“What part of it?”
“Leaving me!” she exploded, the anger rendering her unable to lower her voice.
“Lower yer voice,” he ordered her, irritation crossing his face. She clenched her hands at her sides, the fury only growing inside of her. She knew it was not all fury that was aimed at him, but at her father, too, at everyone who had ever tried to use her as some means to an end. She had given herself to him, she had believed wholeheartedly that he truly desired her, only for him to turn around and treat her like a child? She wanted to scream, to tear his books from the shelves and hurl them at him.
“Don’t tell me what to do!”
He glared at her.
“You sound like a child,” he snapped, and he stepped towards her, catching her by the shoulder. “What do ye want?”
“I want you to explain to me why you married me.”
His face started with surprise at the sound of those words coming out of her mouth. His mouth twisted up into a questioning expression.
“Because I wanted you to be my wife.”
He was dodging the question, she could sense it. She shook her head.
“But why did you want me to be your wife?” she pleaded with him. She needed an answer, she needed a reason.
“Perhaps you should be asking yerself why you were so keen to become my wife,” he shot back at her. She started. For a moment, she had forgotten that she had told him about her father’s intentions to marry her off, and for him to throw this back in her face like that, it almost made her want to cry.
“At least I was honest with you!” she cried out in protest. “The least you can do is tell me why you wanted to marry me, Kiernan. I’m your wife. I deserve to know.”
She trailed off as he stared down at her for a long moment, a darkness crossing her face that seemed almost familiar to her. Then, she remembered the dreams she’d been having before she had left to be his wife, the darkness that had crossed his expression in her nightmares. Perhaps they had been trying to warn her of something. Perhaps she should have heeded it.
“You truly want tae know?”
She nodded, trembling slightly. She knew well that the moment he told her his answer, she would not be able to forget it. She had hoped, she had prayed, that there was something real between them, but as he looked at her now, she could barely see the man who had been with her the night before, and that scared her.
Perhaps the man who stood before her now was the truer version of the man she had married.
He leaned in closer to her, his voice dropping, his eyes blazing with anger.
“Because my father couldnae find a way to take the Aitken Keep,” he growled. “And I told myself, when he died, that I’d be damned if I couldn’t find a way tae make it happen myself. You were that way, Mary. You were my way into the clan.”
She felt as though her knees were going to give in underneath her as she stared back at him. That he could say it so bluntly, and with such little regard for how she felt… he truly was the man that Arran had warned her he had been all this time, but she had been too desirous to realize it.
“You… you married me for that?”
“Aye, and you’ve no place to be telling me I’m wrong for it,” he snapped at her, narrowing his eyes. “You only wanted to marry me to get out of that marriage yer father had planned for you. We both needed something, and we both got it. I dinnae see a problem with that.”
She felt tears prick her eyes, and she blinked them back at once, praying that he hadn’t seen them. She couldn’t stand the thought of him seeing how badly he had hurt her with his words. She drew herself up to her full height, though she knew she was far from formidable in the face of this place.
“Well, I’ll not bother you with my presence any longer,” she spat at him, and she turned on her heel and stormed towards the door. Some part of her hoped that he could call out to her, tell her that he was sorry and ask her to come back, but the silence rang in her ears, impossible to ignore, impossible to deny.
In that moment, she swore that she would not allow him to hurt her again. She knew that detaching herself from him after what they had shared would be near-impossible, that there was a good chance no man would want her again, after what she haddone. But living as an eternal spinster was better than staying with a man who would treat her in such a fashion.
She would leave. She would get out of this place and never look back, return to her sister, to the Aitken Keep. She’d have to pray that her marriage to Kiernan would serve as protection against whatever her father had planned for her, though she knew she’d have to cross that bridge when she reached it.
She reached her quarters again, and finished scribbling the letter she had started writing to Amelia. She would send it later today, and let her know that she intended on returning. Soon, she would be back where she belonged, with her real family, though she would have some wounds to tend to when she returned. She supposed she would have to admit to her eldest sister that she had been right, and that she should not have gone with someone like Kiernan, but that would be a small price to pay for the prize of returning home, returning to a place she knew she was safe.
For now, all that mattered was claiming her freedom again, and starting on the long road to forget the man whom she had given herself to, body and soul.
15
Cold air stung at Mary’s lips and hands as she poked her head out of the door to her quarters, making certain that nobody was watching her. After what Archie had told her about the lady’s maids overhearing her dalliance with Kiernan, she was distinctly aware of how exposed she was up here, but she needed to make certain that none of them saw her flight tonight.
