Chapter Thirteen #2
He raised her face to his at that and brushed the hair away from her hot wet cheeks and kissed her.
“You have nothing to be sorry for.” He sounded fierce.
“You did nothing wrong, Lucy. It was not your fault that they died. You do not know that your sister would have lived, nor a seventh-month child.” His voice had dropped.
“You were very brave. Unbelievably brave and honorable.”
His words only seemed to make her cry all the harder. She felt helplessly unable to stop, sobbing, gulping and wondering as finally the tears started to fade whether she looked as dreadful as she thought she must.
“How much you have suffered,” Robert said softly, stroking the hair back from her damp cheeks. “Unbearable to have to carry it all alone.” He held her a little way away from him. There was a smile in his eyes as he looked at her.
“I know,” Lucy said defensively. “I look awful.”
“The question is whether you feel any better now that you have spoken of it,” Robert said. “You never told anyone, did you?”
Lucy shook her head. “I couldn’t talk about it. I felt so guilty and sick to even think of it. I have nightmares. Waking ones too. I see it all again in my mind’s eye, over and over. It’s as though I cannot escape.”
Robert kissed her very gently. There was no demand in the kiss, only comfort and sweetness.
“You do not turn away from me,” he said, as their lips parted.
“I am glad of that. It is no wonder you do not believe you could ever lie with a man and bear his child.” His lips brushed her hair, pressing soft kisses.
“After all you have been through, it would be no wonder if you believed all men were self-serving bastards like Hamish Purnell.”
“I trust you,” Lucy said. “I know you are not like that.” She dropped her gaze, fixing it on one of the mother-of-pearl buttons on his jacket, rubbing her fingers over their smoothness.
“And yes,” she added, “I do feel a little better. I feel...” She stopped.
It was as though a crack had opened in the darkness, shedding a sliver of light into the emptiness of her heart.
It was hard to believe after eight barren years, but it was true.
Yet it was not enough.
She looked up and saw that Robert was watching her. From the look in his eyes he already knew what she was going to say. Her heart lurched.
“It makes no difference,” she whispered.
“It can make no difference to us. Don’t you see that, Robert?
” Her gaze implored him. “I’m still too damaged, too afraid—” She saw the instinctive repudiation in his face and pressed her fingers to his lips to silence him.
It felt impossible to make sense of the warring demands of her mind and her body, of the sweet seduction of Robert’s kisses and at the same time the cold fear that numbed her mind and her heart when she thought of the marriage bed and of bearing a child.
She thought of the tiny frail burden that had been Alice’s son and she shuddered.
She had failed a child who had depended on her.
She could not trust herself. Not even now, when the truth was revealed at last.
“I can’t offer you anything,” she said, with painful honesty. “It is not fair to you.”
Robert took her hand in his and kissed the fingers gently. He head was bent and the firelight burnished his hair to rich chestnut.
“If you marry me I will settle for whatever you can give,” he said roughly. “If you marry me I swear not to force you into an intimacy you do not want.”
Lucy’s eyes widened with shock. “But you cannot make a match on those grounds,” she stammered. “You need an heir.”
Robert’s smile was wicked all of a sudden. “In time I will have my heir,” he said. He kissed her again, long, slow and languorous so that when he released her she was flushed and panting.
“I do not believe it impossible,” he murmured, “with time and trust.”
“The difficulty is not in kissing you,” Lucy said.
“So I had observed,” Robert said.
Lucy smiled a little, but beneath it she felt an edge of sadness.
She trusted him not to ask more of her than she was prepared to give.
Still, she was not sure she would ever be brave enough to give him the heir he desired.
The thought was enormous and terrifying and it made her shrink inside.
It took her back to the shuttered room and the scent of death and the fear in Alice’s eyes.
Yet Robert’s gaze was steady on her and his touch felt warm and solid and comforting.
“Marry me,” he said softly. “Have faith that together we can make all well.”
Lucy thought about Wilfred Cardross laying claim to Methven land and his men burning and pillaging the villages and Isobel’s tired face and the terror in Bessie’s eyes.
She thought about the clansmen who had given their loyalty and their lives to the laird for hundreds of years, losing their lands and their livelihood.
She thought of the poverty and the misery and the starvation that were the price of her freedom.
She remembered the barren village she had ridden through and the dirt and squalor of the crofts.
She felt the burn of old hatreds and the echo of that enmity in the blood.
She thought about never seeing Robert Methven again.
She thought about the faith he had shown in her, his belief that together they could overcome her fear.
She thought about being his only hope.
He was watching her. There was tension in the line of his jaw and a coolness in his eyes as though he had taken the biggest gamble of his life and was convinced he was about to lose his stake.
“Yes, I’ll marry you,” she said slowly, and felt the fear grip her by the throat so fast she almost contradicted herself immediately.
But her promise was given and she saw the flare of triumph and satisfaction in his eyes. “Thank you,” he said.
“But not tomorrow,” Lucy said quickly. “In a few days...” She fell silent as he shook his head.
“Tomorrow,” he said.
She understood his insistence. It was the ultimate test of her trust in him.
She met his eyes and knew she could not fail, could not fall now, at the very first challenge.
If she was going to try to overcome her fears and be a true wife to him, if she was going to give him the heir he needed, she had to have belief in him equal to the faith he had in her.
“Very well,” she said. “We wed tomorrow.”