Chapter 16

 

Elspeth wasn’t dressed for the outdoors, but she couldn’t bear to wait to change into warmer clothes. Cold as well as desperation added speed to her mad skitter across the icy yard, swept clean of snow, to Fergus’s luxurious stables.

“Jock, have you seen Brody?” she asked the brawny Scotsman who was grooming Fergus’s gray mare Banshee.

The pause before the Highlander spoke threatened to split her heart in two. She braced to hear the news that Brody had already set out for home. “Aye, lassie. He’s in the back, getting ready to head off. Although I told him it’s daft to set out alone on a snowy day like this. And no Christian should leave his family on Christmas Eve.”

“I agree.” A dizzying wave of relief made her clutch at the edge of the stall. Thank heaven, she wasn’t too late to offer amends to Brody. Nor did she need to make good on her vow to Hamish to gallop over the wintry hills in pursuit of the man she loved.

“Brody!” she called, rushing along the aisle dividing the stables. “Brody, where are you?”

“Devil take ye, what’s the matter?” He stuck a tousled dark head out of the last stall. “Stop caterwauling, lassie. You’re frightening the horses.”

He wasn’t being funny. Nervous whinnies from high-bred stock marked her noisy, frantic progress. Because of the Christmas house party, the stables were packed with expensive horseflesh.

She’d pictured flinging herself into Brody’s arms and declaring without ceremony that she’d be his wife. But his bleak expression and unwelcoming tone had her stumbling to a halt outside the stall. This wasn’t the man who had swept her up to heaven in the library last night, but someone sterner and warier.

He’d hung his coat over the gate, leaving him free to work in his shirtsleeves. Her eyes drank in the sight of that large, powerful chest clad in loose white linen, while crippling shyness trapped her joyful acceptance unspoken in her throat.

“What are ye doing here, Elspeth?” he asked in a flat tone she’d never heard him use before.

She’d imagined he’d be pleased to see her, but the green eyes were flatter than his voice. She shivered and wrapped her arms around her torso, although a line of braziers kept the stables toasty warm.

“Hamish said you were leaving.” Elspeth despised her uncertain tone. She’d hoped that over the last few days, she’d developed a bit of backbone, but she was back to sounding like mousy Miss Douglas.

He shrugged and returned to strapping his baggage to the saddle. “There’s no point staying. And it’s pretty clear that most of the party would welcome my absence.”

“I wouldn’t,” she found the nerve to say, edging into the stall and standing just behind him, although something about the tense set of those impressive shoulders warned her against touching him.

He gave a rough tug to the strap fastening his valise. “Ye more than anyone.”

She wanted to argue, but she knew he wouldn’t believe her. “It’s Christmas Eve. You can’t leave.”

“Aye, I damn well can,” he said through his teeth, still without looking at her.

“But you’ll be on your own at Christmas.”

“I need to get used to being alone.”

She winced. “Why?”

His shoulders, broad and straight, heaved with a great sigh that expressed endless irritation. “Why in hell do ye think?”

She twisted her fingers together and blinked back more tears. It had been a cursed watery kind of day. Summoning every scrap of courage, she raised her chin and told herself she could do this. What Hamish had told her suggested that Brody’s feelings might be involved at a deeper level than mere male vanity. She prayed her brother was right, or she was about to make an awful fool of herself.

“Please don’t go, Brody.”

“God almighty,” he muttered savagely and whipped around to glare at her. “Don’t ye understand yet, Elspeth? I want you. I want ye more than a dying man wants his next breath. Because I cannae have you, it hurts. I’m nae fit company right now.”

She gasped, appalled at the corrosive unhappiness in his eyes. Biting her lip hard enough to draw blood, she made herself meet that blazing gaze without flinching.

As she studied him and read his seething anguish, astonishment as well as remorse stabbed her. How on earth had ordinary little Elspeth Douglas inspired this storm of passion in rakish, sophisticated Brody Girvan?

“You can,” she said, her voice so low she hardly heard the words herself.

He jerked up to his full, imposing height and scowled down at her. “What are ye up to, Elspeth?”

She struggled for a little more conviction. “I said you can have me.”

