“I was just informing my commander to show you to a room.”
He looked at her just as her smile deepened, and seeing it again was like finding home after being lost.
No. He had no home. “For the night.” He flared his nostrils to draw in strength as her familiar smile faded. She had left him so easily when he was a servant. “In the morning, you will leave and never return.”
He was glad she had tamed her hair in a braid. Angry that it was soul-wrenchingly tempting to watch the way it fell down her left shoulder and over her humble bosom.
But her gaze commanded his as if she still held power over him.
He ground his jaw then loosened it to speak. “Why are you silent?”
Her eyes glimmered in the torchlight like pools of Marañon blackwater. “Why do you hate me, William?” she asked on the softest breath, furthering his demise. She had moved closer to him. When? “I believed that you had run away and—”
“That is where I stumble, Julianna.” He took a step away from her. “I do not understand how you could think so little of me.”
He turned to leave, having nothing more to say to her.
“William.” She stopped him with a slender hand to his sleeved arm.
“Nicholas,” he corrected with a warning thread woven into his voice. “Make certain you do not speak that name again, especially around my son.”
She would not forget again, remembering and understanding why he’d changed it. “What happened to you that night?” she asked, swiping the tears from her cheeks and then keeping them at bay by the sheer force of her will. “Did my father beat you?”
“No, Julianna,” he told her woodenly, as if he’d practiced telling her a hundred times in his head until it lost its power. “I suspect he knew that if he put his hand to me again I would kill him. Instead, he had me beaten by a group of men. There may have been six or seven, I cannot recall exactly. He then had me thrown out of Berwick and tossed onto the road outside the town, saving my life from the Scots who attacked a short time later from behind. Because, though I am a Scot, I would have defended you to my death.”
His tone did not change when her inward groan escaped through clenched teeth and tears flowed from her eyes.
“My brother, Cain, chose not to join the king’s men in the massacre of Berwick and found me instead on the road leading out. That is why I did not come back to you. They told me you were most likely dead, but I did not believe it. I hoped and I prayed that you lived. And then I found you at the abbey, and you know the rest.”
“I was a fool,” she said with resignation in the curve of her brow. “How long will you punish me for it?”
“We were both fools,” he allowed. “Let us be cautious that it does not happen again, aye?”
He moved to leave once more. He made it two steps and then stopped and turned to her. “You are silent again.”
“I am not leaving, my lord Whateveryouwanttobecalled.”
He fought not to gape at her—while he throttled her. “’Tis my castle.”
“I do not care if ’tis your country,” she countered, bracing herself. “You can punish me all you want, but I will not let you punish Elias. He needs me.”
Hell, she was not going to back down. He should have never let her back inside. “You do not even know him,” he tossed at her.
“Neither do you,” she tossed right back.
Why was he standing here arguing with her? “I will have you thrown out.”
“And I willneverforgive you.”
“Julianna, you are trying my patience.”
“Because I want to care for your son?”
“Because you are here now that I am no longer a servant but an earl.”
Her dark eyes lit up first—she never could remember his lessons on keeping her eyes from giving her away. He caught her wrist a moment before she would have slapped his face.
“I see what this is about, my lord.” She yanked her arm free and rubbed her wrist. “You have the power.”
