“Ask Ewan. He witnessed the ceremony himself.”
“Ye think I would remember if I were your wife!”
“Aye! I couldnae agree more! Yeshouldremember. I keep hoping that ye will look at me and just . . .”—his voice cracked—“just . . .see.See the emotion in my eyes as they watch ye, recognize how my hands ache with your lack . . .”
More silence.
Her mind spun and spooled.
No.
This can’t be.
“Willingly?” she asked. “I married ye . . . willingly?”
He exhaled a breath that sounded trapped between despair and laughter.
“Aye, lass.” He gestured a hand toward her. “Ye married memostwillingly.Eagerly, even.”
She stared at him anew, trying to picture it.
That she . . .
And this man . . .
That they had . . .
She blushed, the sensation scalding her cheeks and pinching her chest.
“But if we were married, then that means . . .” She pressed a hand to her stomach, her eyes closing.
Kieran MacTavish was the father of her child.
She feared she was going to be sick. How could she have made such a choice?
She opened her eyes.
“Aye—” His voice broke, his pale blue eyes peering intently. “Aye, lass. Your baby—ourbaby—was loved.Soloved. And so very,verywanted. The morning on Vanuatu when ye told me ye were increasing, ye nearly pitched headlong into the surf, ye were spinning with such happiness—”
“Stop!” Eilidh covered her ears with her hands. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“Yelovedour babe, even though it was barely more than a wee body of hope between us.”
“Enough!”
“Lass, please. Listen.” Master MacTavish pressed his hands together. “Ye keep running from your memories out of fear, worried that ye will remember horror—”
“Yes! Because what I do rememberishorrific.”
“Perhaps, but if ye truly pull back the veil on your past, ye could also find happiness and tremendous courage. Ye might remember laying under foreign stars, tracing the southern cross with your fingertip. Or clinging to a guyline and laughing into the wind as sea spray flared across the ship’s deck. There are beautiful memories just waiting tae be uncovered.”
“Like being married to yourself?!” Her scathing tone echoed the repugnance in her chest. “A debauched lothario? Was I merely another conquest for ye? The one who managed to slip a parson’s noose around your neck?”
He flinched.
He swallowed and looked away, dragging another knuckle beneath an eye.
A bilious emotion churned and seethed in her stomach.
