Chapter 19
His mouth left hers, and the room came back into focus.
Emma dragged in air, her chest tight and her back pressed against the edge of his desk.
Her fingers were knotted in the front of his shirt, and for a breath, she stayed like that, caught between one moment and the next. Then she realized what she was doing.
Her hands were on him. Holding him.
She snatched them away as if he had burned her.
Logan did not step back. His gaze stayed on her mouth, dark and intent, as if he had not yet decided whether to kiss her again or to start an argument. When he spoke, his voice was rough, but there was a thread of humour under it.
“Were ye so impatient to become fully mine, lass? Could ye nae wait till we were in bed?”
The words should have felt light.
They did not.
Emma let out a sound that was meant to be a laugh, but it cracked halfway. “Do not flatter yourself. It was not impatience.”
His eyes lifted to hers, and his lips twitched, as if he had caught that crack and approved of it. He moved a half step, not touching her, but close enough that the desk dug into the back of her thighs when she tried to lean away.
The study felt smaller than before. The fire had burned low, and shadows darkened the walls.
The locked door behind him might as well have been part of the wall.
Heat still ran under her skin from the kiss.
Her body felt as if someone had shaken it awake.
At the same time, an older feeling pushed up under it, cold and steady, one she knew too well.
“I am not impatient,” she snapped. “And this is not a game.”
“Ye could have fooled me,” he said, his voice calm. “Ye dragged me back here with yer beasts and yer wee performances. Ye wanted me eyes on ye. Now ye have them, wife.”
“I dragged you back?” she scoffed. “You left me with silence. I simply just put something in its place.”
“Really? Something? Ye filled it with chaos,” he countered.
“You left,” she shot back. “I do not think any argument needs to be had after that. How I choose to mend myself after you left is my business.”
Their words climbed over each other, and the kiss slipped to the side.
It was no longer about the heat between them anymore. No. This was about who would set the terms. Every time he used that amused tone, a part of her wanted to shove him away, while another part wanted to grab his shirt and pull him in.
He moved that last half step, his presence a weight in front of her. “Ye are playing, Emma,” he said. “Ye poke, ye push, ye want me to chase. But I decide the rules of this game, nae ye.”
The desk pressed into her legs. There was nowhere else to move.
“Again, not a game.”
If she let him keep talking like that, she knew where it would end. She would laugh when he expected it, treat it all as flirting, let him decide how close they stood and when they stopped.
Her heart hammered high in her throat. If she stayed quiet, she would lose. If she spoke, she might lose in some other way, but at least it would be hers.
The words came before she could smooth them.
“Now that you keep leaving even before you produce an heir, what do you plan to do after you produce an heir? Or worse, when I’m pregnant?” Her voice thickened. “Are you going to leave as well, knowing very much that I could die?”
The room seemed to shrink as the fire crackled. Logan’s breathing sounded loud. His expression shifted in a way she had never seen. The lazy look vanished, and for a moment, there was only shock, bare and clean.
“What in God’s name do ye mean by that?” he asked. “Why would ye say ye would die? Why would ye think I would leave ye if ye carried me child?”
Emma’s back went rigid. Now that the fear was out, she wanted it back. She hated the feeling of standing open while he prodded at a sore place.
“A man would not understand,” she huffed, lifting her chin.
His jaw flexed. “Daenae do that. Daenae throw that at me and then tell me I have nay right to ask. I would expect me wife to understand me.”
The word wife sounded different this time. Emma heard the unsaid part under it. That very few people had tried to understand him at all. Including her.
He did not move from where he stood. Even if the door was wide open, she doubted he would have stepped aside.
“I understand plenty,” she said. “You owe your men. Your ships. Your sea. I am somewhere at the bottom of that list.”
“Ye daenae ken what I owe,” he shot back. “Ye see a ring on yer finger and think the whole thing ends there.”
“Then tell me,” she pressed. “What do you owe that matters more than the clan that looks up to you? More than the marriage you yourself agreed to.”
His mouth twisted. “I didnae drag ye here. Ye came of yer own will. We both ken that.”
“I came because you needed a wife and I needed a husband,” she said. “That is not charity. That is a bargain.”
He gave a mirthless sound. “Ye think this place gave me charity?”
His shoulders had tensed. The sea was never far from him, but now Emma could tell the ship felt close too.
“Every soul is worth the same.” He sounded like he was repeating something he had told himself over and over. “A man on a ship, a man on land, it is all one. But I cannae forget what some of the people here did. How they watched.”
