“Ye’re nae leaving, then?” he asked, trying to sound cynical and not like some orphan watching someone else take the last scrap of bread he would ever see.
“Sir Hamish is still residing two miles away, his gaze turned here while he waits for you to make a mistake. I told you I would stay as long as he remains here. I don’t wish to aid him in any way.”
She continued to make this about her word, her honor, rather than about her emotions. He wanted to shake her until she understood. Until she admitted that she did want to stay here—and not just because being at Garaidh nan Leòmhann made her happy.
And it did. He knew it did. She merely refused to see it. “If ye dunnae mean to cause harm, then show me the letter.”
Without any hesitation she picked it up and handed it to him. “Add something, if you like.”
Graeme turned it right-side up. “Gabriel,” he read to himself, “I wanted to inform you that I am presently in the Highlands. I’m staying with a friend half a day or so from Lattimer, and I do mean to come visit you and meet your Fiona. Be assured that I’m well—though I wish you’d bothered to inform me about the tensions between you and clan Maxwell. I just barely avoided trouble. You really do need to write more. If I choose to remain here longer than another week I shall inform you. Otherwise, you should expect me then. All my love, Ree.”
The last four words kept his attention for an absurd amount of time. She wrote them so easily, more easily than he ever could, and yet he wondered if she’d ever thought of those words with regard to him. He hadn’t said them to her, either, but that was about his own weakness, and not hers.
Slowly he handed the letter back up to her. “I dunnae need to add anything.”
“I wanted… I wanted someone else to know my whereabouts. So if I was to disappear, at least one person who cared would notice.”
He met her deep blue eyes. “I know yer whereaboots. And I care.”
Marjorie nodded, turning away as she wiped a hand across her eyes. She wanted the conversation to end there, then, before she had to talk about how she felt and what she truly wanted. He took hold of the chair and pulled it—and her—around to face him again.
“I didnae want to meet a lass who could twist me up inside. I didnae want my heart to pound or my breath to catch when a particular lass entered a room.”
“Oh, stop telling me why you don’t want to like me,” she snapped.
Hm.“I hadnae thought aboot it that way. What I’m trying to say, Marjorie, is that I only figured on the pain of it. Until I met ye I didnae realize there would be laughter, and arguing, and quiet, and calm, and peace, and heat, and strength, and two people feeling all those things at the same time, together.”
He spoke slowly, trying to fit all the pieces together as he went. Itwaslike putting together a puzzle, seeing the picture, and only then realizing an entirely different puzzle lay on the backside, just as pretty and important as the first.
She wasn’t still protesting, and she hadn’t tried to turn away again or leave, so he went on. “I’m a man with more responsibility than I figured to have at my age, and so I’m cautious of making a mistake. But considering how I felt last night sleeping withoot ye in my arms, I think I would be making a bigger mistake if I didnae fight to keep ye here. With me.”
A tear ran down her cheek and then another, but she continued to sit with her hands folded in her lap. “I never expected to meet you,” she said, her voice unsteady. “I never meant, never intended, to find anyone with whom I wanted to share my life. I mean… who would want to? I didn’t even want to.”
“Marjorie, ye dunnae—”
“I do mean it,” she cut in, as if she could read his thoughts. “I hated what I did, but it was the only way I could think to earn an income. I couldn’t expect Gabriel to send me half his salary forever, and… he was a soldier. In a war. I couldn’t rely on his salary continuing indefinitely. I felt awful for thinking that, but if something happened to him, it would be just me in the world. I literally have no other relations.”
“I didnae realize that.” Aye, he and the lads had been orphaned, but they’d had each other, Uncle Raibeart, a scattering of cousins, and atop everything else, clan Maxwell. Kin, whether or not they were family. “Ye grew up having to look after yerself.”
She nodded. “It took the Crown six months to find an heir for the old Duke of Lattimer. That’s how alone we were. We didn’t even know.” Her mouth curved in a slight, winsome smile that he wanted to kiss so badly it physically hurt to stay still. “For me,” she went on, “one day out of the blue Gabriel appeared on my employer’s doorstep, showed me his new signet ring, and said he was duke, of all things. I didn’t even believe him at first.
“Within fifteen minutes he arrived, gave me the London house he’d just inherited, had his aide-de-camp write down his solicitor’s address and send them instructions to give me whatever I wanted, and left for his new estate in the Highlands. That was nearly four months ago. I haven’t seen him since.”
“I dunnae like that ye were so alone, lass.” It actually made him angry. Not at her brother or anyone else in particular, but at the idea of it. At the idea that a woman as compassionate and sensitive and clever as she was had had to be so… self-contained.
“I’m not after your sympathy, Graeme. I do have friends. Women I met at school. They’re nannies and governesses and companions and teachers now, scattered all across England.” She sighed. “It sounds petty and pitiful, and I don’t even know why I’m telling you this, but some of them feel that I lied to them or something because I have money now, and ‘Lady’ in front of my name.”
Holding his breath, he took both her hands and drew her forward. She followed without protest, sinking across his thighs so he could put his arms around her. When it came to talking about herself and how hurt and frustrated and lonely she must have felt, she was more skittish than the foxes. He wanted her to understand that he was a protector—of his people, his brothers, and her if she’d allow it. Her, most of all.
“I want to belong somewhere,” she went on, her voice muffled against his shoulder, her fingers twining into his coat. “I thought I had the secret password, once I owned a grand house in the middle of Mayfair and more money than I ever dreamed of. I knew what they knew: how to dance, how to chat, when to curtsy, how to dress—I didn’t cheat or lie to be related to the old Duke of Lattimer. I just didn’t know I was. But everyone in Mayfair thinks I’m an upjumped lady’s companion and sister to an upjumped soldier. They’re snobs. Mean, self-concerned, spoiled snobs.”
“Then why fer God’s sake do ye want to be one of them?”
A sob racked her slender frame. “It’s the only… dream I had.”
He kissed her lemon-scented hair. “Mo boireann leòmhann,ye need another dream. A better one. Mayhap I’m nae in it, but I’ll fight to convince ye otherwise. I love ye, Marjorie. And if ye think that’s easy fermeto say, then f—”
“I love you, Graeme,” she interrupted, crying harder. “I just don’t know what to do.”