A silence bristling with anger and confusion and, yes, longing crashed down between them like an avalanche. Brody’s bay gelding whickered and shifted, picking up the tension thrumming between the two humans who shared the narrow stall with him.

Brody sighed again, although this time with regret rather than anger. The belligerence drained from his face, and that tall, strong body sagged as he ran his hand through his black curls, leaving them even untidier than they’d been when she came in. He looked like he’d spent the day tearing at his hair.

“Elspeth, sweetheart, there’s no need to be afraid. You don’t have to give yourself to a man ye dinnae want, just to make sure you’ve got a roof over your head. Marina and Fergus will let you stay, and I’m sure your mother will forgive ye.” He sounded kind and reasonable and, to her chagrin, distant. “I suspect she’s halfway there already. After all, we only kissed. You’re as pure as ever you were.”

His determination to mistake her meaning made her want to stamp her foot. Although she supposed given the emphatic way she’d refused him—twice—she couldn’t really blame him for missing the point. “Why on earth are you so obtuse, Brody?”

Confusion made him grimace. “Obtuse?”

“Yes, obtuse.” At least she’d stopped squeaking, although quarreling with the man she loved didn’t strike her as a great improvement. “I’m trying to tell you that I’ll marry you.”

There, she’d said it. As plain as day. She waited for him to seize her and kiss her the way he had last night.

Instead, he crossed his arms over his chest and surveyed her down that haughty nose as if she were a clumsy housemaid who’d spilled dirty water over his best boots. “There’s no need to panic about your future. I said your mother will come round.”

“I’m not panicking,” she retorted, clenching her fists at her sides. “I thought you’d be glad that I’ve accepted your proposal.”

“Only if you want to marry me.”

She gave a growl of frustration. “What about all that stuff you just said? That you want me and you can’t live without me?”

“What about it?”

“I’m here to tell you that you’ve got me.”

“Have I?” He tilted a skeptical eyebrow. “Or have I only got the chance to restore your good name?”

“Last night that’s what you tried to do.”

“Aye, well, that was last night.” Another heavy sigh escaped him. “I’ve since decided I dinnae want a dutiful bride, who marries me for convention’s sake alone.”

“I promise you I won’t be dutiful.” When her small joke sparked no amusement, she spread her hands in bewilderment. “Brody, a mere couple of hours ago, you proposed to me again.”

“And ye refused me in no uncertain terms.”

Elspeth felt like giving him a good shake. Couldn’t he see that none of that mattered anymore and she was his for the taking? “So this is about pique?”

His mouth turned down. “No. Yes. Maybe.” He rested his large, elegant hand on his horse’s glossy bay withers, and his tone sharpened. “What do ye want, Elspeth? There’s only a few hours of daylight left, and I’d rather no’ be riding across the hills after dark.”

He’d proclaimed he wanted her and despite his irascible temper right now, she believed him. It shouldn’t be this hard to speak up.

“You.” Elspeth fought to steady her quaking voice, recognizing she had a fight ahead to get him to trust her again. “I want you.”

For a moment, she wondered if that was enough. Something bright sparked in his eyes, turned them glowing emerald. Then to her regret, it faded, and he looked as moodily handsome and unhappy as ever. “You need to spell it out, lassie. I thought you wanted me last night, and we all know how my conceit brought me down.”

“I want you, and I’d love to be your wife,” she mumbled.

“What did you say? I didn’t hear you.”

Resentment coiled in her belly, along with the more familiar longing and uncertainty. It made her feel braver. “Now you’re just playing with me.”

“Maybe,” Brody said sourly. “You’ve been playing with me since the day I arrived at Achnasheen.” Anger roughened his voice as he went on. “What in hell did ye mean by kissing me like that, if you didnae mean to have me?”

A huff of incredulous laughter escaped, although she remained a long way from amused. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this! You’re the blasted libertine. Did the country miss toy with the rake’s affections and lead him up the garden path about her intentions?”

Her sarcasm made anger tighten the skin of his face, giving her a sudden glimpse of what he’d look like when he was old. “Well may ye mock. Even I can see the absurdity of it. But nonetheless it’s true. You led me on, Elspeth. You made me think that your feelings were engaged when they weren’t.”

