Chapter 6
SIX
BETH, MY BETH
James
I never thought about the shape of the woman I had to marry. Not her height or eye colour or anything so esoteric as a personality. Only that she’d be selected, I’d agree to the match, and we would be wed.
She certainly wouldn’t have her hair shaved on one side or a torn shirt stretched tight across her breasts. Her name might be Beth, like the Beth approaching me through the arrivals gate of Inverness airport, but I wouldn’t have had any part in choosing her.
In inviting her to visit for the weekend.
In breaching multiple agreements I had with my uncle to let him make decisions for me.
“Hey!” Beth, my Beth, bounded up to me. Exuberant in all actions, just like on our first—our only—meeting when she’d nearly run me over.
At her back, Callum whooped loudly and swept his girlfriend into his arms. He kissed Mathilda like he needed her to breathe.
I would’ve died for wanting the same.
To kiss Beth ‘hello’ lay so far beyond my limits, I couldn’t comprehend the distance. Touching her face or caressing her wild hair…
If I’d thought this meeting a bad idea before, my body certainly agreed.
Her gaze flitted over me, landing on my eyes, then my mouth.
“Are you nervous? I’m nervous. I mean, we’ve been talking a ton, but it’s different when you’re on a phone or a video call.
Face to face is something else. Like, I remembered that you were so tall, but then everyone is to me. This is fucking weird, right?”
So utterly strange. And all I could do was manage the slightest nod, so caught up was I in my prison of a mind. In my anger at my uncle.
The email he’d sent this morning.
I’d woken to find my inbox filled with the profiles of eligible women, none of whom I wanted to read about. The sister of a duke. The daughter of a US senator. Heiresses or the privileged offspring of rich families. I couldn’t bring myself to open the pages.
It had slammed my lack of choice right into my face.
Now, my stifling nature choked my throat.
Beth’s impossibly pretty gaze held mine. “Are you okay? You’re sort of pale.”
A horrible pause rang out between us where I tried and failed to say anything more.
I should have told her I could be like this.
I’d meant to, when we’d spoken yesterday.
Before she’d travelled all this way and found this version of me—stiff, formal, and silent.
Failing in everything I’d sought to change.
But talking on the phone had been so easy, and that was before Richard’s contact crushed me.
“Car’s outside,” I managed.
At Beth’s slight frown, her pinkening cheeks, and the disappointment in her look, we moved to the revolving door exit. Too late, I realised I hadn’t taken her case, and she bumped and dragged it over the cold Scottish ground.
And while pure need burned under my skin, I despised every second of my past decade lived in isolation, serving my duty, where all I did was obey, obey, obey.