The carriage hit an untimely bump in the road, making the entire conveyance sway. Catriona was jostled. He caught her waist in his hands, steadying her. What else was he to do, allow her to go sprawling to the floor?
“What are you doing in my lap?” he growled.
“Making you look at me.” Her hands fluttered to his shoulders.
At this proximity, he could once more see the vivid striations in her irises. The freckles decorating the dainty bridge of her nose. Still as alluring as ever. A rush of longing he could not contain hit him. Not just primal desire, but something far stronger.
Something far more dangerous.
Something he must avoid at all costs.
“I have already looked,” he gritted. “Return to your seat.”
“You have been lookingthroughme,” she argued. “Ever since this morning. We were closer than we have ever been, only for you to withdraw and place this icy, unscalable wall between us. I will not have it. If we are husband and wife, you must look me in the eyes. You must speak to me, confide in me. Seek comfort in me.”
Seek comfort in me.
What a strange thing for her to say.
No woman before her had ever uttered such an invitation. But they had been different. Camp trulls, women who followed armies and soldiers and offered a different sort of consolation than the one Catriona did.
“I do not need comfort,” he told her. He had been living these last few years without it. Nothing would change just because he had married her. Nothingcould, for he was irreversibly broken. “I am leaving you as soon as you are with child. You do understand that, do you not,querida? There is no point in this madness you would foist upon me.”
He felt her stiffen beneath his touch, but still she did not retreat. “Youdoneed comfort, Alessandro. You lost the woman you loved. You lost your son.”
Yes, he had, and curse her, the kindness in her voice drove him near the point of breaking. A point he had not descended to in some time.
“I have been comforting myself as I see fit,” he told her coolly. “I am fighting for the land Maria loved, the land where she and our son are buried.”
“What happened?” Catriona searched his gaze, her right hand going to his cheek, cupping his jaw tenderly.
Part of him wanted to haul her back to her side of the carriage. Part of him wanted to keep her here. To bask in her solace.
His hands tightened on her waist, and yet he did not remove her from his lap. “He never took a breath.”
He had not meant to make the revelation. But saying it aloud somehow lightened the burden of the weight upon his chest. Catriona said nothing. Instead, she drew his head to her shoulder. Her arms came around him, holding him tightly to her.
And though he told himself to push her away, Alessandro embraced her back. He buried his face in her throat, stifling the sob rising within him only through sheer force of will. He had not cried in years. He told himself he would not do so now.
Her skin was soft, her pulse a throbbing affirmation of life against his lips. She stroked his hair. Slow, soothing ministrations. Another realization nudged him, no one had touched him thus since he had been a lad. Since his mother. Not even Maria had dared.
He had been a young buck when he had met her, angry at the world. She had always told him he reminded her of a wild horse. She approached him with caution, never knowing what to expect.Peligroso, she had called him teasingly.
Dangerous.
And he had been. He still was.
But this foolish woman he had married, who had settled herself upon his lap as if it were where she belonged, seemed unconcerned. She did not know half the things he had done. The violence he had committed with his bare hands, the men he had killed in the name of war.
He was a monster.
He did not feel like one now, however.
He felt like a man.
Like a husband.
Likeherhusband. Catriona’s.