Guilt cracked her defiance and jabbed her like a hundred needles. How she’d hurt him. She’d had no idea.

“They were engaged, Brody,” she admitted, meeting his gaze with an unwavering stare. It became clear that nothing but unconditional surrender would break through the carapace of injured pride—and feelings—he’d built around himself.

“Then why did ye refuse me?”

Before she confessed that, she needed to be sure of him. She almost was, but not quite. “Why did you ask me? Was it just to save my good name?”

Brody ran his hand through his hair again, and she read an unfamiliar defenselessness in his face. “That was part of it.”

She licked her lips. What a fool she’d been to imagine that luring Brody back would be easy. “But not the sole reason?”

The hand on the horse’s withers tightened into a fist. “No, not the sole reason.”

Her confidence rose a fraction. “And did you flirt with me because you were bored?”

“Of course not.” He looked offended. “I flirted with ye because I couldn’t resist you.”

That sounded even more encouraging. Elspeth took a faltering step closer. “And you didn’t kiss me because Marina made me look pretty?”

“You’ve always been pretty. Marina just made it easier for the world to see what was already there.”

“I didn’t think you’d noticed me before.”

He sighed again. “It’s hard to explain, at least without confirming that I’m the careless numskull that ye already think me.”

“Try.”

The helpless gesture was new, as was the air of defeat that hung about him. “I’ve been a wild young man. There’s no point lying about that.”

“No.”

For the first time, genuine, if bleak humor lightened his expression. “Hamish and his blasted big mouth.”

“Yes.”

“But during this last year, I’ve just been going through the motions. Playing the libertine has become more work than it’s worth. I’ve felt aimless and useless and lost.”

“I’m sorry.” She knew without him telling her, that he’d never confided his unhappiness to anyone else.

“There I was, sick of the world, sick of myself, and most of all, sick of my deuced self-pity, when I turned up at Achnasheen to spend Christmas with people I’ve known most of my life.”

“No high expectations that anything special might happen?”

“None at all. But then I saw ye. I dinnae think I’d ever seen you before. No’ properly.”

“What…what did you see?” she dared to ask, inching even closer.

His faint smile warmed in a way that made her heart jump around like a grasshopper. A powerful surge of hope stole her breath. After all the confusion and pain, she and Brody might yet have their happy ending.

“An interesting lassie, who didn’t seem too impressed with me, a sure sign of intelligence. A lassie who hovered in the shadows while the rest of her family monopolized the sunlight. A sweet, pure-hearted lassie with no idea how beautiful she is.”

“Oh, dear,” Elspeth said, her voice catching on a husky note. “No wonder the Edinburgh ladies were mad for you. You shouldn’t say such things if you don’t mean them.”

Irritation at her continuing lack of faith tightened his features. “Damn it, I do mean them.” He sucked in a breath and spoke more calmly. “But that day, what I saw clearest of all was that I was nowhere near worthy of this exquisite creature.”

She swallowed to shift the jagged boulder of emotion blocking her throat. “That didn’t stop you from kissing me.”

He shrugged. “I’m only human, my darling.”

The endearment threatened to undo her. Surely now he’d kiss her again. Instead he turned back to his horse and began to unbuckle the bag he’d just attached to his saddle.

“What are you doing?” she asked in bewilderment.

“I’m no’ going anywhere today.” Brody set the valise on the ground.

She swallowed again. “I’m glad.”

“Are you?” he said, still facing toward his horse.

“Yes.” She sucked in an uneven breath and steeled herself for his answer to the question she must ask. Although after what he’d just said, she wasn’t as nervous as she had been. “Brody, leave your saddle and horse and straps alone for a moment and look at me.”

With slow deliberation, he did, his green eyes so dark and deep that they belied his claim to being a shallow man. But of course, he wasn’t half as shallow as he pretended to be. He never had been.

“Please stop skirting around the truth. Tell me why you proposed.”

She expected him to revert once more to avoidance or annoyance, but instead his shoulders slumped. Brave, shining Brody Girvan looked vulnerable as she’d never before seen him.

“Och, mo chridhe,” he said, in that beautiful baritone brogue that always made her want to melt into a puddle of delight at his feet. “That’s easy to answer. I asked ye to marry me because I love you.”