He nearly laughed at that, but she would not take kindly to his humor. Fortunately, she wasn’t so furious that she didn’t hear the ridiculousness of her own words.
“You know what I mean,” she said.
“I do. It means you’re afraid of the tight nubs on your breasts. It means you are afraid of the wetness between your thighs and the heat in your belly. It means you touch your lips to remember my kiss, but then cut at me so you won’t be tempted to feel my mouth on you again. It means, Mairi MacAdaidh, that you can’t control yourself when I touch you and of all things, you like to be in control.”
“You’re daft,” she snapped. “I don’t control anything. If I could, I would have sent the MacCleal laird and his men away long before Liam came back with his wife. I wouldn’t have seen my mother die nor yours either. I would set my father to smiling again, but he still cries at night when he drinks too much whisky. And that’s nothing compared to the women I’ve seen die in childbirth, the babes who passed when they couldn’t suckle, or the men out of their minds with fever from infection. I cared for the MacCleal clan when the laird was too drunk and Liam was in England with his books. If I had control, do you think my home would have been what it was?”
“No,” he agreed. “But those are things only God controls, and if it were in any soul’s hands, it would be yours. You’ve done all that and more when you were barely tall enough to stir the laundry. So you try to control what you can, and that’s your thoughts, your hands, and your heart.”
He saw a single tear slide down her cheek. She hastily brushed it away.
“It’s not a failing, Mairi. No woman can control those things.”
“And no man either!” she said. “So here we are, two creatures who cannae control themselves, and where will that lead? My parents were such, and I was born seven months after their wedding.”
“They loved each other.”
“She died while birthing my brother, and my father’s never smiled so bright again.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“Truly? What family do you know that hasn’t felt pain, what grandparent who hasn’t seen brother or mother or child die?”
“Grief comes to all in one form or another.” This time he did touch her. He raised his hand ever so slowly to touch the back of her hand. He knew she saw it and was grateful she didn’t pull away. “Denying what we feel makes no difference. It just makes us lonely.”
She lifted her gaze to his. He saw the sheen of her tears and felt the rigidness in her body. She didn’t disagree with him, but she wasn’t going to give him an inch.
“It makesyoulonely, Connall. It makesmesafe.”
And with that she jerked away from him. She headed back to the house with firm, heavy steps. He matched her easily, walking beside her while struggling for something to say. The words didn’t come. When they finally made it back to the house and up the stairs, he tried to say more to her before her bedroom door. He opened his mouth to speak, but she shook her head.
Still he tried to shape words, but she stopped him with one of her own.
“No.”
She didn’t shout it, but it had the force of a blow. And then she went into her bedroom while he stood in the hall and tried to understand. How was it that he finally cleared himself of a guilt he’d been carrying for nearly a decade, and yet now he felt a thousand times worse than before?
