‘She’s not what I want, lass.’
‘That’s not what it looked like.’ Cecily turned her back on him. Her blonde hair blew in the wind.
‘You are so beautiful.’
‘Oh, save your flattery, please.’
‘I mean it. And I caused you great harm, lass. I am willing to marry you this very day so that you are not shamed by my wickedness.’
‘Well, you might be willing, but I am not, and if you think I will endure that mauling again, you are mistaken.’
‘Were you not willing earlier? Every look you gave me said you were.’
‘I didn’t know what I was doing. I was gripped with some madness. You did not give me time to think about it. And you should not have taken advantage of me.’
‘No, I should not. Do you want to know why I did, Cecily?’
‘Not particularly,’ she said, crossing her arms.
Peyton turned her around with a gentle hand on her arm. Her eyes were awash with tears. ‘I lay with you, Cecily, because I could no longer bear it. I have wanted you from the first moment I laid eyes on you in that blue dress in my chamber. I am not sorry that I killed for you because you are the most beautiful woman I ever saw. You are brave and strong, and I have ached for you, lass. And aye, I took you in a fit of madness, but that doesn’t make my desire for you any less sincere or my affection any less real.’
‘Desire and beauty. Do you know what they have brought me? Beauty got me here, under your power. Desire ruins love and honour. It is a curse. I used to think love was the greatest gift in life. It is not. So Peyton Strachan, forgive me if I do not want to be used by you while you pursue another woman.’
‘Why would you even care about other women if I am such a brute, and you don’t want me?’ he said, frustration tainting his words. ‘You always seem to be fighting over me.’
‘I don’t give a fig for you.’
‘It didn’t seem that way just now in my bed.’
Cecily’s face twisted in anguish, and Peyton relented his words. ‘Look, lass, I used to care for Lorna, but not anymore.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because when she turned me down, it stung my pride, aye, but I did not feel it in here,’ he said, placing Cecily’s hand on his heart. ‘Back there in the yard, you cut me when you refused me.’
She gave a bitter laugh. ‘You just fear the mockery of your clan.’
‘I felt my disappointed hopes, lass. I had not thought of it before, but marriage is a means to free you from your predicament.’
‘Free! I would be in bondage in your bed for the rest of my life. How is that free?’
‘Because you will no longer be ruined. I took what was meant for your husband, and I am sorry for it. And surely I can make a better husband than that foul grub Edmund Harclaw. You will be Lady Strachan. We can claim we were meeting in secret, and you eloped with me because your father would have opposed the match. It will lift suspicion from you. Remember, lass, that you ran off the same time Edmund disappeared. Eloping with me will turn that on its head. And as my wife, you will always have my protection.’
‘As you protected me today in that bed?’
Peyton took her face in his hands. ‘I meant to, Cecily. And what I did today started as anger, but it ended up as affection and was the greatest joy of my life.’
He felt raw, as if his skin had been flayed away to reveal his beating heart. He braced for Cecily stomping on it, as Lorna had, but she did not.
‘I cannot believe you care a jot for me,’ she said quietly.
‘You should,’ he said, kissing her quickly and softly. ‘I mean to do right by you, I swear. I will never see you face English justice or be forced to wed an old man for an alliance and wealth. Marry me, Cecily, and you will never have to share my bed if you don’t want to.’
She frowned. ‘You cannot mean that.’
‘I swear it,’ he said, pulling her closer and kissing her again. Peyton no longer cared if she had lied to him about Glendenning. There was only the slip of her warm lips on his, the sweet smell of her hair wafting against his face, and the cawing of gulls over the water.
She pushed him gently away. Her voice held sadness as she said, ‘I must go inside. It is cold, and my clothes are wet.’
