The panic spread to Isla’s heart. She feared the organ would punchthrough her chest and collapse to the ground at her feet, her lifeblood pouring loose.
“And giving me up?! Permitting Gray to buy you off?”
“No!” He ran an agitated hand through his hair. “That’s not what I’m saying. I will find a way to return for ye, Isla. I’m not planning on holding to my word with Grayburn.”
“I cannot stay here. Gray is . . . or rather, Gray told me . . .” The confession of her illegitimacy froze on her tongue. She couldn’t risk Tavish turning away from her, too. “I cannot bear it!”
“Isla, I can’t take ye with me at the moment. I am to report to Shorncliffe in Kent for training with the 92nd Highlanders. There isn’t a place—”
“Officers take their wives on campaign.”
“Aye, they do, but I know nothing of the mechanics of it. Ye will simply have to wait until I can save the necessary funds and find a way to send for ye.”
“Save funds?! What if you cannot save sufficient?” The nervous energy thudding her heart blackened her thoughts. Rationality fled.
All Isla could see was the desolation of Tavish’s betrayal.
He had promised they would be together. She had married him based on that promise.
Instead, he had allied himself with Gray.
And now . . .
Now, he was leaving. Perhaps never to return.
“I don’t know!” The sentence burst from him on a frustrated rush. “I don’t know, Isla. Our plans unraveled and now every obstacle feels insurmountable and . . . and . . . I don’t know what to do. We’re both so young and inexperienced and . . .” He drifted off on a huff.
Regret.
That was what Isla heard in the breaths between his words. Regret that he had married her. Regret that she now hung like a millstone about his neck.
Just as Gray regretted the burden of her life.
The cuckoo in the nest. Unwanted. A noxious millstone to bear.
Isla took a step back from Tavish. Then two.
“Isla.” He reached for her.
But she was already shaking her head, tucking her hands to her chest and wrenching his wedding ring from her finger.
“You are trying to twist the reasons for your actions, Tavish, but they all reach the same conclusion—you are letting Gray buy you off. You decided to take his money and run. You can take this, too!”
She hurled the ring at his chest. It bounced off, clinking to the path at their feet.
Tavish scarcely glanced at it.
“Love, that isn’t at all what I’m saying, and ye ken it.”
“I’m not your love!” she hissed. “If you l-loved me, you would take m-me with you.”
“Isla.” He reached for her then, trying to pull her into his chest. “I’m promising to return for you. Ye be twistingmywords, too.”
“No!” She wrenched free, dancing back.
“Ye must look at this logically, Isla. As an adult with a mature perspective. I ken that ye be not even a month seventeen, but we must—”
“So I’m a child now, too?!”
