“I was… last night, when I left with Archibald. He didn’t have to convince me. I wanted to go.”
His heart stuttered in his chest. He supposed it should not have come as a surprise to him, given the distance he had kept from her. He supposed that any woman would have taken that as a sign that her husband wanted little to do with her, if anything at all. But the thought that he had been the one to drive her fromthis place, the thought that she might have gone and never come back, because of how cruel he had been to her…
“And… and now?” he murmured. “Do you still want to go?”
She turned to him, her eyes finally meeting his.
“Do you want me to go?”
He shook his head at once.
“No, Mary, never. I never wanted you to leave.”
“So why did you treat me in such a way, after we were intimate?”
He closed his eyes for a moment. She deserved an explanation, of course, but he struggled to find the words for it. How could he tell her that he wanted her, more than anything, and it was the sheer depth of that wanting that made it so hard for him to control himself? When he was around her, he had forgotten everything he had tried to convince himself of how he could use her, how he could make sure she played to his rules, once and for all.
He lifted a hand to her face, took a deep breath, and forced himself to speak.
“Because… because I couldnae stand the thought of being so close to you again. So vulnerable.”
Her brows knitted together in confusion.
“So vulnerable?”
“Aye,” he replied with a nod. “When we came together, Mary, it… it shattered everything I had been clinging to. I thought I was in control of all of this, of the marriage, of the reasons I was doing it, of the chance to ally with the Aitkens and get them under my thumb. But the moment I had you, I couldnae pretend any longer.”
She breathed in sharply, not taking her eyes from his.
“You couldn’t pretend what?”
“That I wasnae in love with you.”
She leaned her head into his hand, her eyes softening at once. It was almost as though a warm light was coursing from deep inside her, warming her skin and her gaze.
“You’re… you’re in love with me?”
“As much as any man can love a woman, I love you, Mary. I knew it from the moment we were together, and that’s why I ran, because I never intended to love ye.”
“But you do.”
“But I do.”
A small smile curled up the corners of her lips at once, as though the reality of the situation was just starting to settle in to her.
“I love you too, Kiernan,” she confessed, gazing up into his eyes. “I… when I said I would marry you, I never could have imagined that it would lead here. I was escaping my father’s grasp, I was fleeing from what I knew, but I never imagined what I might run into in the process.”
He leaned forward and kissed her softly on the mouth, brushing his nose against hers.
“And I’m glad you found me, lass,” he added softly. “Promise me ye’ll never try to leave again.”
“As long as you give me no reason to,” she teased him, and he laughed.
“Trust me when I say I have nae intention of givin’ ye any reason,” he replied, and he kissed her again—this time, a little firmer, a little more passion building between them. As she slipped her hand behind his head, he knew that she could feel it, just as clearly as he did; this certainty between them, this sureness, this passion that seemed to overcome everything else. No matter what mistakes he had made before, now, she was his, and he was hers.
And he could imagine nothing more important in the world than that.
EPILOGUE
