“I don’t want to leave you,” Isla sighed into his neckcloth. “I want us to be together every hour of the day. No more caution or secrecy. Just you and I, hand-in-hand, running into the sunshine of our future.”
Tavish basked in the happiness of that image for one deep breath.
He needed to let her go. She must hurry home.
And yet, he struggled to release her. It felt akin to dragging his own heart from his chest.
Instead, he bent his head and kissed her.
He intended it to be a quick kiss of parting. A promise of things to come. But one kiss became two . . . and then became twenty.
Bloody hell, how he loved this lass. How blessed to have found her. To know that she would be the companion of his soul from now until his dying breath.
One of her hands threaded into his hair, pulling his head more firmly against her own. Tavish lost himself in the delicious joy of kissing his wife.
“Ye need to go, lass,” he murmured against her mouth. “They might come looking for ye.”
“I don’t want to leave.”
“Isla—”
His clever wife inhaled his words, nibbling them from his lips.
Tavish had just dipped his head to feast on the sensitive place below her right ear, the spot that always made her moan, when Isla let out a horrified scream.
He lurched upright as she shoved him away.
“You damn, miscreant curr!” a stern English voice snarled. “I will kill you for this!”
Tavish whirled to see the Duke of Grayburn descending on him from up the road, face a glowing coal of rage, walking stick swinging like a cricket bat, his limp pronounced.
“Go!” Isla pushed Tavish’s shoulder.
“Isla—”
“Go! He won’t hurt me. GO!” She shoved him toward Goliath.
“Isla!”
“Graywillharm you! Don’t be a stubborn idiot. Go!”
Though it went against everything Tavish thought himself to be, he swung onto Goliath’s back and whirled away, kicking the horse into a gallop.
Away from Grayburn.
Away from Isla.
Once Tavish gained the bend, he slowed, pausing to look back.
If Grayburn so much as laid a hand on her—
The duke faced Isla down, yelling and flushed. But his arms remained at his side, one hand clenched around his walking stick. He did not appear to be physically threatening her.
Grayburn whipped his head upright, his gaze finding Tavish. If the man had a gun, Tavish would already be dead.
He wheeled Goliath for home, a knot of dread twisting in his gut.
Damnation.
