"It was awful."
"I’m sure it was." He paused. "But leaving you was also a blessed relief."
When he saw her whiten, he was sorrier than ever that he’d lit the lamps. She reached out to hold the back of the chair, as if her legs threatened to give way beneath her. "You wanted to get away from me so much? You said you like me. You said you…cared."
He swallowed, wishing there was an easy way to make her understand the unacceptable truth. "I did. I do."
"It doesn’t sound like it." Resentment cracked in her voice.
He sliced the air with one hand. "Damn it, the problem is I like you too much. I like you to the point where sleeping alone became the purest torture. I made you a promise before we married. But each day we spent as man and wife, that promise became shakier and shakier. With every mile that I traveled north, you were a mile safer from my need."
She was still ashen. "So you’re saying if we live together, our arrangements must change?"
Arrangements? What a namby-pamby term to describe the storm of desire that swept through him at the merest thought of her. He stood as straight as if he faced a firing squad. He had to make this clear, if they were to have any chance of rescuing anything positive from the disaster of their marriage.
"Yes, I am. I know it’s not fair. I know I told you I can keep my word. But, Emily, if you and I are going to reconcile, I can’t live as your chaste partner for the rest of my days. If we live together, we live together as man and wife. With all that phrase encompasses."
Chapter 19
Hamish waited for Emily to storm out of the room in disgust. But while the wariness in her expression deepened, she didn’t move. She didn’t even look particularly shocked. Which shocked him.
Then a horrible thought occurred to him. "You do know what I’m talking about, don’t you?"
A wry smile twisted her lips. "Do you mean am I aware of the mechanics of conjugal relations? Yes, I am. A girl at school told me. I didn’t believe her, but I’ve since had the opportunity to read some animal husbandry manuals. If we mate as animals do, I understand the basics."
Despite the tension vibrating in the air, Hamish laughed. "That is such an Emily answer."
She blushed. "I had nobody to ask. I couldn’t talk to Papa about this."
No, he supposed she couldn’t. She’d been lonely growing up, too.
"I can imagine those books were all practicality and no poetry," he said bleakly.
She still eyed him as though she expected him to ravish her if she blinked. "I’ve read enough poetry to guess that with people, it’s not so matter-of-fact. I imagine when passion carries one away, it feels different from the ram tupping the ewe."
If he wasn’t so close to the edge, he might laugh at that. "So it’s just me you don’t want to sleep with."
There was a spiky pause. "I’m not as opposed to the idea as I was."
He shook his head. Surely he’d misheard. "What?"
She leveled wide hazel eyes on him. "Don’t make me say it again."
He took a step forward but stopped bewildered when she raised one hand. "Don’t come any closer."
"But you just said…" Hamish struggled to master his primitive impulses.
It suddenly seemed a very bad idea that he hadn’t rushed her straight back to Lyon House the moment she arrived. They had far too much privacy here at the peel tower, and he wasn’t sure she could trust him in private any longer.
"We’ve been apart for months. I’m not jumping into bed the minute I see you again."
He slumped so heavily into a dining chair that it gave a loud creak. With a groan, he buried his face in his hands. "Damn it, Emily, this is torture."
When he raised his head, she hadn’t shifted an inch. He strove to sound like a reasonable man. "What’s changed? You were adamant that you’d never allow me to put my filthy paws on you."
With considerably more grace than he’d demonstrated, Emily sank into the chair beside his. "When you proposed, it was—"
"Unwelcome?"