Fully and truly, not a half-effort distorted by heartache and anger.
A path that he might walk with Blair.
Blair ignored the shockedexpressions as she strode past those seated for the evening meal and made her way toward the stairs. She knew how she looked — her light blue bodice stained, her gray skirts torn and dirty, her hair a mess. She had lost her kerch sometime earlier. Yet she kept her head high as she marched past the gaping on-lookers.
Adaira jumped up and raced to her, calling to a kitchen maid to bring dry blankets to her chambers. Blair wanted to brush her off, find a place where she might cry on her own, but Adaira was too kind, too caring, to suffer a sharp tongue from Blair.
Oh, that the impulsive Reade could learn that virtuous trait!
“Blair! We must get ye warm! Ye are chilled to the bone!”
Fury and embarrassment held Blair’s tongue. She allowed herself to be led to her chambers,Reade’s chambers,she thought sourly. They had reached the door that loomed darker than the gates of Hell, darker than the door to the dungeon she’d been held in, when Reade leapt up the top step and into the hall.
“I’ll take her from here, Adaira.”
Adaira threw her shoulders back and her lips tightened. She stepped in front of Blair, ready to confront her brother on Blair’s behalf, yet Blair had quite enough confrontation for the day. She rested her hand softly on Adaira’s arm.
“’Tis fine, Adaira. Reade can escort me in.”
Adaira’s lips pulled even farther, a shocking and unnatural expression on her usually amiable face, but she said nothing. She patted Blair’s hand and stepped away, glaring up at Reade as she passed him.
Blair did not look at Reade; she couldn’t bear to. Instead, she faced the door, as if the devil himself waited behind it. Reade shoved it open with a bearish hand, and Blair silently entered the room.
She hadn’t cried the entire time — perchance the shock of the afternoon had taken too much from her, but to see the chambers where, as of late, she’d only found such joy and pleasure, struck like a knife in her chest, and tears finally welled in her eyes. She blinked hard to keep them from falling.
She wasn’t going to give Reade the chance to see how much he’d hurt her with his coarse treatment. She was used to coarse treatment. That wasn’t new. She just wasn’t used to it from Reade.
Her gentle, attentive Reade.
And she had been trying so hard to be a good wife, a good MacDonald wife, to him!
Had everything between them been a guise? Had he never felt anything for her, in truth? Had his anger at the Campbells and at being shackled to her simmered below the surface the entire time? If so, he’d hid it well.
More the fool, her.
Reade closed the door quietly behind them. The chambers immediately felt too large and too small at the same time. A warm cavernous room crowded with heavy thoughts, fear, pain, loss, and longing.
Stepping softly, Reade came to her side. She had to force herself not to flinch when he touched her bruised cheek, yet her lips screwed up at his soft gesture. He sighed, and she dropped her gaze to the floor.
Where were they supposed to go from here?
“Can ye tell me what happened to ye in the wood?” he asked in a restrained voice. If he believed he was speaking in a soft and caring tone, he was sorely mistaken.
Blair swallowed hard then threw her head up to stare at him straight on. “Why? So ye can call me liar and traitor again? Nay, thank ye.”
Reade sighed again, a weary sigh that irritated her. Blair’s stomach jumped, and she narrowed her eyes at him.
“Blair, please. I can be rash, I know —”
“But no’ rash enough to apologize? To say ye were wrong in your presumptions, and then to throw me in that, that —”
“I apologize,” he snapped back.
Blair swallowed the bile that rose in the back of her throat. “I’ll tell ye what happened when ye are truly sorry for your actions. Empty words are worthless.”
Then she moved away from him to the wardrobe where a second plaid sat folded on a shelf. She retrieved it and began wiping her damp hair, pretending Reade wasn’t studying her with his intense eyes, watching her every move. Under his steady gaze, her stomach roiled in her wame, threatening to rise and eject from her body. The chaos of the day had been far too much. She swallowed hard to keep the day’s meager stomach contents down.
Hunger, she thought. She hadn’t eaten since she broke her fast, and now she’d missed the evening meal.It must be hunger.
