Chapter 28 #2
“My father thinks…” She faltered. “What I mean to say is, we talked for a while and… Gordon, I am very grateful for the protection you have granted to my niece and me. It was generous of you, and I know you didn’t have to agree to it, so… thank you for that.”
He watched her closely, uncertain of where this conversation was headed. “Ye’re welcome.”
“But he is not the man he was when I left England,” she continued, her hands clasped against her stomach. “He was stuck in his grief then, and he seems… more inclined to help me than he was before. More reliable, I suppose.”
Gordon wasn’t sure he liked the direction the conversation was heading.
“He is not angry with you for doing what you have done, not after I explained the situation to him,” she said.
“However, he is obviously unhappy with the arrangement. So, he suggested that we find me someone else to marry, so that I might have protection from Edwin and the extended security of marriage. And… I agree with him. Our arrangement cannot go on forever, so… I think, with my father’s help, I will begin the search for a husband. ”
Gordon almost broke the armrest of his chair as the words settled in his skull, his hand gripping the wood so hard it creaked in protest. His knuckles protruded through his skin as a rush of white-hot anger flooded his veins.
Of course, he had considered the idea, but now that she had broached the subject, he couldn’t stand it.
“Daenae say that,” he growled.
She frowned, as if his response was the last thing she had expected. “Whyever not? It would resolve everything. You would have your peace and quiet again, I would have the solution that I seek, and we could put an end to this fake betrothal to carry on with our lives. Apart.”
The wood splintered at that word. Apart.
“Nay.” He rose to his feet and strode around to her side of the desk. “There’s no man alive who will protect ye like I can.”
She met his gaze. “That hardly matters if the protection is temporary, my Laird. We cannot be in a fake betrothal forever, now, can we? People would eventually start to notice that we were not, in fact, betrothed.”
He closed the gap between them, his blood burning in his veins. “Ye’re still here, under me roof. Ye’re still mine.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” she replied, her voice breathy. “What does that have to do with anything? How can I be yours when this is not real, my Laird?”
For someone who seemed so innocent, her ability to rile him up warranted intense studying. She somehow knew exactly what to say to make the wolf inside him howl and tear at its cage, desperate to be set loose.
“It means…” he rasped.
“Yes?” Her green eyes seemed to dare him to say something foolish.
But he had never been much good with words, not when it came to expressing himself well. And as he had just destroyed most of the art in his tower, he no longer had that to show what was going on inside him.
The only thing left to him was action.
He grabbed the back of Agnes’s neck and dipped his head, his lips crashing onto hers in a bruising, hungry kiss that he couldn’t hold back.
He poured into it all the things he couldn’t say and a claim he couldn’t make.
His entire body yearned to set her on his desk, sink deep inside her, and claim her once and for all.
Before any inferior Englishman or laird could steal her for themselves.
After a moment’s hesitation, she kissed him back, pressing herself against him and sending the wolf within him into a violent frenzy.
His hands grasped at her soft curves, pulling her closer, kissing her harder, while the last shackles of his discipline began to loosen.
He could not let any other man have her.
Would not. Since the moment she climbed in through that window and begged for his assistance, she had been his and his alone.
His tongue danced with hers, and he felt her smile against his mouth as if she had at last won a game of Vingt-et-Un. If this had been her intention all along, then she was slyer than he had thought, but that didn’t mean he was going to stop.
Indeed, he might have reminded her what she would be missing if she sought a marriage to some dull lord or laird, had it not been for the approach of footsteps outside the study.
Agnes practically leaped away from him as if she had been stung, just as the study door widened and her father walked in.
They might have been able to explain away why they were breathless and standing so close to one another, unchaperoned, but Gordon saw the problem before Agnes did. In truth, he doubted she was aware of it at all, but her father certainly couldn’t ignore it.
“You devil!” her father snarled, jabbing an accusatory finger in Gordon’s direction. “You vile snake!”
Ordinarily, Gordon wouldn’t have permitted anyone who called him such things to keep breathing, but in this case, he could understand the man’s fury.
After all, in the tower, Gordon had insisted the betrothal was nothing more than a falsehood, and his part in it all was that of a righteous protector.
And now, his handprints were streaked all over the dress and face and neck of the man’s daughter—a map of everywhere he had touched.
“You have ruined her!” the older man barked, his eyes bulging with rage.
Agnes put up her hands in a gesture of surrender. “It is not what it looks like, Father. He has not done anything. We were just talk—”
“I can see exactly what he has done to you!” her father retorted. “It is all over you! Do not try to deny it. Do not lie to me, girl! You are making the same mistakes as your sister! My goodness, what did I do to raise such… such… hellions?”
Visibly confused, Agnes glanced down at herself and let out a horrified gasp as she took in the paint.
Between the evidence of Gordon’s appreciation of her figure and the fact that her father had just hurled such a cruel word at her, Gordon made up his mind. As his wife, no one would ever dare speak to her in such an unkind way again, not even her father.
Nor would he allow her father to think of him as anything like Edwin.
“Ye should calm down, sir,” Gordon said coolly. “It isnae ruination; it’s a seal on me intentions.”
“Oh, I can tell very well what your intentions are,” her father shot back, his face puce. “And I will not calm down! Not when you have dishonored her in such a—”
“She’s to be me wife, ye dolt,” Gordon interrupted. “I held her in me arms just now because she’s mine.”
Her father faltered. “What?”
Agnes said nothing, but her bewildered expression asked the same question.
“I intend to marry her,” Gordon clarified. “She’s nae ruined at all. Far from it, she’s under me protection. We can have the weddin’ the day before the cèilidh, and the cèilidh can replace the weddin’ festivities.”
Her father seemed to relax, his face softening. “You will marry her?”
“That’s what I said,” Gordon confirmed. “Now, if ye’ll excuse me, I ought to speak to the housekeeper before she retires for the night.”
He swept out of the room before he could think about changing his mind or consider the enormity of what he had just done—breaking a vow he had made to himself five years ago on the worst day of his life. A vow to take no wife and have no children, as penance for the deaths that he had caused.