lamonts. They’d used the information Graham smuggled on Colina’s behalf, and they’d plotted against the Campbells. It cost Brodie his first bride, a woman barely more than a girl who Brodie married for an alliance.
It was, in part, redemption that Dominic sought. He prayed helping Emelie would redeem him in God’s eyes and his own. He prayed that bringing her home to Kilchurn would redeem him to his clan. While they would deceive his clansmen and women by making them believe Emelie’s child was his, he had a certainty that Emelie would be a beneficial addition to the clan. He’d never considered Colina’s role in his clan when he courted her. He assumed she would help around the keep and do what most women did. He never considered her worth until it was too late. The only bone of contention they ever had was that Colina took no interest in running the keep after Dominic’s mother died.
At first, Dominic and Brodie believed it was Colina’s grief that kept her from taking on the chatelaine’s duties. She’d appeared the ideal wife and helpmate when she arrived at Kilchurn on Dominic’s arm. But Dominic’s mother soon grew ill, and Colina became her nursemaid. It was the first grave error Dominic made besides marrying the woman in the first place. Colina killed his mother.
“Dom?” Emelie’s voice broke through his thoughts.
“I was just thinking how fortunate I am, and how fortunate my clan is. I ken there is much we must still learn aboot one another, but I wouldn’t have offered for you if I didn’t feel you would be good for my people too.”
“I hope I never disappoint you.”
“Stay as you are, and you won’t,” Dominic whispered before the steely band wrapped around her middle lifted her off her feet. Their kiss combusted the moment their mouths fused together. Emelie’s fingers tangled in Dominic’s rich chestnut hair as she angled her head to allow Dominic’s tongue to brush the back of her mouth. She moaned as she felt his rod harden along her belly. She pressed her hips forward, aching for more contact. She wondered if they would have a wedding night.
Dominic’s hand glided along her ribs until it cupped her backside. He groaned as soft flesh filled his palm. He squeezed as he felt the urge to thrust his hips into her. He wanted nothing more than to retire to his chamber, strip her bare, and explore every inch of her lush body. But when his hand pressed against her breast and her moan was one of pain, he nearly dropped her as he set her back on her feet and jumped back.
“I’m sorry,” Dominic swore.
“You did naught wrong, Dom. They’re just tender these days. I—I still liked it.” Emelie covered her face with her hands, embarrassed by her admission. “You must think me such a whore.”
“What? Never.” Dominic fought Emelie’s grip and pried her hands away. “Please look at me, Em. I have never thought that. Not when I discovered you with the pennyroyal. Not when you told me your situation. And certainly not now. Aye, you have experience most brides don’t. But I’d rather know you’re attracted to me than fear I repulse you.”
“Repulse me? I’m quite certain you have never repulsed any woman in your life.”
Dominic once would have agreed with Emelie, but after Colina, he wasn’t so sure. He’d believed his wife loved him, just as he loved her. But after discovering her perfidy, he didn’t know if she merely tolerated him in her attempt to grasp the title of Lady Campbell, or if she’d ever had genuine feelings for him.
“I don’t hold your past against you. If I did, I wouldn’t have asked you to join your life with mine. And it doesn’t make any woman a whore to enjoy a mon’s touch. If the Lord didn’t intend for men and women to enjoy intimacy, He wouldn’t have made our bodies able to.”
“But I did so without being married,” Emelie mumbled.
“You trusted the wrong mon. He made promises he likely never intended to keep. You’re young. You have admitted to your error in judgment, and you’re taking responsibility for it. Never have I heard you blame him. But he shoulders as much culpability as you, if not more. I never thought you would go from one mon to another. I don’t fear you being unfaithful. You don’t strike me as having taken a coin from him, nor would you take it from a mon in the future. You are not a whore. Don’t call yourself that. Ever.”
“I won’t,” Emelie whispered, pressed into agreement by the sternness in Dominic’s voice. “But what if people find out? What if they call me that?”
“They would be fools to ever let me find out. I will defend you to my last breath. If anyone slights you over your past, it will be the last mistake they ever make.”
“You can’t kill someone just because they aren’t nice to me,” Emelie countered.
“That isn’t what I meant. If they slight you, if they impugn your honor, then they put your life and the bairn’s at risk. I won’t accept that.”
Emelie swallowed as she realized the gravity of what Dominic meant. She’d begun to think about the babe growing within her as a part of her. She discovered a protectiveness she hadn’t imagined before. Any threat to her child tore at her, creating a visceral reaction to defend him or her to the death.
“I will always protect you, Em. Not just because you’re a woman. Not just because you’re mine. But because you deserve it in your own right. I don’t want you to live in fear of people finding out. What goes on behind closed doors is our business, not anyone else’s. I cannot keep this from Brodie, which means Laurel will know. But no one else. And I will tell Brodie as my brother, not as my laird. We’ve never kept secrets from one another.”
Emelie nodded as she pulled her lips into a flat line. She swallowed as her gorge rose. “I haven’t told Blythe aught. It’s felt too scary.”
“Naught?”
Emelie shook her head. “I didn’t tell her that I sneaked out to tryst with Henry, even though I learned she knew I sneaked out. She doesn’t know we coupled, and she doesn’t know I’m with child. It terrifies me to tell her, but I don’t want to keep these secrets any longer. I’ve never kept secrets from her or Isa until I met Henry. Then it seemed to be one after another. At first, it felt exciting and illicit. Then it felt necessary. Now it feels horrid.”
“Would you like me to be with you?”
“You’d do that?”
