"You were, but I suspect I was insufferable." He shrugged. "I suspect I still am."

Blindly she stared down at her empty plate. "You’re not so bad," she mumbled.

"What did you say?"

She raised an unwilling gaze to his face. "I said you improve upon acquaintance."

He cupped one hand around his ear and did a fair impersonation of a deaf old man. "No, I still can’t be sure I heard you aright."

Emily struggled not t

o laugh. What a revelation. She felt like she shared a sweet moment with someone who understood her better than anyone else in the whole wide world. How strange, when she’d braced for an encounter bristling with antagonism and recrimination. "Hamish, don’t tease."

He lowered his hand, and the laughter drained from his face. The expression in his eyes made the eggs she’d eaten coagulate into a cold lump in her stomach. The preliminaries, gentler than she’d ever predicted, reached their end. It was time for the main bout.

She wasn’t surprised when Hamish came around to pull out her chair, with a courtesy she remembered as innate.

"I should wash up." She cursed the quiver in her voice. Now the moment arrived, she was desperate to put it off for a little longer.

"Later." Hamish took her hand and seated her in a leather chair in front of the fire.

She watched him settle in the chair beside hers. With his long hair and traditional Highland costume, he could be a man from another age. The ancient tower rising about them deepened the impression of the past crowding in upon the present.

He stretched his long bare legs toward the hearth and turned to her. Flames flickered across his chiseled features and made him look like a stranger. Her heart fluttered with fear – and with something that she now recognized as sensual awareness. Ten empty months had given her plenty of time to examine her own confused reactions to the man she’d married.

"You’ve come a long way to see me, Emily. After nearly a year without a word." His voice was deep and persuasive, with no hint of belligerence. "Will you tell me what you want?"

Ah, that was a question indeed.

She curled shaking hands over the worn lions’ heads carved into the arms of her chair and made herself answer. To her surprise, the words emerged smoothly. Those unexpected revelations about Hamish’s lonely childhood gave her a shred of hope that he might understand.

"I don’t want to be alone anymore."

Chapter 18

Hamish frowned unseeing into the fire, as those astonishing words ricocheted through his mind. The whole day had been astonishing. He’d never expected to see Emily here at his bolt-hole. The sight of her had awoken his desire to almost painful life.

Now his wife was here, asking for…

Just what was she asking for?

"Hamish, are you trying to work out some tactful way of telling me to go back to London?" She sounded touchingly young, like the adolescent girl he’d met all those years ago at her father’s house.

He raised his eyes and studied her. She looked nervous. She also looked like she struggled to conceal her nerves under a show of bravado. How very like her.

"Even after all these months apart, you must recall that tact isn’t my forte."

His attempt to lighten the atmosphere didn’t succeed. Her expression remained austere. "So what do you think?"

He thought he needed a lot more information before he took on what could be just more heartache and frustration. "Tell me why you want this."

The spread of her hands indicated an inability to explain. "It’s a long story."

He rested his shoulders on the back of the chair. "I’m not going anywhere."

The question was – was Emily?

She twined her hands in her lap, a sign of disquiet he’d become familiar with in London. "I…I missed you, too."

Tags: Anna Campbell The Lairds Most Likely Historical
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