Could he resist the call of whisky if he had to witness her hang?
Or if she were exonerated but chose a life with Simon the Sassenach?
He couldn’t answer that.
He turned and continued walking.
“You’re running away,” her voice called to him. “You need to face this, Kieran.”
“Face what?!” He whirled back to her.
She had been walking briskly, but she skidded to a stop in front of him. The wind whipped her pelisse and tugged at her bonnet and sent a rosy blush glowing in her cheeks.
She was so impossibly beautiful.
“The brutal reality,” she panted, eyes pleading. “I cannot see a way back to . . .us. At least, not as we were.”
Her bold words seized his chest. “Why? Why cannae ye imagine a life with me?”
“Because I long for peace and quiet. And though you offer me comfort and safety of a sort, those things come with the cost of remembered pain. They come with obligation. You and I may have suited once, but I don’t think we are so similar anymore. I lost my memories, and you lost your . . . your wife—” She stumbled over the word, as if unequal to sayingme. “These losses have changed us. You want to return to the past. I simply want an uncomplicated future.”
Kieran winced.
Despite the successes of his career, she wasn’t wrong to crave the unencumbered security that Simon the Sassenach offered.
Kieran had never been a brilliant choice for her. His struggles with whisky aside, he was a lower-class urchin at best. She was a genteel captain’s daughter, raised as a lady. As much as it burned him to admit, Simon the Sassenach was an infinitely better option.
But Kieran couldn’t let her go. Despite her hesitance over the word, she was hiswife.
And he had always reached for things above and beyond what he deserved.
“Ye took a chance on me once, lass.” He closed the space between them. “Why not trust your past self and try again?”
He took the final step to her. She had to tilt her head back to look him in the eye.
But she, true tohernature, did not back down. Her chin jutted out in such a familiar, Jamie-esque expression it made him want to smile and weep simultaneously.
Her accent slipped once more. “Ye mean the past self who also thought it was a good idea to hop a merchant ship, learn to fence, and set off fireworks?Thatpast self?”
“Aye.” Kieran did smile at that.
“That woman hadterriblejudgment.”
He chuckled. “O’course, she did. She married me, did she not?”
“I thought ye wanted to aid your argument, not give me more reasons to leave ye?”
That sobered him quickly.
“Eilidh.” He lifted a hand, thinking to wrap it around her waist, to draw her into him. The instinct felt as natural as breathing.
The freezing scowl on her face stopped his hand midway between them.
Right.
No touching.
He had promised.
