“Well?” she asked.
He continued to regard her, his expression so open she could clearly see a wounded animal within.
He looked . . . ill. A man on the brink of devastation.
“We—meaning myself and the other survivors—have kept certain facts from ye,” he began. “We had all hoped that ye would remember them on your own. But I fear we do not have time for subtlety.”
Eilidh licked her lips. “Facts?”
“Aye. Facts. Ye are making plans for your life without knowing an important wee bit of information. And I cannae let ye continue on without . . .” His voice trailed off.
He scrubbed a hand over his face, his eyes glittering with what she suspected were unshed tears.
Abruptly, she was terrified of what he would tell her.
What information about herself could make a man such as Kieran MacTavish weep?
Blood roared in her ears.
“Two things.” He held up two fingers. “One—”
“Maybe I don’t wish to know it,” she interrupted. “Must I know?”
“Aye.”
“What could possibly be so important?” She threw up her hands. “You’re practicallygreitingover it!”
“O’ course I’m greiting!” He dragged a knuckle across his eyes. “Ye would be greiting too if your wife didnae remember that she was yourwife!”
His words were a vicious slap to her senses. Eilidh recoiled, taking an involuntary step back into her bedchamber.
Silence.
Deafening, thunderous silence.
The word reverberated between them—wife, wife, wife.
“Pardon?” she whispered, bracing a trembling hand on the doorjamb.
“You, Miss Eilidh Fyffe, are mywife.”
Eilidh’s knees threatened to buckle. She swayed.
He lurched forward, an arm instantly around her waist, pulling her upright, his body pressed to hers.
Every point of contact burned with a fiery heat—his chest under her palm, his thigh against her hipbone, his fingertips on her spine—
She pushed away from him, forcing them both back against opposite walls once more.
But not before she felt a frisson of . . . something.
A roil of current bucking the white numbness.
A flashing hint that perhaps she had been here before.
That perhaps . . .
“No.” She shook her head. “I don’t believe ye.”
