"Quite."
Gabrielle opened her mouth to say something, but abruptly changed her mind; the glint in her green eyes suggested that the words she settled upon were not the ones that originally entered her mind. "I pity you, Connor Douglas. Not only can't you say the word, you can't even feel the richness and depth of the emotion."
"I dinny lack for emotions, lass. Ye be wrong aboot that."
"Mayhap, but you obviously lack the most important one. Love. Methinks 'tis what the term 'barbarian' truly means."
That said, Gabrielle reached up and untangled her arm from his shock-slackened fingers. Turning her back on him, she quit the hall without a backward glance.
That he'd been insulted, Connor did not doubt. Exactly how the insult had come about, however, he wasn't so sure of. He knew only that without her presence to warm it, the great hall felt suddenly chilly and... aye, lonely in its vast emptiness.
Connor stared at the empty spot where Gabrielle had stood for a full two minutes after the clipped echo of her footsteps faded away. He might have stood there a good deal longer if not for the two sudden, sharp pains in his shin that snagged his attention.
His gaze jerked down and to the side, colliding with one that was a bit bluer, wider, and fringed by long, thick copper lashes.
"So help me, Ella," he snapped, "if ye dinny cease kicking me, I'll see ye wed to—"
"Ye be a real charmer, Cousin," Ella said sarcastically, ignoring the threat he'd been about to voice. "I cannot remember the last time I heard a mon turn a woman's head with such honey-sweet words." Crossing her arms over her waist, she met Connor's glare with a steady one of her own. "Tsk, tsk, tsk. Even Roy Maxwell has a smoother tongue than yers, and that mon was purposely insulting me. 'Tis wond
ering I am, why ye dinny ask Gabrielle to open her mouth and show ye her teeth. Indeed, ye might as well have asked her to bare all. A Douglas ne'er does anything by half measures, don't ye ken? If ye're bound and determined to treat the lass like ye're doing nothing maun important than buying a horse, ye may as well do it right."
"If Roy Maxwell has insulted ye..."
"Roy Maxwell isn't the point. Gabrielle Carelton is. I'll thank ye to be sticking to the subject at hand. Dinny be trying to change it again."
"Have a care, Ella, I'm in a foul mood and of a mind to take ye over my knee."
"I've just come from the dungeon, and Roy Maxwell's voice is still ringing in me ears. Since me mood isn't any better than yers," she gave a careless shrug, "I'm almost of a mind to let ye try. Almost."
Connor clamped his teeth around a terse reply. Spinning on his heel, he retrieved the tankard, left the table long enough to fill it to the cold, pewter brim, then returned. Thinking only of turning his back on his annoying cousin, he sat where Gabrielle had sat... then instantly wished he'd chosen another spot.
Was it possible for the bench to radiate the woman's heat, even now, or was his imagination getting the better of him?
Connor swore under his breath, then lifted the tankard and gulped down half its contents in two huge swallows. Perhaps whisky would have been a better choice? The potent liquor would be more numbing to his senses, something he could most certainly use just now.
An uneasy feeling settled in the pit of his stomach. Complete intoxication would be the only way he'd be able to chase wayward thoughts of Gabby from his mind, he realized. Even then, the remedy would be temporary. Aye, he could get blindly drunk, mayhap even forget about the lass for a wee bit, but as sure as the sun would rise come dawn, he knew that when he sobered, his traitorous thoughts would stray right back in that woman's direction.
Gabrielle Carelton was like a fever in his blood, one that ran strong and deep, one he could not seem to shake himself of. When he wasn't with her, he thought about her. Who was she with? What was she doing? Was she happy or, at the very least, content?
And why, why did the answers matter ever so much?!
Bloody hell!
When he was awake he fantasized about her, when he was asleep he dreamed about her. More provocative dreams he'd never in his life experienced, yet he had to admit that only a small portion of those dreams centered around the tantalizing memory of their lovemaking. Equally as many left him to wake with the lingering impression of Gabby's smile, or the bittersweet trill of her laughter echoing a haunting melody in his ears...
"...Alasdair Gray."
The name broke into Connor's thoughts and caught his attention. He focused on his cousin and demanded she repeat herself.
"I said only that the last time I saw such a ridiculous expression on a mon 'twas on Alasdair Gray, when he took Vanessa Forster to wife."
"And what expression is that?"
"I may be wrong," she replied, and grinned impishly, "but methinks the kitchen wenches call it 'lovesick.' "
"Och! Cousin, I'm not lovesick! Curse ye for e'en suggesting such a thing!"
Ella's lack of a verbal response made her arched copper brow all the more compelling.