“Do you like that scent?”
Lisette gasped and twisted around to see that Conall watched her from where he toweled himself dry, his deep blue eyes darkened in the firelight.She spun back around in a spray of water and sank further into the tub, her knees raised.
“Oui, lavender is my favorite,” she said in a breathless whisper, overcome again by his masculine beauty as she heard his footfalls cross the floor.
Not toward the bed to await her there…but to the tub.
Lisette lost her grip on the slippery soap that dropped with a plunk into the water, when she realized Conall had stopped just behind her.
“Hmm…I would have thought it lilac.”
Lisette froze as Conall moved to the side of the tub and sank to his knees, a towel draped around his neck and covering his upper chest, his thickly muscled arm reaching into the water to retrieve the soap.
Lilac.Isabeau’s favorite scent,nothers.
Lisette remembered then that her half-sister had doused herself in the fragrance before she had dressed, the smell trailing after Isabeau when she had hastened from the room.Of course Conall would think Lisette loved the scent, when in truth, she would forever associate it with her half-sister’s cruelty…
“Euan gave me a vial of lilac perfume as a gift,” Lisette said shakily, concocting a lie even as she wondered if Conall had thought it strange that she hadn’t reeked of the scent.“It’s his favorite—”
“Then I’ll ask you tae never wear it again.Will that grieve you?”
She shook her head so quickly that he seemed surprised, and then a look of understanding lit his handsome features.
“Did you love the man you were tae wed?”
Lisette gaped at him, so stunned that Conall would ask her such a question that she didn’t know quite what to say other than the utter truth.“No.”
To her surprise, he looked almost relieved, though his expression then seemed to darken.
“Were you forced into the betrothal?”
Lisette shook her head again.She didn’t want to fabricate any more lies, but there was nothing else she could do than offer Conall half-truths.“The marriage was arranged by my father some months before he died, at the behest of King Edward.An alliance between great families to draw England and France closer together—”
“Great families?I know nothing of the Charpentiers, but theMacCullochs?”
Conall had fairly spat the name, a scowl on his face now that was frightening to behold.Lisette thought of enemies he must have faced in battle with such a forbidding countenance and she shivered, her skin prickling with gooseflesh.
“I can well understand why you would hate them,” she murmured, feeling suddenly sick at heart at her realization, “but I had no part in the death of King Robert’s brothers.Will you hate me, too, no matter we’re now husband and wife?”
As if her query had doused him with cold water, Conall didn’t look fearsome any longer as much as perplexed.He gave a short laugh, though Lisette could tell it held no humor.
“I dinna hate you, lass, but I’m not pleased by our marriage, I canna lie tae you.I didna wish tae marryanyone…and yet here we are.”
The same bitterness in his tone that she’d heard after their wedding, Lisette almost blurted then and there that she wasn’t Isabeau…as if that might make some difference to him.She wasn’t an enemy, just a bastard daughter of no consequence at all and so grateful to him for freeing her—
“You’re a strange one, Lisette Isabeau Campbell.I’d swear you were made glad by our wedding, though I canna fathom why.”
Lisette blinked at Conall, deciding it was best to hold her tongue though she wondered wildly what he would think if he knew he had just hit upon the truth.
“Tae have your life upturned and yet you havna fought me.You havna screamed or kicked or tried tae strike me—aye, just run into the woods.Thank God I caught up with you in time.”
At his reference to the wolves, Lisette shivered again, though she wasn’t sure if it was more because Conall had flung aside the towel and begun to rub the soap between his large, callused hands.
“You should be the one filled with hatred, wife, but I dinna see a trace of it in you—”
“I don’t hate you!”
Her outcry silencing him, Lisette stared at Conall as he stared back at her, his eyes appearing darker in the firelight.
