“Lass, we should head back, before…”
She nodded but didn’t move. He took her hands, thinking to pull her to her feet.
“Come lass, I’m sorry to have brought back sad memories. Let us speak of happier things, shall we? While we walk back to the village?”
“Nay, please. I’m…I dinna want anyone to see me like this.” Her eyes, big, brown, and glistening with unshed tears, held him in check.
“Verra well. We can stay for a few minutes more.”
She nodded. “Thank ye.” She scrubbed at her face. “I’m no’ ready to return.”
“Do ye think ye can be happy here, Shona?”
She hesitated, and Angus steeled himself for her answer. So much depended on it.
“I hope so…but no’ with Colin.”
Shona’s sad smile put Angus on alert, and he cringed at the thought suddenly crowding between them. She came here alone with him and now refused to leave. Was she deliberately trying to trap him into marriage? It was one thing for her to warn him about her uncle’s suggestion to Colin, and to seek some small measure of comfort from him. But quite another to arrange to be discovered alone in the woods with him, forcing a wedding with him instead of Colin. The possibility angered him. The MacDonald lass had tried the same.
He reached for her, and she leaned into his touch. So he wrapped his hand behind her head and pulled her into his kiss. He wasn’t gentle this time. He plundered, putting his anger into the assault on her lips. Her hiss of indrawn breath made him hesitate, but then she kissed him back. So she did want him, or wanted him to think she did. Doubt made him deepen the kiss, thrusting his tongue into her mouth, mimicking what he really longed to do. She permitted his invasion, so he trailed his fingers down her throat, but paused at her shoulder. Still, she made no move to stop him, so he let his hand fall to her breast and gently squeezed.
Shona reared back and knocked his hand away. “What do ye think ye are doing?”
“Giving ye what ye want,” he told her, his voice husky with arousal. Testing her.
“Ye go too far. Why are ye treating me this way? First the day of the election, and now…”
“I ken, Shona.”
“What? Ye ken what?” A breeze tugged at her hair, whipping tendrils into her pale face. Impatiently, she shoved them out of her eyes, as if she needed to see Angus more than to hear his words.
“Ye are trying to avoid marriage to Colin. Do ye think to tease me into marrying ye by offering yerself while waiting for someone else to find us? To compromise ye?”
Shona’s outraged gasp did not sound false. She did not argue with him. She simply stood and stepped back. “I canna believe ye would think such a thing of me…think I’d be willing to…to…”
“Give away yer favors? Are ye no’?”
A sudden gust startled him, picking up leaves and swirling them around her. She batted them away and kept retreating, backing away from Angus. “Nay! I thought ye cared…I thought I could trust ye. But I see now I made a mistake. Ye are no better than my uncle and the new MacAnalen.”
Her face blotched, and her eyes glimmering with tears, Shona turned and ran from him, leaving behind one yellow primrose, flattened into the forest loam.
His belly suddenly hollow, Angus watched her flee, wondering if she was not the only one who’d made a terrible mistake.
