She pursed her lips, not knowing how much he wanted to kiss them. “Then why?”
“Because I am a fool.” He answered quickly. “I was a fool. I thought to scare ye into submission. In part because I was frightened for ye. If ye ran from here, ye might find yerself in worse danger. But also because I wanted yer help.”
“To reclaim your lands,” she said flatly.
“Is that not a good reason?” he demanded, a flair of temper taking precedence over finer thought. “Greenock Castle has been in my family fer hundreds of years. The lands are the lands ofmy forefathers. The farmers that toil those lands look to me fer safekeeping.” He opened his arms. “Ye speak as if I shouldna fight to reclaim my home.”
“I do not think that.” She massaged her temples and pushed back her hair, as if deciding what she did think. “I can guess how I would feel if some imposter laid claim to my family estate of Wolvesley.”
“Aye.” He nodded firmly. “Ye would want yer family to take it back.” He propped himself back on his elbows, but Isabella’s silence made him look at her. “Well?”
“Yes.” She sighed. “I suppose.”
“Ye suppose?” Bewilderment chased away his temper.
Isabella met his gaze. “’Tis just that I cannot imagine any army strong enough to overpower us.” She shrugged.
Hamish sat up. “’Tis a strong failing of mine that I allowed yer English King to conquer Scotland,” he said sarcastically.
She hugged her knees and looked into the fire. Shadows flickered at the far corners of the wall, like dark spirits threatening to descend.
Hamish scowled at his feverish imagination. Then he scowled again, for allowing this ignorant English woman such power over him.
It is time to leave this place.
And this woman.
“’Tis a terrible thing that has happened in Scotland,” she said, stopping him as he was about to rise up from the rug. “Especially when we had reached an agreement of peace. My family celebrated that peace.”
He nodded, unable to articulate a response.
Isabella gave him a quick, assessing glance. “I have led a cosseted life, I know it. But that does not mean that I have never known hardship or pain. Or that I have ne’er longed forsomething I simply cannot have.” She balled her crumpled gown in her slender hands. “Something that is not meant for me.”
Hamish noticed the break in her voice but was still too riled to offer comfort.
“What I am trying to say is this.” She took a breath. “Are people not more important than property?”
He was caught by surprise. “I believe so, aye.”
“And any attempt to reclaim your lands will lead to lives being lost.”
“I cannot deny it.”
She nodded slowly, as if her point was proven. “Well then.”
He was not inclined to debate the ethics of war with a woman who had never stepped onto a battlefield. But he was not made so stupid with residual anger that he could not seize the opening she had unwittingly handed to him.
“My family has always been the most important thing to me. My mother, my father, my two sisters.” He paused. “They are all gone now.” He spoke on, over her sharp intake of breath. “All dead, apart from my younger sister, Elena.” Grief swiped him with sharp claws, but he pushed it away. “Elena has been taken prisoner by yer Lord Gaunt.”
There, he had said it.
Isabella’s big blue eyes swung to his face. “Gaunt has taken your sister captive?”
He nodded.
“As you have taken me captive?”
He shook his head. “I doubt he has built her a fire or bathed any wounds she has.”
