The one he’d needed years of painstaking practice to master.
To learn to form around his scar.
Now, he upped the smile’s potency by letting a devilishly careless gleam enter his good eye. A casualness at odds with the tense pounding of his heart.
He meant to do so much more than tell her of Balkenzie.
He hoped to make her want to live there.
For her to love him, and his home.
To greet each new day there with gladness and gratitude, as he did. Above all, for the two of them, and the children they’d have, to enjoy the best life he could give them.
“Come,” he tried again, extending his hand. “We shall speak of naught more intimate than the thickness of Balkenzie’s walls, its proud location on the southernmost loch-shore of MacKenzie territory, or how pleased I am to have many of its windows fitted with panes of polished horn.”
She stood as straight as if she’d swallowed a pike, the fluttering pulse at the base of her neck revealing that he’d chosen the wrong words to convince her.
“I do not want to hear of this distant castle,” she said, coming closer, placing her hand in his. “I wish you to remain at Dunlaidir. You are needed here, as am I.”
“Not so, fair lady.”
“Nae?”
Marmaduke’s brow furrowed. “So I said.”
He wished he could lie.
Instead, he heaved a sigh and drew her onto his lap. “My use here is but for a brief span of time,” he said, settling her so her back rested against his chest, then smoothing the ends of his fur-lined cloak across her legs. “Your purpose here is long expired and does more ill than good.”
“Nonsense.” She twisted round to frown at him, the movement causing the cloak to slip off her shoulders. “I am lady here.”
“Youwerelady here,” he reminded her, and tried not to notice the cloak had dipped low enough to expose the top halves of her breasts.
“God’s eyes,” he muttered, drawing up the cloak so that it once more concealed her lushness. “As I was saying,” he began again, this time cradling her head against his shoulder so she couldn’t shoot blue fire at him, “you were lady here.”
She stiffened. “Meaning?”
“If you remain here, you will be as a shadow on the turret stairs. A presence at the high table even when you are not physically there,” he tried to explain. “Your strength will hover behind and over James, shadowing all he says or does so long as you reside within these walls.”
“You’re only trying to lure me away,” she argued.
“I want what is best for you.” He spoke the truth as he saw it. “You, and your stepson.”
“And what you want for yourself.”
“Aye, what I wish for myself as well,” he admitted, moving his fingers over hers to rub the chill from them. “Mind you well, fair one, in every man’s beginning is his end and many times we reach it far too soon.”
He paused to kiss her brow. “Too often, those we’d hoped would make the journey with us, are stricken along the way or take another road, leaving us alone.”
“What does that have to do with me? With any of this?” she asked in small voice that said she already knew.
“I have many empty years behind me, lonely years,” he told her, each word costing him in its naked honesty. “Now I’ve the rest of the journey ahead of me, a proud stronghold awaiting my return, and, aye, a heart that yearns to love again.”
“You speak like a warrior poet.”
“Perhaps I am?”
She didn’t answer, but her fingers, warm now, laced with his, giving him hope.
