“Oh, God.”Conall drew in a long breath and exhaled slowly, the weight of Aislinn’s words striking him like a sword blow.
He had never known a humbler moment…or one more damning.
Frivolous dalliances, aye, that’s what King Robert had called them, and Conall could only agree.
Everything he’d done had been to forget Lorna.Yet now, strangely, he was hard-pressed to remember exactly what she had looked like as a vision of soft brown eyes filled with tears tore at him.
“Those days are behind me, Aislinn, I swear it, as God is my witness.Will you allow me a moment tae see her?”
She didn’t answer, only stared at him for a long moment in astonishment, until at last she nodded.
“Aye, Conall, but don’t wake her…please.”
She gestured to a closed door halfway down the hall, but she didn’t move to accompany him.
Instead she turned and hastened down the steps in a swirl of green silk while Conall went in the opposite direction, his heart thudding hard again.
He didn’t want to wake Lisette, either, only to look in upon her.He opened the door and slipped into the candlelit room without a sound, his breath caught now as he moved to the curtained bed.
Dressed in a white long-sleeved nightgown, she lay motionless on her side with one hand balled under her chin like a child’s, her other hand dangling from the bed.He longed to reach out and tuck those slender fingers within his own to feel their warmth and assure himself that all was well—but all wasn’t well.
Not with Lisette thinking that he might wish to seek an annulment and that he hated her and desired to share the beds of other women.
He could see the wetness staining her pillow from her tears, Conall truly despising himself at that moment for the distress he had caused her.
He vowed to himself, too, that he would do better—hemustdo better.What kind of man would that make him if he didn’t?
In her sleep, Lisette suddenly sighed…a ragged sound telling him that her dream might be just as cold and bleak as life seemed to her now.It was all he could do not to lean down and touch her cheek to comfort her, but somehow he refrained and moved away from the bed.
Another moment more and he had left the room and closed the door behind him…not seeing her stir and lift her head.
“Conall?”
Lisette blinked open her eyelids, still heavy and swollen from weeping.
Something had pulled her out of a dream…a slow intake of breath, a creak of the wooden floor, but she saw nothing and dropped her head back onto the pillow.
Yet she smelled the masculine scent of him hanging in the air—sweat and wood fire and horses, and knew in her heart that he had just been there.
Yet why hadn’t he stayed?It wasn’t night, but surely he must be tired from their journey and needed sleep, too.Was there something else he must do first?Someone else he must see?
That thought brought such a pang that tears welled again, hot and stinging though she did her best to force them back.
She had told Aislinn, her new sister-in-law, that she would try to understand if Conall sought the warmth of another woman’s arms—but she had lied!
She had never been one to utter falsehoods even in the worst times with Isabeau and Claudia and now they seemed to tumble from her lips.
She didn’t want Conall to seek an annulment!
She didn’t want him to seek solace from other women when he had a warm and willing wife in his bed!
After Conall had been so distant toward her since leaving Douglas Castle, her flagging hope had made her say those things in the first place, but she hadn’t meant them!All she wanted was for them to find happiness together and for him one day to love her—heaven above, was that too much of a miracle to hope for?
Just as Lisette knew she had fallen in love with him from the moment he’d claimed her, the ache only growing in her heart.
Chapter11
“You look so pretty, Lisette.Are you feeling better this morning?”
