“Why am I here?” she whispered. “I assume you spoke with your solicitor and set things in motion with the procurator fiscal, as you said you would. Has anything changed from our last conversation?”
He shook his head, a single stroke to the left.
She gripped the door handle tighter.
Pushing off the windowsill, he crossed to her. Isla drew herself up, standing as tall as possible. He still loomed. Not threatening, per se. Just . . . large.
“Then why summon me here?” Isla continued, tongue darting out to lick her lips. “We risk much if we are caught.”
That seemed to amuse him. His lip pillows quirked upward in the low light.
“The horror,” he deadpanned. “What would follow should we be found together, yourself and I? A duel for your honor? Demands that we marry?”
Darkly ironic, those words.
“A marriage that might stick this time, you mean? I don’t think you want that outcome any more than I do.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Pardon?”
“I count Edward Archer among my closest friends. He has saved my life—and I his—more times than I can quickly count. I would die for that man.” A pause. “I did not, however, expect to hand him mywife.”
Tavish watched hiswords land, emotions fluttering across Isla’s face.
Surprise and resolve.
That was how Tavish would label the flare of her eyes and slight lift of her jaw.
Aye, the light was dim, but she faced the window, capturing what there was of the waxing moon.
“And what of it?” Her chin edged higher. “Your esteem of Colonel Archer only does him credit and proves my good sense. I anticipate that you and I will both remarry eventually. Colonel Archer is an excellent choice. I should think you happy to see me well-married and content.”
Tavish ground his teeth, as he could scarcely disagree. Fletch was the best of men.
“You seemed to find Miss Crowley’s ample bosom alluring this evening,” Isla continued. “I am sure it will be no hardship to unearth a lady to console you in the wake of my loss.”
As you have no doubt done in the past, her tone added.
Her words slashed outward. Tavish felt their bite, the cut unexpected and stinging.
Was this the woman she had always been fated to become? This withdrawn and caustic creature?
Fletch thought of her as everything elegant and refined—more complimentary words thancoolorunfeeling—but Tavish had once known the wild color within her. He had reveled in it.
What happened to that girl? Or had she never really existed? Tavish would not be the first man to see only what he wished in a woman.
He didn’t disabuse her notion that he might have sought solace elsewhere. She clearly had not been loyal to him or their marital vows—in thought, certainly, if not in some small deed.
A man did have his pride, after all.
“You have no right to this fit of jealousy,” she finished.
“Jealousy? This has naught to do with jealousy, lass, and everything to do with communication.”
At least, that was the reason he told himself.
“Communication?” she scoffed.
