Chapter 20 #2
She was stiff for a moment or two, then she let out a shuddering breath. He drew her close and she didn’t fight him. He smoothed his hand over her hair for several minutes until she finally sighed deeply, put her arms around his waist, and rested her cheek against his chest.
“I shouldn’t stay.”
“The man in the stables is a recent addition and one I’m not happy about,” he said quickly.
“He glares at me as well, so don’t take it personally.
Besides, you can’t go until you’ve exacted your price from me, can you?
Here I am, at your mercy. I can’t believe you aren’t going to twist the knife whilst you can. ”
She relaxed just the slightest bit more. “For a minute or two, I guess. Since you’re at my mercy.”
He smiled. “Agreed.”
“Patrick says Alistair made you his heir eight years ago,” she began without hesitation. “What were you doing before then?”
He shut his mouth only because he realized it was hanging open. By the saints, that was the last thing he’d expected to have her ask him.
“Reneging?”
He tightened his arms around her. “I’m just catching my breath. You go for the jugular.”
“I’m curious. It’s what makes me a good herbalist.”
“’Tis what drives you to find lobelia wherever you are, no doubt,” he muttered. He took a deep, fortifying breath, then gave his normal dodge a go. “I am, of course, um . . . kin of Alistair’s. I found myself rather . . . abruptly in his company.”
“How?”
“My memory fails me on that,” he said honestly.
“What’s the last thing you do remember?”
He wanted to ask her why she was so curious, but since she was standing willingly in his arms, he thought it might be best not to encourage any thoughts of flight. “I remember going out riding, ” he said slowly. “The next thing I remember is waking in hospital. Everything in between is gone.”
Except that memory of pulling someone out of Moraig’s house. He wondered who that someone was.
Could it have been Sunny?
“Cameron, you’re trembling.”
“’Tis cold out,” he said without hesitation, because it sounded less daft than the truth—that he suspected he’d knocked on the MacLeod witch’s door and Sunny had opened it. But that was impossible.
Wasn’t it?
“It’s spring and I imagine you’ll survive,” she said firmly. “Now, how exactly are you related to Alistair?”
“Thinking to challenge the will?” he managed.
He’d been jesting, but saw when she lifted her head to look at him that she was deadly serious. He reached up with one hand and dragged his fingers through her damp hair, lifting it away from her forehead and tucking strands of it behind her ears.
“Why do you want to know?” he asked with as much of a smile as he could muster.
“Because I want to know everything about you,” she whispered. “I want to know who your father was, your brothers, your mother. I want to know what your life was like from dawn to dusk. I want to know why my doorway makes you so ill.”
He opened his mouth to give her some bland bit of something that would deflect the question yet leave her still in his arms and him with his privacy intact. Instead, words he hadn’t intended to say came out before he could stop them.
“Perhaps,” he heard himself saying, “’tis the knowledge that every time I step over it, I’m leaving you behind.”
She stared at him in shock for a moment, then tears sprang to her eyes so suddenly, it was as if someone had slapped her. He tried to speak, to apologize, to soothe her, but he was so far from what was comfortable and sensible, all he could do was pull her against him and hold her tightly.
She wept. Just the sound of it tore at his heart. Her weeping was rough and so unrelenting, he half thought she would be ill.
“Sunshine,” he said helplessly, but he realized that she couldn’t hear him. He feared that she truly would come undone if he didn’t do something. He fumbled for the doorknob, swept her up into his arms, and carried her into the house.
Madame Gies met him halfway across the hall, wearing a look of surprise.
He had told her that morning he was bringing a guest home for breakfast, a guest he could guarantee wouldn’t send everything back as Penelope did.
He supposed she hadn’t been expecting that breakfast guest to be one who had fallen apart before he’d even gotten her to the table.
“Take her upstairs immediately,” Madame Gies said without hesitation. “I will see her put in the bath.” She shot him a stern look. “You shouldn’t have had her out in the rain.”
He suspected the rain had nothing to do with Sunny’s present condition, but he didn’t bother to say as much. He merely followed his chef and chief terrorizer of the other staff upstairs and into one of the guest chambers. He set Sunny on her feet, then found himself summarily ejected from the room.
“But—”
The door was shut in his face.
