Chapter 32 #4
“Bullshit. You’re not your mother.” Struan suddenly stood and crossed his arms. “You’ll have the finest doctors, a midwife, whatever is needed.
People say death is inevitable, but half the time it was because they didn’t want to bother saving somebody’s life.
Cheaper to let them die. So they’d administer some opium to quiet the screaming, put on a sad face, and say it’s inevitable…
but really they didn’t want to fail. They didn’t want to spend time and resources working to save a life only to have the life slip away, or to have the life be saved, but the body mangled. There’s no point in saving half a man.”
“Wait!” Elspeth knew Struan had forgotten the original conversation and was now talking about the past. She slid off the bed and stepped up to him, putting her hands on his arms to get his attention.
“Stop doing that. Listen to me. The war is over. You’re done with it, and you are a whole man.
Anyone who says differently is an idiot. ”
He didn’t react for a moment, not even to show any awareness of her touch. Instead, he stared in front of him, his eyes unfocused, unless they were focused on some point she could never see.
Elspeth tightened her grip on his arms and tried to shake him, with about as much effect as a butterfly shaking a mountain.
So she leaned against him, putting her head against his crossed forearms, pressing her cheek into his skin.
And it felt so perfect. She always wanted to touch him and be near him. Because she loved him.
Of course she loved him. She tried to convince herself otherwise. She tried to pretend he didn’t love her. But he did. Everything he’d ever done for her or to her was done out of love. And his one error—hiding the truth behind the marriage proposal—he’d done to shield her from a harsher truth.
Ellie squeezed her eyes closed to stop the tears. Admitting that she’d allowed his mistake to hurt them both would be difficult. But she had to do it. How?
After a moment, he lifted his arms slightly to loop them above her head and pull her into an embrace. He didn’t even seem aware that he was doing so, but Elspeth cuddled against his body and slid her arms around his torso to keep him close.
“Struan? Talk to me.”
He didn’t talk at first, but he did raise one hand to her head, and began to play with a lock of hair, twisting it and twining it around his fingers like a solitary game of cat’s cradle.
“I wish you wanted me as much as I want you,” he said. “Ellie, is there anything I can do that will make you come back?”
“You know,” said Ellie with a wild thought. “You never actually proposed to me. I mean, when I first saw you in the church, it was already our wedding. I knew that I was going to marry you and you had no reason to ask.”
He sounded a little perplexed. “So? If I had asked that day, would you have said yes?”
“Of course.”
“Not that that means anything. You didn’t know the truth then. You do now.”
“I know much more than I did then,” she said. “I know what it’s like to be married, which I had no notion of before. And I know you, which of course I didn’t know before. I like to believe that my decision would be much more informed if you were to ask me now.”
Elspeth looked at him expectantly, but he didn’t respond. She tapped one foot and prompted, “Well? Are you going to ask or not?”
He swallowed nervously, and she couldn’t help but smile. Struan was such an intimidating figure most of the time, except to those people who knew him. Seeing him nervous was rather sweet. She said, “This moment cannot be the most terrifying thing you have faced in your life.”
“It’s more terrifying than you might think,” he said, though with a faint answering smile that told her she had broken through the first barrier.
“Please ask me. It’s traditional. And I think we are, despite everything, both rather traditional people.”
Struan took her hands in his, running his thumbs over her knuckles, as if to ensure that she really existed.
He cleared his throat, then said in a low tone, “Elspeth McGregor, I need you. I can’t imagine any other woman at my side.
I want to be the kind of man you deserve.
But the only way I can do that is if you allow me the chance.
I love you so much that it scares me. Will you be my wife, not because somebody else wants it, but because you want it? ”
Elspeth’s heart pattered beneath her ribs.
She rarely glimpsed such raw emotion in Struan as she did in that moment.
He didn’t have to ask her to be his wife.
He had everything already, according to the law.
And yet, he asked anyway. Because she wanted him to.
And she could say no to his question, and destroy him.
But all she wanted was to say was, “Yes.”
“Yes?” Struan echoed, hope in his eyes.
She’d loved him before, but it was the simple, adoring love of a rescued stray, so eager to be valued that she’d give him everything he asked for and much of what he never asked for, just so that he wouldn’t discard her as a worthless thing.
Now she knew her worth.
Now she knew why she was answering the question.
“Yes. I love you. I want to be part of you. And have you be part of me. If you’ll forgive my own mistake. I should have let you explain. I should have trusted you.”
He kissed her forehead. “Do you trust me now?”
“I trust you as much as I love you. Completely.”