Her shoulders relaxed a bit. Evidently, she was desperate to get away from D’Arcy and put that disappointment behind her.
“What else?” he asked, keeping his voice even.
Her face was strained, and she could not look him in the eye. Whatever this second condition was, it was difficult for her to say it.
And he was certain he would not like it.
“I will no share your bed.”
What? If there was one thing he had been confident of, it was that he pleased her under the blankets. Did she dislike him so much that she would give up the pleasure they shared in bed?
“If all I wanted was a nursemaid, I would hire one. And I believe the chances are good that I could find a pretty one and bed her as well.” He added the last part because he was angry. “I want a wife. In every sense.”
Glynis flushed and bit her lip. She could not truly have expected him to agree to this. He waited to hear what she really wanted.
“I’ll share your bed—but only so long as ye are faithful.” She lifted her serious gray eyes to meet his. “If ye take another woman, I shall never willingly share your bed again.”
“Never willingly?” he said, white-hot anger sending sparks across his vision. What did she think of him? “I’m no the sort of man who forces women.”
“If ye take another woman, then ye must agree to give me a separate house to live in,” she said. “A small cottage would do.”
The anger welled in his chest, threatening to explode. Nay, he would not live as his parents did.
“Do ye agree?” She held his gaze as if she were trying to see into his soul for the truth.
He pulled her against him and covered her mouth with his. He kissed her with all the fury and passion pent up inside of him, until she was like liquid fire in his arms. When he pulled away, her eyes were dazed—just as he wanted.
“Ye want me to make love to ye,” he said, “until ye hear the blood thundering in your ears and see the flashes of light as I make ye come again and again.”
Her breath was ragged, and her lips parted and soft from his kisses.
“Say it,” he demanded.
“I do,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Ye want me to be your husband and to share my bed every night. Say it!”
“I do.”
He kissed her again until she moaned in his mouth and swayed against him. By God, she would want him and only him. His anger still was not spent when he released her a second time.
“I’ll agree to a full marriage, then,” she said, primly running her hands over her gown to smooth it. “If we decide after a year that we do not suit, we’ll part with no hard feelings. Unless, of course, ye take another woman before then, in which case, it will be as I said before.”
It was time to settle this between them.
Alex pulled his dirk from his belt and heard her suck in her breath as he used it to cut a strip of cloth from the bottom of his shirt. He grasped her hand and interlocked his fingers with hers. Holding their hands up between them, he locked eyes with her as he wound the strip of cloth around their wrists three times.
“I take ye as my wife, Glynis MacNeil, daughter of Gilleonan MacNeil of Barra, and I will be your husband.” Alex paused, and then he said in a deliberate voice, “’Til death, Glynis. Did ye hear that? ’Til death.”
Under Highland tradition, a man who was unhappy with a marriage could return the woman to her father, along with her dowry, or tochar, at the end of a year. This was most commonly done when the woman failed to conceive, but if there was a child, the child was considered legitimate. Unfortunately, the woman could quit the marriage as well.
Alex could not hold Glynis to more than a year without a priest—and priests were few and far between in the Highlands—but he was demanding it anyway.
She pressed her lips into a tight line and glared at him.
“You’ve done this before,” he said. “Ye know what to say.”
When he saw the flash of hurt in her eyes, he regretted bringing up her prior marriage. But for reasons he did not understand himself, he was far too angry to apologize.