“Oh.” Emma swallowed and stared at the fire. “I did not know there was something.”
His eyes flicked to the fire and then back. “The clan didnae stop it,” he rasped. “They let me be taken. It was the pirates who kept me alive. Fed me. Made me what I am.”
Suddenly, the pieces started to fall into place. Isobel’s silence when the subject of Logan’s childhood came up. The way the older men watched him with uneasy respect. The tension that had lingered in the hall even at the wedding feast.
“So when you say everyone’s value is equal,” she said, “you mean theirs and ours.”
“I mean, I willnae forget who held out a hand when I was drowning and who looked away. Me braithers at sea didnae look away.”
Emma wanted to speak, but the words simply did not leave her mouth.
His eyes flashed anyway. “It doesnae matter now. It is done. We will speak of it another time.”
There it was. Later. Another time.
“Is that why you are running off again?” she asked. “Back to the sea because land still feels like the place that let you go?”
He did not answer. His gaze slid away for the first time.
“One last trip,” he murmured. “In the morning after tomorrow. I told ye. We need money and a way for the clan to prosper. That is what I’m seeking. Ye will be surprised to learn that the former Laird left almost nothing. I will find what needs to be found. Then I will stay.”
Her fingers dug into the edge of the desk, and fear pressed in from all sides. The image of herself here, married on paper, left behind while he took his wound and his loyalty back to the only life that felt sure in his hands.
Suddenly, it all felt very sharp.
She had thought marriage would be something solid to stand on. At that moment, it felt like thin strips of wood from a drop she could not see. She was married to a man she was uncertain about, and that made her feel incredibly uncomfortable.
The silence lingered between them, and Emma felt it at the back of her neck. He did not move. She could feel his eyes on her hands where they rested on the carved edge of his desk. Earlier, she had clutched it. Now, she flattened her fingers and lifted them away.
When he spoke at last, his voice was almost calm. The question was not. “Will ye play any more games with me?”
There it was. The test.
Emma drew a slow breath. Her stays bit into her ribs where Jenny had pulled them tight. She held on to that small pinch like an anchor.
She lifted her chin. “No. No more games.”
He did not look like he believed her. The furrow between his eyebrows deepened. She had raged and snapped at him for the last hour. Of course, a neat answer would never be enough. So she added what she had learned in London.
A smile.
The one she had used with Aunt Agnes.
Polite.
Pleasant.
Empty.
“I will be the wife you wanted,” she said. “No trouble. No chaos. No backtalk. You may have your voyages and your silence. I will follow your rules.” Her voice sounded strange to her own ears, smooth as glass.
“Is that what ye think I wanted?” he asked.
“It is what you asked for. Obedience in public. Gratitude in private. I listened.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Then I should be at peace.”
“You should.”
The coals popped softly. Somewhere beyond the door, a latch clicked, then another. The castle seemed to go on without them.
“I have never been more worried in me life,” he admitted.
The words sat in her chest. They did not change the fact that he was going to leave again in two days.
“Well,” she said, curling her fingers over it. “You won’t have to worry for long. You will be at sea. I will manage the castle. We will both have what we chose.”
He did not answer.
She turned toward the door, and leather creaked behind her as he shifted. He did not call her back.
The iron knob felt cold and a little greasy under her hand. She hesitated, waiting for his voice. When nothing came. She opened the door and stepped out.
The air in the hallway was cooler and sharper with smoke. A gust of air slipped along the wall and brushed the bare skin at her throat. She shut the door and let her hand fall from the panel.
No sound came from inside.
She walked, her slippers tapping softly. At the corner, she glanced back. His door was only a dark shape. He did not step back out.
By the time she reached her chamber, her chest ached from holding everything in place. She slipped inside, turned the key in the lock, and leaned her shoulders against the wood. She crossed to the rug and sank onto it instead of the mattress. The wool scratched through her gown. It felt real.
Logan knew about the humiliation she had faced in London. About her fear of being abandoned. He knew about all the ways he might hurt her by leaving her alone. He knew, and he still meant to go.
Emma tipped her head back against the wall. The women in her life had all had their methods, but it always came down to patience. She had no wish to wait for this man to become different.
If the raw truth would not keep him, she would stop throwing it at him. Let him believe that she had settled into the role he wanted. She would smile, nod, run his castle, and make this place into something he missed when he was gone.
She curled her fingers against her ribs and inhaled deeply.
She would be the perfect wife.