So knowing all this, why did she still hesitate to agree to a life with him?
Wait—
Did he still wish to marry her?
“You have not entreated me to give you an answer to the question you asked before I left,” she said.
He pondered her words for a long minute, as was his way. Simon was nothing if not methodical in his thinking.
“I know you, Eilidh,” he finally said. “I know you will tell me once you have decided what you wish. Until then, I will be patient. I care enough to wait. I want your decision to be firm.”
Eilidh nodded, trying to ignore the prick of unease.
Just tell him yes, part of her urged.Agree to marry him.
And yet . . .
What if shehadblown up the ship? Simon did not deserve to be known as the betrothed of the woman who destroyedThe Minerva. It would utterly ruin him.
Was this why she hesitated?
Or was it more that she had opened up her heart to the possibility of another? And now she struggled to agree to a life without Kieran MacTavish in it?
She looked at Kieran’s shoulders ahead—shoulders she had wrapped in a passionate embrace not three hours past, shoulders that had borne more of her grief and anger than Simon even knew afflicted her.
Simon noticed her noticing of Kieran. That wee dent remained in his brow.
She shot him a soothing smile.
Simon trusted her.
He likely shouldn’t, but she could hardly say that.
The irony, of course, was that Simon in his retiring way hardly knew her at all. To him, she was a placid sea, no wind or curling tide. And she craved to see herself thus, to embrace the simplicity of it.
That was the problem, though.
Simon didn’t know her well enough.
Kieran knew her better than she knew herself.
Both men were unnerving and exhausting in their own way.
But with Simon, she didn’thaveto remember. She could float atop the current-less sea, safe and becalmed.
Sometimesboringwas a relief.
“Do you havea moment, Master MacTavish?”
Kieran turned as Simon Fitzpatrick hailed him from across the parterre garden of Kilmeny Hall. Beyond Simon, voices drifted out from the open doors of the drawing room. Lady Aster laughing over something. The low rumble of Ewan’s voice.
Simon strode toward him with an easy grace, immaculately attired, not a single hair out of place—blond, blue-eyed, meticulously English.
Simon the Sassenach.
Simon was every inch as handsome this afternoon as he had been yesterday evening when he arrived. Lady Aster and Lady Rose had certainly noticed. The ladies flirted outrageously with him. But Simon—gentlemanly, good-egg Simon—had batted away their advances with practiced ease, focusing his attention unwaveringly on Eilidh.
Kieran hated that he grudgingly admired Simon for it.
