For judged he was being. And for what, he did not know.
Ever since that kiss in the forest, Belle had been behaving differently around him. From the moment he had done it, from the second they had become entangled in one another's arms, Henry had known it was a bad idea. That it would make things a thousand times more complicated.
Yet, this distance was not the complication that he had foreseen.
His fears had fixated on the way her body would feel against his. How it would make his blood sing every time he entered a room and his arms itch to hold her again. How the taste of her mouth would see him up at night, and how the breathy moans she made in his embrace would never leave his ears.
All such concerns had been well-founded.
Even without Belle's interaction with him, the woman had never left him. He saw, heard, felt, and tasted her with every breath. Whether she was in the room or not.
But, each time, it was a mere shadow. A ghost of what was given to him in those woods.
The real thing was before him now, and she could not bring herself to even look in his direction.
"My lady?"
She did not flinch.
"My lady, if I have done something to offend you, would you not allow me to beg your forgiveness?" He had asked this before. Then he had pleaded. Then he had demanded. None of it had moved her to speak.
Just how was he to make amends when he did not know his crime?
Hadit been the kiss?
He had read her as a willing participant. He had felt her arms come around his neck, her sweet frame finding its place against his. He had thought her to be as lost in passion as he had been. But, perhaps he had been wrong? He had not known a lot of women over his adult years. Had he been lost in the moment and only seen what he so desperately wished to see?
He glanced at Coira, who tactfully stepped out of the room. She closed the door behind her, but Henry knew that she would be hovering on the other side to ensure their privacy.
"If this silence with which you punish me is about what happened in the woods, my lady, I can only apologize again and hope that you will be benevolent. I can assure you that I am duly chastised by your cold shoulder and regret—"
"Oh, shut up!"
The cry seemed to be a shock to both of them. It had Henry biting his lip and Belle's eyes shooting wide. Whirling around in a flurry of skirts and long, curling tresses, the ejection seemed to spur a torrent of words that had been so far kept at bay.
"I am tired of listening to you, Henry! I am tired of your apologies and your regrets! I shall not hear them anymore! Do you not know how much they hurt? Do you not see how your actions have wounded me?"
Had Henry been able to pay attention to anything but the tears steadily flooding Belle's eyes, he might have been proud of her language. She screamed at him with the proper dialect and the correct tone. She no longer sounded like the little village girl he had once collected by carriage. Now she was a poised young woman of distinction who was bent on seeing his heart break.
"You have a life in the South. A laird and a profession. A sister that you never spoke of to me!"
"I can explain tha—"
"I am not finished!" she screamed, stomping her foot down hard. Her hands were balled into fists, and her face was scrunched up like a baby's wail. "I know that you have a life to return to. And that such a life is not here. I know that I am intended for a noble marriage for the sake of a father I have never known, and I accept that. Do you hear me? I accept it because I know that I can help Mama more by being a noble wife than I can as a common daughter."
Henry was wise enough to keep his mouth shut this time, but he was tempted to argue that she had never been a “common” anything. Certainly, not to him.
"You have made your preference for my marriage abundantly clear in your lack of action over my betrothal, and yet you twist me into knots whenever we are alone. I cannot be persuaded to live two lives, and I cannot abide the hurt I feel when you switch from one purpose to another. Do you understand me, Henry?"
In truth, he did not. His “lack of action”? Did she think that, because he had not stepped in the way of her engagement, he was supportive of it? He had been able to do nothing! His actions would have only seen her played the fool and her father insulted. His hands had been tied!
"You think me indifferent to your engagement to Lachlan Hunter?" he demanded, shocked to his very core.
"You have done nothing to suggest to me otherwise! Are you not holding the agreement for such a thing right now?"
Glancing down at his hands, Henry had almost forgotten the parchment he carried. It had become unfolded as their argument had become more animated, and half of its fine handwriting was glaring out at him.
"Aye," he admitted. "I am. But that does not mean that—"