He knocked, but there was no answer, and the door had been locked.
He frowned, then decided that perhaps he would do well to change quickly so he could be of use if Madame Gies ever opened the door again.
He found dry clothes for Sunny, sent them along with one of his young serving maids, then changed his own gear and retreated to his solar. He built a fire, then started to pace.
Perhaps ’tis the knowledge that every time I step over it, I’m leaving you behind.
He realized that those words were closer to the truth than he had intended to go.
He wasn’t sure when it had happened, but he realized with a shocking bit of clarity, that what he felt for Sunny went far past where it should have gone for his having known her such a short time.
It was madness. He’d only seen her for the first time .
. . how many weeks ago was it? Four? Five?
He could count on one hand the number of times he’d been with her since that first unexpected encounter.
Then how was it he had longed for her so fiercely every moment of every day since?
He considered that for quite some time, but found no useful answer.
Soon enough, he heard voices coming down the passageway.
One belonged to Madame Gies. It took him a moment to realize that the other was Sunny speaking in perfectly unaccented French.
They exchanged kisses on the cheek, Madame Gies promised Sunny a delicate tea to warm her insides and breakfast suitable for her particular tastes, then she hastened off to deliver on her promises.
Sunny turned and looked at him.
She was wearing his only pair of flannel pajamas. The sleeves and trouser legs were rolled up and her hair was wrapped in a towel. She was so utterly fetching, he couldn’t help but laugh.
She glared at him. “I couldn’t find anything else.”
“I had those left for you,” he said, walking over to her.
“Was there nothing else here in my size?” she asked plaintively.
“I suppose you could have had something of Madame Gies’s, but you’re quite a bit taller than she is.”
“Doesn’t Penelope leave things here?”
“She never would,” he said without hesitation, “even if she were here often, which she’s not. She’s been here twice and complained constantly during both stays.”
“How long have you been engaged to her?”
“Almost two months.”
She looked a little winded. “So recently,” she managed.
He wanted to flatter himself that he knew what she was getting at—and he shared her sentiments exactly. He’d paid for Penelope’s ring, then seen Sunny in front of Tavish’s store a fortnight later. If only he’d had the good sense to put the engagement off—
If only he could break it off now.
“You would think she would have left something in your room to remind you of her,” she continued pointedly. “Since she’s not here very much.”
“She’s never slept in my bedchamber,” he said automatically, then shut his mouth and found himself growing rather red in the face. He could hardly believe he’d said anything at all, but apparently the spewing of secrets hadn’t ended at his front door.
Her mouth fell open. “You’ve never slept with her?”
He shifted. “I think I would like to, as you would say in the Colonies, plead the Fifth.”
“You’re Scottish, you don’t have the Fifth,” she said promptly. “Why haven’t you slept with her?”
The list of reasons was rather short, actually, and mostly had to do with a distinct lack of love.
He wasn’t sure, though, that he could say as much to Sunny and not have her wonder what in the hell he was doing remaining engaged to the woman.
He searched for the least revealing but most pertinent reason he could name at the moment.
“She has other lovers,” he said slowly.
“And you don’t care to be added to her list?”
He lifted his eyebrow briefly. “Actually, nay. I don’t.”
She studied him for another moment or two, then moved past him. “Good for you. I’ll stay for breakfast.”
“What sort of admission must I make to convince you to stay for luncheon?” he asked, before he could stop himself.
“You probably don’t want to know and you probably shouldn’t push your luck. Here, I’ll go peer into your nooks and crannies and make you uncomfortable with all sorts of other personal questions. That’ll be distraction enough, won’t it?”
He smiled. “Aye, I imagine it will be.”
She looked at him over her shoulder. “She’s out of her mind, by the way,” she said, then turned away and made herself comfortable in his solar.
He had to lean against the door frame just to keep himself upright. He smiled, because he couldn’t help himself, partly because of what she’d said and partly because she looked so completely at ease in his favorite chamber.
Unlike Penelope, who never would have tolerated nightclothes and bare feet, much less a morning without shopping, society, or paparazzi.
He watched Sunny wander through his private sanctuary, touching things that interested her, pausing before pictures, putting her hand on the cold stone of the wall, and wasn’t surprised to find how much he wished she could have been there for more than just the morning.